Concept Design Services - Assignment Example

Concept Design services Task One. The CDS (concept design services) have gone through a key change in the strategy in business. The existing operational competencies in the company have contributed to the adoption of the business strategy in different ways. The CDS Company changed from being a manufacturer that is inward to a make and design customer focused operation. In this case, the organization was in a service provider that is integrated. Many of the new business for CDS was formed from the partnership that was formed with the houses of design (Bradley, 2007). In effect, CDS designed products in a joint form having design houses that are specialized having a brand that is well-known hence give out a full service of distribution and manufacturing. In different ways CDS was a business to business organization from being a business to consumer organization. It is a company which makes the most profits in Europe. This company shifted from establishing industrial mouldings in the sector of aerospace and items of home ware like dustpans and buckets. These products were sold under the brand name focus so as to establish home ware of increased quality, stylish and of increased design value. CDS has also shifted into a homeware of a high-margin. This advancement was championed by Linda Fleet who was the director of marketing of CDS and had worked previously with enormous chain retail and retailers wallpaper. In the brand name (concept), CDS had about 3000 outlets of retailers that were signed up, given out with the display facilities of point of sale. Coverage of press established an immense interest that was motivated by the placement of the products on different TV cookery and programmes of lifestyle (Bradley, 2007). CDS soon came up with the new market and in a period of two years products of concept gave out 75 percentage of the company’s revenue and about 90 percentages of the company’s profits. The realization of price of the products of concept is high compared to the range of focus. This made the company keep ahead the company launched ranges that are new at interval. CDS has also moved to the partnership of the design house. In the past four years, CDS has been designing, distributing, and manufacturing products for prestigious house designs. This has made the business grow specifically in Europe where the house designs appreciate the ability of offering them a manufacturing level of expertise which they could not obtain somewhere else. Additionally, CDS offers a service of distribution that is geared towards their needs. According to the view of the customer the arrangements of distribution appear to be part of the design house. This implies that it is based on the CDS call centre, distribution and warehouse resources. One most collaboration of success was an Italian designer (Villessi). This was a CDS design expertise that was attractive to partners of the design house. CDS employed respected designer professionals who had obtained a formidable reputation in translation of the difficult designs into saleable and manufacturable products. The partnership of design house involved a lengthy lead time and gave out products having large margins, which carries the house of design brand. This relationship is one tool, which is geared towards the strength of CDS and the adoption of the strategy of business. The CDS designs made the company gain entry to the partnership making the company be valuable in marketing, distribution, and manufacturing of competency. On the other hand, the manufacturing of CDS was done in one facility, which was positioned 20km away from the head office. The area of moulding housed injections that are large mostly having material that has robotic handling capability. Components and products moved to the hall of packing where they went through an inspection and assembly. The complex new product had to be moved from mouldings towards the assembly then returned to further moulding. The products went through a similar broad process with different products demanding different progressive moulding and stages of assembly. CDS had an idea of devoting a cell that is separate towards the new, complex product up to when they would be bedded. The selected cell could be useful for testing Moulds that are new. In addition to this, CDS shifted into making concept products of a higher margin and disposed the old smaller injection machines of moulding. With all the large machines, it was possible for the company to utilize the multi-cavity Moulds that are large. In this regard, the productivity was increased through allowing the CDS to give out many products in a single machine cycle. This also gave CDS an opportunity to utilize complex and high quality mould that provided a significantly high quality product. For instance, having an equal amount of labour CDS could establish about three items in each minute on the machines that were old and approximately 18 products each minute in modern machines that utilize multi-Moulds. CDS also achieved accuracy of high dimension, surface finishing that is excellent, and colour consistency that is extreme (Hill, 2006). CDS performed all this due to their expertise that is derived from a number of years of establishing products of aerospace and through standardizing a unit large machine. In this respect, the situation was ideal from a perspective of planning since CDS was often requested to come up with minimum concept product runs within a short notice. Another issue is that increasing the desire and volume of reducing cost lead to the company putting most of its focus products to different companies of moulding. Task two. There are five operational performance objectives that can be used in measuring a company’s operational performance. A company needs to be concerned with the satisfaction of the requirements of its customer for dependable and fast services and at a price that would be considered as reasonable. A company should also help its suppliers in improving the services that they do offer. In this respect, the performance objectives include dependability, speed, quality, flexibility, and cost (MacDuffie, 2008). These performance objectives could be applied to different operation types. For the case of CDS, the