Operational Management of the Hudson Alpine Furniture Firm - Case Study Example

CASE STUDY: HUDSON'S ALPINE FURNITURE (MARCUS) By Student Name Course Instructor Submission Date CASE STUDY: HUDSON'S ALPINE FURNITURE (MARCUS) Operations management deals with the designing and redesigning of business operations in terms of production of inventories. It ensures that the business operations are efficient due to use of few materials and effective because they meet customers’ requirements. It deals with the way the business converts inputs into output. Operating in a highly competitive environment, Hudson’s Alpine Furniture business firm needs standard procedures to operate the firm successfully. Indeed, any operational issues affecting the business should be addressed with a sense of urgency so as to avoid of customers dissatisfaction, employees low morale and the business incurring losses. Hudson should play an extraordinarily significant role in ensuring that any inefficiency is effectively solved to enhance business performance as well as overall productivity. He should be able to provide the necessary tools needed and cater for expenses incurred. Everybody in the business should work as a team in attaining their objectives and also addressing the operational issues. This problem should not be viewed as a problem that only affects the employees or the owner of the business, but it should be seen as everyone’s problem. Although many businesses need to produce and deliver their products to their stakeholders and clients, this may not be the case always depending on the plan of the organization. Performance of the business may be influenced by a variety of operational issues and problems. Operational Problems fall under five categories: these are delay issues, control and management issues, wastage issues, work cultural issues and quality issues. Wastage, delay and quality are direct and primary while management or control and work cultural are secondary and indirect factors. Operational issues and problems frameworks are superb value to the organization because they assist it in identifying and understanding operational problems and issues in an effective way. By use of these frameworks, the business will be able to analyze the operational issues and problems and be able to solve them. In this essay, operational issues and problems facing Hudson’s Alpine furniture will be identified. It has discussed on how to enhance the operational effectiveness and efficiencies of the firm in relation to operations management based on their current operations (Mark, 2004). The firm has too many customers because they are supplying to private owners of ski lodges, holiday cabins within the snow fields and the country of New South Wales Alp, and commercial buyers. These many buyers are causing problems in the firm under the following conditions, delivery levels, production scheduling, quality of raw materials and products, and in terms of consumer satisfaction. As a result, Hudson Alpine furniture should find ways of sustaining their current operational productivity, effectiveness and efficiencies. For the firm to improve on their productions and operations, they should employ integrated management strategies such as management of supply chain, production scheduling, quality management and inventory management. These strategies have been covered in this discussion and all the information related to them, and lastly operational problems have been solved. Also, recognition of development of operations management and trends will be discussed. Finally, we shall conclude discussions whereby operations management solution on how to maximize the operations and management, production capacity and consumer satisfaction, rationalize the suppliers and on making improvements on the quality of products (Mark, 2004). The dilemmas caused by the problems facing the firm may be evaluated by use of operations management evaluations. The following are the issues that need to be addressed in the discussion. Delivery operational management is supposed to ensure optimal operations in transport. It implies that the cost will be reduced leading to increase of speed and safety of distribution. The firm should ensure that products are of high quality output thus minimizing rejections of the product by the consumer. Production scheduling system maximizes the productivity of raw materials available such as manpower and equipment. Also Customer satisfaction reduces complains of the consumer and increases the loyalty of the customer. Process strategy practices lead to faster retrieval of needed merchandise. However, Inventory management practices and policies reduce the stock holding and increases the availability of raw materials needed for production. Hudson Alpine furniture firm should see the opportunity to enlarge their current operation management so that they may increase their profits. Later, I will discuss several management operations that the firm may use to increase on their profits. This discussion evaluates the firm behavior of the operations management. Due to the increase of production level, the firm will raise supply of products to local customers, and commercial buyers are intertwined directly or indirect to the operations management trends (Lambert &Cooper, 2000). This shows clearly how Hudson furniture firm is faced by the problem of delay in deliveries due to resource limitations (Cristobel et al.2005, pp.289-301). Scheduling and Strategic planning of operations are highly required by the firm. Production is based on three dimensions: quality, delivery and cost. Quality is the primary value of the product, and it is highly desired by firms. Quality is characterized by specifications, varieties and features. The second dimension is the delivery, and it deals with the provision of finished goods to meet customer needs at the right place, the right time and the right amount or quantity (Lambert &Cooper, 2000). Lastly, cost as a dimension refers to the production cost and the cost of delivering commodities to the customers. Cost affects the marketing and profits of the product. The following are the basic components of scheduling chain management. The firm needs a strategic plan so that it may manage its resources. It should consider a source that will be providing them with raw materials. Supply chain managers should plan the required items for production like packaging, testing and preparation for delivery. Also, the firm should get the receipts of orders from their consumers and satisfies their needs appropriately. Return component is where the supply chain planners should build a flexible system which can accommodate excess products coming from consumers. The firm is also affected by delivery management. In fact, it should take the responsibility of controlling its inventory and deliveries. The firm is incurring too much cost because it has to hire an expensive warehouse and in addition due to delivery costs. The demand associated with delivery of promised goods may lure the operation management to shorten or speed up some valuable operations leading to decrease in the quality of the products. The cost of rejected and wasted products is spreading all over products that are valued (Tan & Wisner, 2003). This will as a result raise the production cost. The firm is supposed to address this by distributing all the unreliable stock. Management should also supply all stock needed to be transported on time. The firm should focus on reduction of cost; they should consider planning for delivery programs such as frequency of delivery so that the inherent costs are reduced. They should consider being reliable in terms of response to time and maximizing the consumer’s utility. As a matter of fact, the consumers center their thoughts on the specification of the product qualities and the way it competes with others in the market. Therefore, the firm should ensure there is assurance of their products through avoidance of defects, and it may do with testing or verification and validation. The following are the attributes of quality as achieved by operational management (Sridharan & Berry, 1990,pp.541-558). Dependability is supported by quality, speed; flexibility is supported by speed and flexibility supports cost. Improvement of the production of Hudson’s firm will lead to increase in revenues, technological advancement and employment opportunities. The best method of assessing process control is by use of quality of the inventory (Paul & David, 2002). Several models are used to address operational issues and problems facing the firm. The problem facing Hudson Alpine Furniture is real time problem in their operating systems, process control and distributed systems. A number of problems involved in scheduling they can be modeled naturally by use of timed automata. Timed automata, the approach robust is in opposition to changes setting of the parameters and small change in the specification of the problem (Mark, 2004, pp 30). Unlike classical approaches, this model allows the expressiveness of timed automata. The following points summarize the importance of scheduling in the firm: Efficient and effective scheduling may be of a competitive advantage to the firm. Customer services are improved through the addition of capacity which results from faster deliveries; Good schedules lead to reliable deliveries, Quick movement of products by use of facilities leads to use of assets and decrease of costs. The firm should make sure that it delivers products to their customers that will satisfy their needs appropriately. When a firm designs the right experience for their customers and delivers the goods to the user at agreed time and place leads to improved financial performance. It is extremely challenging for businesses to have customers and sustain them indeed. Through the change in the operation, the management of Hudson’s business is supposed to know needs of their customers or what they are experiencing. The firm is supposed to change the idea it has for their customers in terms of experiences based on the intentions and desires of target customers. Judgment is done on the first impression made by the operating management and experience day-to-day ton customers sales. To attain this change, the firm needs to do a challenging task for them; this requires leadership and insight. The firm also needs to reduce delivery cost and production cost. Firm’s revenues may be increased by improving the quality of product and intelligence of operational management. They should ensure that both old and new customers are satisfied with their products. Through the development of satisfaction of their customers, the operational management will move towards achieving their goals of revenues and productivity. Customer’s preference should be noticed at each stage of management. Operational management should compare its performance to the satisfaction of their consumers. They should also use stronger approaches in order to make sure their customers are satisfied. Most customers need to be noticed by the organization when they contact them; their preferences, their intentions and through their history. The firm’s management should be able to know on how to relate with their customers regardless of how many times the client contacts them either through walking to the firm's office, being online or the web, this is an extremely challenging task for the firm and the operational management. The firm increases its productivity and allows other behaviors of operational management to increase its revenues, satisfy their customers, and decrease its operational or production cost. The firm should be able to know all those new customers dynamics so that they are able to consider them as consumer centric. For the firm to achieve its performance it should focus on three areas namely: fulfilling the customers’ promises, knowing the customer and exceeding the customer expectations. For the firm to retain its market share it is supposed to improve not only its productivity but also products quality. The firm is supposed to invest highly in technology this is because technology will result in improved productivity and efficiency. Traditionally, Hudson Alpine Furniture considered on making of custom pieces of furniture and the customer was the one who specified on what he or she needs. Firm should aim at increasing the value added content of their services. The creation of value added contents should be associated with opportunities in the market optimal performance of operational management. The firm should be interested in implementing its operational management. The following are examples of technological advancement, and the firm should employ in their production; direct and indirect computer aided manufacturing (CAM), flexible manufacturing system (FMS), computer integrated manufacturing (CIM) and computer aided design (CAD). Computer aided design is used to design a product and process a product on the terminal of a computer (Buffa, 1983, p24). Analysis, modification, optimization and creation of a design are done by use of a computer system. Computer aided manufacturing may be used to manage the processing tools directly, or it may indirectly carry manufacturing operations. Automated machines will carry out many operations according to the order given by the computer. It should specify the process of operation and the sequence. FMS is a machine which is flexible, and it has the form of automation, many computers are linked to the central computer (Jack 1998, p444). Another advanced technology is artificial intelligence. It enables computers to have the personality of mind of humans, it has the knowledge to solve problems, understand, learn, and also able to reason. Some of the approaches that have influence on inventory management are just in time and material requirements planning. These models are applied direct in the processing of the products. The firm should also be concerned with general trends of management operations. It considers the following aspects instead of using only trends of automations; Mass customization, use of recycled materials, encouraging employees, environment friendly production, partnering supply chain, planning for material requirement and ethics. For an inventory to be successful, management of inventory deals with the balancing the cost incurred in production of that inventory to the benefits accrued. The trends of management of inventory also deal with: Costs of inventory incurred, Forecasting of inventory, Valuation of the inventory and Future inventory price forecasting. In conclusion, operational management of the firm needs to be advanced through management strategies like of quality management, delivery management, operational management process and supply chain management in order to solve problems like; delivery levels, raw materials, scheduling of production, satisfaction of the consumer and quality of the products. Hudson's firm should employ two related functions. These are quality assurance which ensures that there are no defects, by use of quality management tools. The second one is the control of quality defect detections, and it is mostly used in testing which deals with the verification and validation of the product. Scheduling of production is a branch of operational management that is well established. The decisions made by operational management team should be in line with the strategy of the firm which is shared by managers under each functional area: Products must be distributed; raw materials should be purchased; maintenance of facilities and products must be produced. As per the condition of operational management of the Hudson Alpine Furniture firm, several fields should be enhanced. For management of customer, the firm should ensure that there is consistent supply of products to consumers. This will enhance the relation between the firm and consumer. The firm should create a new database in order to deliver this consistent consumer satisfaction. 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Wu, Z & Choi, TY 2005, ‘Supplier-Supplier Relationships in the Buyer-Supplier Triad: Building Theories from Eight Case Studies', Journal of Operations Management, vol. 24, no. 1, p. 27. Read More