Systems and Operations Management - Assignment Example

Table of contents Table of contents 0 Table of figures and diagrams 0 Table 1: Atokowa input output process diagram…………………………………………………6 0 Abstract 1 Introduction 2 Table 1: Atokowa input output process diagram 3 CATWOE ANALYSIS 4 Customers 4 Actors 5 Transformation 5 Weltanschauung 5 Owners 5 Environmental Constraints 5 Analysis and Discussion 6 Recommendations for Improvement 7 Operation Management Strategy in the Retail Shops 7 The Company Should Set Quality as an Operational Management Objective 8 The Atokowa Advantage Should Embrace Client Orientation and Customer Service As an Operational Management Objective 9 The Otakawa Retail Stores Should Make Reliability an Operational Management Objective 10 The Atokawa Advantage Should Make Professional Development an Operational Objective 11 Conclusion 11 References 13 Appendices 14 Table of figures and diagrams Table 1: Atokowa input output process diagram…………………………………………………6 Figure 1: Atokowa Advantage Organisation Chart………………………………………………………17 Abstract The changing technological and management practices in the world today continually eliminates historical quality differences in the products offered to customers. The retail industry is increasingly getting competitive with established businesses utilizing pricing and product tactics to cut competition. Globalization has both negative and positive implications for stationery and office supplies industry. Many businesses can source their supplies from anywhere in the world if the prices are right and this creates a ripe ground for cut throat competition. The increased competition has necessitated the establishment of systems and operations management practices aimed at increasing efficiency, flexibility, and customer satisfaction with the major goal of attracting customers and retaining the present customers through mutually beneficial practices that benefit all stakeholders. Operational strategies are important to a business survival through better efficiencies leading to higher profit margins. Retail shops and businesses should increase their operational performances; embrace customer care and customer orientation practices, and increase the efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery to survive the competition (Yu and Ramanathan, 2008). Introduction Operations management is the efficient designing, systematizing and managing the activities and resources required to provide the business chief services and products for the market with the objective of curtailing costs and enhancing effectiveness and client satisfaction. Systems and operation management practices are used for all types of organizations and are responsible for all products and services utilized by man (Waller, 2003). Atokowa advantage business has no formal objectives in all its operations and the senior management needs to develop operational objectives for progress to be made. Operations management integrates the financial, marketing and operations processes of the enterprise and these functions overlap; complementing each other until the organization reaches the maximum potential in quality, efficiency, and service delivery. An efficient and successful systems and operations management framework in a company is fundamental to the achievement of the business in all key areas. The systems and operation management must create a harmonious relationship from the senior management to the customer as the astute management of human capital, raw materials, and energy will give the customer the right products and services necessary for his satisfaction. These processes are improved and refined overtime to cut costs, improve quality and efficiency; as the benefits will trickle back to the company in profits and to the customer in quality, low costs, and satisfaction. Atokowa advantage is the stationery and office supplies company in Australia, which initially started as photocopy business and later expanded into business printing. It sells and supplies a wide range of stationery and office supplies to individual customers, businesses, and other organizations. Formed in 1964 as a photocopying business in Sydney, Atokowa advantage has grown tremendously and expanded to other areas. Atokawa advantage is headed by Jonathan Atokowa who is assisted by four directors Paul Fair Clough who heads retail operations, Ranjeev. Table 1: Atokowa input output process diagram The management team include Patel who directs the Purchasing and Supply Department, Hayley Atokowa who is the marketing and human resources director, and Graham New Court who is the finance director. They are the key decision makers and they are supported by numerous managers on the ground. Atokowa advantage is a reputable business in the stationery and office supplies industry in Australia with many customers seeking its services. Its customer base is diverse and includes individual customers, businesses, and organizations. The company gets is revenue from its printing and photocopy services and the wide stationeries of office supplies it sells. The printing venture is hugely successful with the general manager of printing. George Hargreaves is maintaining high standards by investing in new printing technology and ensuring customer satisfaction at all times. Ranjeev Patel - the purchasing and supplies director - introduced the Atokawa range