five measures would be used in measuring its operational performance. To start with quality, CDS will do things right through ensuring that they give out error free services and goods to the customers. This means that the products and services produced should be as they are meant to be and should conform to the required specifications. The exceptional quality external effect in the CDS company is that all the consumers would use the services and products with no complaints. Whenever customers have no complaints, they would be happy and would likely consume the products and services once again. The main effect, therefore, would be an increment in the companys revenue. The good quality inside operation has an effect that is slightly different. Whenever the quality conformance is high in the activities and processes of operation, there would be minimum mistakes done. This implies that the cost would be saved, where as the response of speed and dependability would increase. This is so because when an operation corrects mistakes continually, it may find it hard to serve the needs of its customers. CDS should work hard and ensure that the company is ranked as one of the top companies in the surveys of customer satisfaction. For instance, when CDS is voted by surveys and market researchers as the company of the year it shows out that CDS would have had a successful worldwide record. The next measure is speed. This involves performing activities in a fast rate so as to minimize the duration between the availability and the order of the goods or services which provides the consumers a speed advantage. In the case of CDS, the company should focus their operations towards simplicity of operations through the use of small and basic machines that are known to be flexible and robust (Hill, 2006). Through rearranging the flow and layout of the company, CDS would improve the production speed. Dependability is another measure that CDS should consider so as to measure their operational performance. In this respect, CDS should always perform their activities in time so that the customer will be able to get their services and goods whenever they are promised. CDS should include the just-in-time proverb in their system of production with workers who are multiskilled. The workers, in this case, would work in teams and deliver the products and services as promised. Improved quality and efficiency in the operations of CDS should be a concern of employees, technical experts and managers of the company. When CDS does this, company would enjoy the dependency advantage towards its customers. Apart from this, flexibility is another measure that CDS would use to measure its operation performance. A result that is clear in responding to an environment that is dynamic involves companies changing their services and products thus changing the manner of doing business. CDS Company should love change in the operation and come up with flexible and responsive companies that would cope with the dynamics of the environment of business. This company should adopt its resource manufacturing so as to launch models that are new (Buchanan, 2008). The company should give out different options for which customers would be able to choose. Another measure of the CDS operational performance would be the cost. In many situations, low price has always been the key objective of different customers. This, however, can only be achieved through producing services and goods at a cost that is considered to be low. For a company to perform it production, cheaply it has to seek an influence in the services and goods cost. The company needs to shift its production of goods that are multipurpose to different countries. The performance of cost is displayed by the performance of goods and other objectives of performance. When CDS utilizes the quality, dependability, cost, speed, and flexibility operation performance, the company would be able to measure its performance. When these performance operational objectives succeed in a company, then a company would experience a high percent satisfaction of customers, and a global growth. Operational challenges. For all these measures of performance, there are different operational challenges that CDS will need to overcome. The fast challenge is the function of the department of design and its influences to the development of new products (Hill, 2006). The development of new products is vital to CDS since the company had established alliances with houses of design. The main effect would be a growth in the influence and size of the department of designs. In this company, the relations among the designers and other individuals of the company are strained (Buchanan, 2008). This makes the designers to be frustrated due to the constraints that they need to work under during the distribution and manufacturing of the business parts. The second challenge includes the forecasting of sales in which the company had two views. Some individual in the CDS Company is convinced that forecasting requires an improvement. Other persons in the company argue out that is exceedingly difficult to have an accurate forecast. This leads to the disruption of the distribution and manufacturing of the operations. The last challenge includes the lo9nger term. The significant changes made within the company occurred due to exploitation of the strength that was held in the company. The movement towards concept products could be possible since the high-tech expertise precision was brought about and the company developed in the sector of aerospace into the sector of homeware in which no competitor could match the CDS excellence of manufacturing. The company is left in a dilemma concerning their next move. It does not know whether to expand globally or rather extent its services and products into other, different markets. References. Bradley, K., 2007. The quality circle transplant and productivity efficiency. British J of Industrial Relations, vol.21, pp.291-311 Buchanan, D., 2008. Organizational Behaviour. New York: Jack and sons Publishers Hill, S., 2006.Why quality circle failed but total quality management might succeed. British J of Industrial Relations, vol.29, no.4, pp. 541-68 MacDuffie, E., 2008. Operational performance. New York: Oxford publishers. Read More