The Value Chain and Supply Chains - Article Example

Operation Management Table of Contents Part A: 3 Part B: 5 Part C: 10 Reference: 14 Bibliography: 15 Part A: Strategy and the internet was the focus of Porter’s (2001) article. Explain how technology has reshaped the value chain and supply chains: The articles stated that the management of organization should implement a strategy i.e. Internet in their organization to make their business more successful and it also aids the managers to understand the requirements of current market scenario. Through this article Porter stated about the importance of Internet in current market scenario and how the internet could be an essential strategy for an organizations to generate more revenues via supply chain or whole operation process of business. To generate more revenue an organization should implement Internet or Information Technology in their business, this strategy will aid the organizations to achieving sustainable competitive advantage with the help of by reducing the cost of operation functions in to the organizations. This whole activity provides the organization a better management structure and best output results. Another advantage of this strategic system is that it will provide a unique type of values to their customers along with various type of features, way of services and logistical arrangements. The internet system helps the organizations to make their operational functions more effective and give lots of different strategic ways. It will provide the organization more strength in their work environment. Effectiveness in operation functions: As we all know, internet is most powerful tool and available globally to exchange ideas and information. Through this, the organization can exchange the information and data with their suppliers and it will give more effectiveness in their operational functions. The advantage of internet in operation function are; it will save time for both parties the company and suppliers and they will able to share information in real time process and minimize the extra cost too. This whole activity will enhance the overall all value chain of the company and provides a common platform to both parties to work together effectively. Strategic Positioning: As it gets to be harder to maintain operational advantages, strategic positioning turns into all the more imperative. In the event that an organization cant be more operationally viable than its adversaries, the best way to produce larger amounts of monetary worth is to increase an expense playing point or value premium by contending in a unique manner. Humorously, organizations today characterize rivalry including the Internet practically altogether as far as operational viability. Accepting that no economical advantages exist, they look for velocity and readiness, planning to stay one stage in front of the opposition. This type of a strategy to rivalry turns into a fulfilling toward oneself prediction. Without a different strategic course, speed and adaptability lead no place. Either no one of a kind competitive advantage is made, or enhancements are non specific and cant be maintained. Having a strategy is a matter of order. It obliges a solid concentrate on benefit as opposed to simply development, a capability to characterize an interesting worth suggestion, and an ability to make intense exchange offs in picking what not to do. An organization must finish what has been started, actually throughout times of change, while always enhancing and expanding its different positioning. Procedure goes a long ways past the quest for best practices. It includes the setup of a custom-made value chain, the arrangement of processes needed to create and convey a service or product that empowers an organization to offer one of a kind worth. To be faultless, also, the value chain must be exceedingly incorporated. At the point when an organizations processes fit together as a strengthening toward oneself framework, any contender longing to mirror a technique must imitate the entire framework instead of duplicate only one or two discrete product gimmicks or methods for performing specific activities (Porter and others, 2001). Part B: Input-process output Mapping As we can see that there are various operational issues occuring in the Blackberry Hill farm which is hindering the over all serivec that are being offered to the customers, we need to understand each and every problem occuring over here and how to reduce it. There is clearly an issue with the processing of the services, such as parking of cars which is exceeding the limit during peak hours. This issue cannot be solved by increasing the capacity of the car parking area. However, the car parking system can be enhanced by organising the whole process. Over here we can apple various types of models such as input-output process model. Over here we can identify our customers as an input criteria and process will mainly be the services offerred by Blackberry Hill farm. The output will again be the customers but the success of the output will depend on their level of satisfaction. Blackberry hill farm mainly faces issues during peak hours. In order to cope up with this issue, they should hire more staffs and train them of their individual routine. A staff who is designated to handle the parking will only be responsible for parking and he or she should be dragged to a different service during peak hours. This will only hamper the quality of services being offered to the customers (Bass and Lawton, 2009). Value Chain Analysis: Figure 2 Value Chain Model (Walters and Rainbird, 2004) Firm Infrastructure: The infrastructure for any firm is a basic need to develop the whole organization and business. In this, the Blackberry Hill Firm has three basic functional department which deals with to develop infrastructure of the firm. Accounting and Finance Department: Accounting and finance department is essential for any organization. The role of account and finance department to monitor the financial functions like tractions for business process, revenues of the organization and budget for the organization to develop or start new project within the Blackberry Hill Farm. It analyzed the overall money related problems for Blackberry Hill Firm and guides the top management according to it to earn more revenue and make the company more profitable. The main function of accounting and finance department to project a report on all variable and fixed cost related to company from the bringing, procurement of raw materials from suppliers to the customers and analyzed total budget for a product or services. Legal Department: The role of legal department in the Blackberry Hill Firm, to solve and advice the top management regarding to all legal activities which are linked with suppliers, process to develop the product or service and at last with customers when the products or services reached to them. Health and Safety: Health