of products that increased the business profits and strengthened the Atokowa business brands. The branded stationery and office supplies increased the business prominence in the country and reinforced its standards to its customers. With Atokowa stocking a wide variety of stationeries and office supplies it remains a one stop shop providing convenience to its customers who remain royal to the business. Atokowa Advantage does not have a comprehensive customer service and orientation policy. Customer orientation ensures that the organization determines and comprehends the wants and needs of the target market with the objective of creation, communication, and delivery of competitively priced products and services (Kotler, 1992). CATWOE ANALYSIS Customers Shop attendants are at the receiving end because of the inefficient ASIS processing software resulting in long paper trails for business customers. The shop attendants are incompetent in their jobs as they do not know how to process some of the accounts resulting in incorrect invoicing, inaccurate and late delivery of products. Some of the shop attendants are poor in customer care. The management is also at the receiving end as it is not coordinated in its activities. They do not have a business focus or strategy and they operate independent of each other, which is not healthy for the business. The company needs to develop a quality department to deal with the stores branded items and avoid low quality products in their stores. Actors The chief executive officer, directors and shop managers Transformation The transformation is from independent decision making to an all inclusive decision making process in key areas. The shop attendants would be provided with an upgraded processing system from semi automated to fully automated processing. All employees would be retrained on customer orientation practices and on their job descriptions to enable job mastery and increase confidence. A quality department would be established to allow only high quality products in the stores Weltanschauung The overall effects would be an all inclusive management that facilitates customer focus and orientation practices. This would enable high quality services guaranteed to satisfy all customers resulting in a highly efficient operation management process with higher profits due to high customer retention and customer base. Owners The process owners will be led by the chief executive officer and implemented by the directors and the retail and shop managers. Environmental Constraints The business owner may refuse to initiate change due to financial constraints and personal reasons. The management may also refuse to embrace the new proposals and ideas due to conservativeness and challenge of new technologies. These challenges may be solved by making the process owners understand the importance and benefits of the new systems and objectives. Retraining and capacity building of all employees with effective customer communication would increase acceptance of the changes and would result in increased satisfaction levels, higher process efficiencies and profits. Customer satisfaction should be prioritized because most theoretical and empirical studies associate business performance with the level of customer satisfaction (Morgan, Anderson and Mittal, 2005). Analysis and Discussion To achieve this, Atokowa should understand the internal and external customers’ needs and wants. It should establish efficient communication channels that would facilitate free information flow from the retail customer, employees, managers, directors and the chief executive officer. This would highlight the weaknesses in critical processes of the business with an objective of adequately addressing them. Throughout the shops, the employees and the management lack total involvement in deciding the direction and shop improvements to best serve the customers. The management should empower their employees and tap their ideas and recommendations in the overall improvement of the business products and services. The inability and lack of developing priority objectives is a major hindrance to business progress (Checkland, 1999). There are no guidelines and framework for collective decision making and support systems for the decisions. Each director has a future plan and objective of the business but there are no collective or organization objectives to be achieved. Though the business has highly talented individuals, they are underutilized and constrained by the lack of empowerment to make and implement the right processes and programs necessary for improving efficiency in the service and product provision. The business does not have any organizational, operational, or quality targets and no benchmarks to evaluate the performance. This impacts the quality of products and services provided leading to the majority of customers being dissatisfied with the service provision across all the stores. This lack of organizational, operational, and quality objectives is a major weakness in the effective management of Atokowa advantage. The management has failed to invest in appropriate financial and organizational management software increasing the workload of the employees and this significantly impacts on their morale leading to wastage of valuable time. The employees should also be adequately trained in all aspects of the business to facilitate