Operations Planning and Control - Essay Example

However, demand for organizational products is influenced by many factors as explained by Ahlersten (2008, p. 87). These factors include the price of the products, time of the year, price of other substitute and complementary products, taste and preferences of customers and the income of the population. In addition, demand is determined by the expectations of customers in changes of price and quantities supplied in the market. This however depends on all other factors remaining constant. Dilts (2004, p. 68) asserts that demand must be backed by the purchasing power of the customers and is always related to a specific price and time.

Consequently, it is critical for organizations to optimize the supply of products during the peak demand period to ensure that the customers are able to access the services demanded. This is the greatest dilemma facing Holly Farm. The Farm at the beginning of 2007 decided to open its doors for paying visitors to view their Farm. The organization is involved in both dairy and arable livestock rearing. To ensure the comfort of their visitors, the company invested its entire savings constructing a 50-space car park and a six park for the 40-seater coaches.

Furthermore they invested in constructing a safe area for viewing the milking parlour, purchased special trailers to transport passengers around the farm on guided tours and a children’s recreation playground. Behind the shop, the farm constructed a small facility for making dairy ice cream. Through aggressive advertising and events organized in local schools and organizations; the number of visitors to the Farm has grown steadily and by the end of 2010, the annual number of visitors was over twenty one thousand.

There are great variations in the number of visitors during different months of the year and time of the day. Although the allowed visiting hours are from 11.00 am to 6.20 after milking is completed, approximately 90 percent of the visitors in cars and coaches arrive after midday picnic until around 1.30pm and make a tour of the farm in the afternoon. By 3.00 pm about 40 percent would leave the Farm while 60 percent wait to view the milking process and there after visit the shop for ice cream and other products.

There are more visitors from April to October while demand is too low outside this period. Moreover, visits are high from Friday to Monday, the demand peaking on Saturdays and Sundays. The period between November and March is usually too cold for tractor rides and the animals have to be kept inside. Gillian who is charged with the responsibility of managing the visitors has initiated an ambitious plan to increase the number of visitors to the Farm by forty percent in 2011. Moreover, a state of the art milking parlour has been launched by the Farm where cows are milked on a slow moving turntable and milking is to last from 3.00 to 6.00 pm.

To optimize the number visitors visiting the Farm, Gillian has to determine whether concentrate on individual advertising or promoting visits by coaches during the peak time. In case