and safety is always a major concern with every organization. Through this the Blackberry Hill Farm, can provide better health to their employees and provide safety to them during work. It also helps the company with health of the customers, since the Blackberry Hill Farm’ major products and services are related to foods Human Resource Management: The Blackberry Hill farm has to recruit more employees in their organization to manage all functions and parts. If there will be sufficient amount of work forces then the Blackberry Hill Farm can manage high amount of visitors during peak hours, although human resource department has to provide proper training to their staffs and new employees to manage and how to deal with customers specially with children in zoo area. Technology Development: Research and development: Since, the Blackberry Hill Farm is in agriculture sector and develops various products related to food items such jams, bakery items and beverages. To fulfill the demand of the customers, they need to develop a best strategy in their research and development centre, so that the failure of the product could be minimized by the company in terms of money. Procurement: It deals with the whole process to supply chain activity; here the Blackberry Hill Farm has to procure all necessary raw materials to develop the food products from relevant supplier in aspect of cost and quality so that they can satisfy their customers Business Process Mapping The next thing which needs to be implemented is to create a business process map. This needs to be done by the higher management because they will have all the knowledge required to create the map (Conger, 2011). The basic idea behind a business process map is to understand the purpose of the business. The purpose of Blackberry hill farm is to create an effective agri-tourism experience and offer a host of services with the farm which will entertain the customers. They already have everything they need to create a good farming experience for their customers so it can be assumed that they are clear on their purpose of the business. Once the purpose has been set, the next step is to understand how to fulfill the purpose. In the case of Blackberry hill farm there are several services that are offered such as tractor rides, car parking facility, petting zoo, etc. Each of the services need to be handled properly in order to keep the customers satisfied, with this aim in mind, the staffs working in the farm need to have clearly defined goals and objectives as to what needs to be done by them in order keep the services and the processes running smoothly. As discussed in the case study, there is a presence of bottleneck in the form of a dough-nut making machine which has recently been installed in the bakery. However the customers enjoy watching the machine work. So in this case, the bottle neck can be utilised to be a tourist attraction instead of hampering the whole process of bakery (Jacka and Keller, 2002). It should be a separate entity so that the other process are not hampered. Once the bjectives of the firm is clear with the staffs, we need to work on them rigidly to further improve the operations at Blackberry Hill farm. Evaluation: This whole issue with the Blackberry Hill Farm can be solved with information technology. The Blackberry Hill Farm has to implement a strong database to store the records of their visitors. This process will help the Blackberry Hill Farm to regulate each and every visitor and they can track them via database. This process help them to maintain each record of customers history like address, telephone number, date of visit and relevant records that the Blackberry Hill farm want to know about the customer. This whole process also help to the visitors to place their order via information technology system and it save in to the data base. If the visitor wants to repeats his or her old order the staffs of the Blackberry Hill Farm can retrieve the history and the choices of products from database. This whole system is very effective and save lots of time of both staffs and the visitors too. It will minimize the overall cost on extra staffing in the Blackberry Hill Farm too. Part C: There are lots of issues with Blackberry Hill Farm such as huge queue developed at peak hours and due to this they are not able to manage the whole firm perfectly. Even though, they have less number of employees to manage whole farm and top management do not want to hire extra employees for this. Some issues of the Blackberry Hill Farm are explained with the help of graph. No of Visitors during last year: January 1,006 February 971 March 2,874 April 6,622 May 8,905 June 12,304 July 14,484 August 15,023 September 12,938 October 6,687 November 2,505 December 3,777 Total 88,096 Average 7,341.33 The above graph is showing the number of visitors is showing the number of visitors darning last year. It can be seen that the average number of visitors is 7,341, which is very huge in number. Preserve demand and production (previous year) From above graph, it can be seen that, during June to August of previous year there was huge demand of product whereas, the productions of product was less in compare to the demand. Solution: To mange huge number of visitors, and to control the huge number of visitors, the management should implement information technology in their farm to monitor and track the record of each visitor through a database system. It also helps the Blackberry Hill Farm for daily visitors and save lots of time during check in to the farm. However, average demand of the product was 4,660 and average inventory was 7,880. This thing should be managed in proper way so that they can control the demand of the visitors and fulfill their need by supplying the products in proper time. To install information technology in the Blackberry Hill Farm, the top management has to identify major issues and how it should be minimized with the help of information technology. Another factor is the process of choosing solution should be cost effective and doesn’t affect the earlier business process. To do this, the top management has to design a system for implementing information technology in to the farm. After system design, they have completing implementation such as selection of hardware, software for this program, then testing to check whether the new process is working properly or not. Then the management has to provide proper training to their staffs with proper documentation and maintenance of system in regular interval. At the end if there is any requirement to bring changes in system, then they can do those changes to make the Blackberry Hill Farm more effective for their customers and to minimize the issues. Reference: Bass, I. and Lawton, B. (2009). Lean six sigma using SigmaXL and Minitab. 1st ed. New York: McGraw-Hill. Conger, S. (2011). Process mapping and management. 1st ed. 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