the efficiencies of their services. Competent employees are more flexible, confident, and more productive. The management needs to set quality benchmarks to be realized in all facets of the venture from purchasing and supplies, finance to the retail shops. The management should develop effective evaluation procedures designed to pinpoint the major weaknesses in the operational systems and management. It should institute organizational mechanisms to support, strengthen, and reinforce continual improvement initiatives that have the capacity to reduce product and time wastages and customer dissatisfaction. Increased efficiency and effectiveness of organizational management programs would lead to more profits for the business owners and mutual benefit to all stakeholders. Recommendations for Improvement Operation Management Strategy in the Retail Shops The business needs to make conscious decisions and actions, which strategically define the roles and functions of operation management in the business to initiate responsibility in all processes. The Atokawa advantage management should use appropriate tools to assess the overall potential in the stationery and office supplies industry in Australia and identify the major weaknesses and strengths of its operations. They should come up with various strategies for competing with their rivals based on the product and service performance, pricing efficiency, timely and reliable delivery of products and services and flexibility of the products and services (Wild, 2002). The systems and operations management priorities need to be focused on customer satisfaction and retention, which can only be done by constantly changing their strategies as the markets demands. The stores should enhance their business accounts through the provision of financial services, which can improve customer loyalty (Akehurst and Alexander, 2000). Financial services increase the competitive advantage over other similar businesses by creating stronger customer bonds essential for customer retention due to increased customer confidence in the retail stores. The Atokawa advantage shops should invest in the latest database software that allows efficient processing transactions of all types of customers without any paper work. This would reduce the consternation and dissatisfaction of both employees and customers because of the large paper work. The Company Should Set Quality as an Operational Management Objective Quality of design and conformance should be in line with the customers’ expected standard. The company should make quality a priority in all its operations as low quality products and services are easily identified by customers in the various processes. Quality is easily discernible by customers and has a large determinate of satisfaction and dissatisfaction of the customers (Slack, Chambers and Johnston, 2007). The quality of stationery and office supplies should be of the highest standards possible and there should be a department to evaluate the quality of the supplies. All products stocked and sold by the company should meet the quality of design and conformance and should meet the standards perceived by the customers. These measures would ensure that products with low quality are not sold in their retail shops. The printing and photocopying services should be improved where possible by continually investing in new technology and equipments. The Atokowa Advantage Should Embrace Client Orientation and Customer Service As an Operational Management Objective Customer service should focus on both the internal and external customers and should be designed to avoid any dissatisfaction in the daily business dealings. Satisfied employees are motivated to work more efficiently and are able to improve their customer service skills. Otakawa advantage does not have a customer orientation and customer policy and there are no channels of dealing with customer complaints. The senior management should develop customer service guidelines and open customer feedback channels, which can strategically enable the business to improve its services and products. Customer service personnel should be employed in all their stores and they should certify that the clients leave the retail shops when they are satisfied. Exceptional and excellent customer service is historically a strong competitive tool and should be practiced at all times (Mazursky and Jacoby, 1986). The customer orientation and customer service strategies should aim at cultivating customer loyalty, which is essential in retail businesses. The Retail Shops Should Make Speed as an Operational Management Objective Speed is the time that passes from the time the client demands a service or a product to the time the customer receives the product or services (Slack, Chambers and Johnston, 2007). From customers’ feedback, long waiting periods in the stores was the main setback in nearly every store. The company should improve the efficiency of its systems to be able to speedily and efficiently serve customers. They should evaluate their systems and pinpoint the key areas where the customers are delayed and make concise and innovative ways of alleviating the problem. The shop attendants must be flexible, innovative and time conscious to avoid unnecessary delays and management should increase the number of employees if the stores are understaffed. Speedy receipt of services and products increases the satisfaction of the customer and increases the chances of the customer using the services or products. If printing and photocopying services are offered quickly and efficiently, the customers are more likely to return with more business. The Otakawa Retail Stores Should Make Reliability an Operational Management Objective From the customer feedback sheet, some customers’ orders were delivered late and there was a small percentage whose orders were wrongly delivered and it contributed to significant customer dissatisfaction. It is imperative for the business to timely deliver the orders to their clients at all times when promised. Late or wrong deliveries reduce customer confidence on the business and can make dissatisfied customers switch to the competitors (Ott, 2011). Late deliveries can lead to order cancellation, which lead to loss of profits and wastage of time. The retail stores should adequately monitor their stocks and make timely re-orders depending on the market trends. A retail shop with assorted and a wide selection of products and services makes its customers dependent on it for all their needs. The Atokawa Advantage Should Make Professional Development an Operational Objective For improved efficiencies in operational processes, the management must facilitate the development of its employees’ skills and expertise through training, facilitation, and provision of effective and efficient facilities. They should develop a long term strategic plan of regularly training and educating its employees to increase the systems operational efficiencies throughout the businesses. Emerging technologies, customer requirements and trends necessitates the constant and continued retraining of employees. Highly qualified staffs are creative and flexible and are most likely to remain with the company, which is essential for continued maintenance of customer service standards (Greenwood, 2005). Change is not always welcome and the importance of instituting the change should be well communicated to employees and all levels of management staff. Management staffs are responsible for implementing change in the organization and some may fail to appreciate the importance of the expected changes hindering the organizational improvement standards. Though all stakeholders will benefit from the proposed changes the business owners are the ultimate beneficially as the business will make more profits. The business owners may also reject the proposed changes and improvements due to the immediate economic demands placed by the proposed changes. Conclusion The highly competitive retail dealing in the current business world necessitates the capitalization of any competitive edge available. Customer care quality and superior product quality are fundamental in maintaining and attracting new customers in the business. Reward systems should be started to reward and maintain the loyal customers who can get some discounts with huge purchases. The management staffs needs to organize and manage all the organizational processes with the larger objective of attracting and retaining customers through the provision of exemplary service. It is important and imperative for Atokawa advantage business to improve its operational processes and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of its employees. The senior management staff of the company should be tasked with implementing the changes and laying the framework for their implementation. They should identify the key deficiencies in their employees and put in place mechanism for remedying the situations. Without the provision of efficient and up to date facilities and technologies, employees remain powerless to improve the operation efficiencies even if highly qualified. The management holds the key to making significant gains through systems operational management principles and it should always remain committed to continued improvement at all times. References Akehurst, G., and Alexander, N., 2000. Retail Marketing. London: Frank Cass Publishing. Checkland, P., 1999. Systems Thinking, Systems Practice. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons. Greenwood, B., 2005. “Client orientation - open heart surgery on the business." S S G M, Service Station & Garage Management ABI/INFORM Trade & Industry, ProQuest. Web. 31 Mar. 2012 Kotler, P., 1992. Marketing’s New paradigm: What’s Really Happening Out There. Planning Review Mazursky, D. and Jacoby, J., 1986. Exploring the Development of Store Images. Journal of Retailing, Vol. 62, no 2, pp.145-165 Morgan, N.A., Anderson E.W., and Mittal, V., 2005. Understanding Firms' Customer Satisfaction Information Usage. Journal of marketing, 69(3) Ott, A., 2010. The 24-hour Customer: New Rules for Winning in a Time-starved, Always-connected Economy- Harper Business. Slack, N., Chambers, S. and Johnston, R., 2007. Operations Management, 5th Edition. England: Pearson Education Limited Waller, D. L., 2003. Operations Management: a Supply Chain Approach, 2nd edn. London, England: Thompson Wild, R., 2002. Essentials of Operations Management. London: Cengage Learning EMEA. Yu, W., and Ramanathan, R., 2008. An Assessment of Operational Efficiencies in the UK Retail Sector. International Journal of Retail and Distribution Management, Volume 36. No. 11, pp 861-882. Appendices Figure 1: Atokowa Advantage Organisation Chart Read More