Operations Management Products and Services

Question: Discuss about the Operations Management for Products and Services. Answer: Introduction The report aims to provide the analysis of the operational, issue prevalent at Big C, Vietnam. The report intends to provide the background giving importance on the various types of the competitive strategies and the priorities set by the company. The study provides a process design and analysis in order to assess the present process and give recommendations for the same. The main objective is to do a performance objective analysis based on cost, flexibility, dependability, speed and quality. The report discusses about the current performance with the help of different KPI and gives recommendations based on a GAP analysis and performance benchmarking (Slack 2015). Big C headquartered at Bangkok, Thailand was founded in the year 1994. It is one of the subsidiaries of the Casino group and popular for being the first French retail group with a investment of more than 350 million USD. The company has more than 18 supercenters located across Ho Chi Minh City, Hue, Vinh, Nam Dinh, Thanh Hoa and many other locations. Big C deals in over 50,000 varieties of items and known to employ 7,500 people. The companys name signifies two important elements of the strategic management techniques. Big implies large sized store with range of selection available for merchandise. The term C refers to customers especially the once who are loyal. This philosophy of the business states the company gives first priority to its customers in the development activities related to then operations management. The company is always committed to provide competitive price, quality and service to its customers. The customer satisfaction is the top priority of the company. The fiv e core values of Big C are customer satisfaction, responsibility, solidarity, transparency and innovation. These predefined set of the values will be useful in the preparation of the operational framework of the company (Bigc.listedcompany.com. 2016). Operational strategies and the competitive priorities The company is known to expand at a rate of five new stores all across the country on an annual basis. The company is also known to be consistent with adaptation of dual property/retailing with gives an overall boost to the shopping experience to the customers. The company is also known to adopt several, techniques for setting up hypermarkets to optimize the retail and the rental space allocation, which is required for making the stores more attractive. In accordance with the policies related to the casino groups policy related to the sustainable development, Big C Vietnam is largely responsible to integrate the socio economic practices and promoting community oriented activities in the countries (Quotes.wsj.com. 2016). The operational, contribution of Big C is shown below as follows: Figure 1: Four stage model of operational contribution (Source: Brown et al. 2013) Five performance objectives Then five performance objectives based on the quality, speed, flexibility, dependability and cost is shown below as follows: Quality Maintaining a good quality is important for the company in providing the customer satisfaction to the highest level and keep the cost to as low as possible. The quality aspect of Big C is shown as a diverse concept with factors such as condition of the goods an d then merchandise, hygiene and cleanliness of the facilities of the company, good customer environment and appropriateness of the shopping environment. The company is known to put an augmented focus on the traditional aspect of the quality and the freshness of the products. Big C is also known to implement several partnerships with the local producers in then which then company has shown to be a small-scale grower from the Da Lat Plateau, where the goods are shuttled every day to Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi in dozens or more drivers or fishermen working at the Mekong Delta (Evans and Lindsay 2013). There is huge scope for the company to improve the quality aspect, by going into partnerships with the state-owned enterprises, private business and the MNC. This can be done to ensure the quality of the products and at the same time secure the products at the timer supply of the goods. Big C should further look forward to cooperate with the health centers to enhance the checking of the foods quality and test the goods against accidents while then transportation (Krajewski et al. 2013). The company should further ensure that All the items sold at Big C adhere to the regulations as per Vietnamese Government. It should ensure that suppliers factories are done with the worlds most innovative and technology of inspection, testing and verification. The company should further look forward to implement the hygiene and the various standards related to the quality The company should look forward in training the new and existing staffs at Big C. Speed The operational strategies related to foster the speed is related to minimize the total time for ongoing transaction of stores. The implementation of the objective of the operational strategies is to improve the value of the service and products provided to meet the customer satisfaction level. It further adds to the benefits to the operational measures such as short delivery time of the products and lead-time. In order to improve the present scope of speed on the service the company needs to consider the following factors: Scheduling of the sales staff to work overtime, this would ensure rapid replenishment of addressing the clients issues and speeding up the process of then total transaction Big B further plans to establish dedicated purchase planning to enhance then supply chain operation to serve the hypermarket of the Big C to operate in the best condition. The immediate guarantee of the speedy delivery of the goods can be controlled by use of then proper mode of transportation which will ensure that the company is able to maintain the proper the mode of transportation in terms of the better delivery of the goods and save cost at the save time. The immediate availability of the goods can ensure by providing all the items at the store mentioned in the catalogue of the company. The company should further look forward to reduce the return policy of the company less than 72 hours for the electronic appliances and less than the 48 hours for the other goods (Brown et al. 2013). Dependability The dependability factor is based on the way the company manages its time, cost and stability. A reliable operation helps a company to save time and cost and ensures the bringing of the quality of the operations. Big C is known to start its store operations at 8 a.m. 8:30 a.m. every day. At same time then ATM and then banks also start their various types of the operations. The company also known to launch promotional program in every week and gives the promotional alert in form of SMS, email, and the websites by uploading of appropriate catalogue clearly stating the various types of the promotional activities set by the company (Jardine and Tsang 2013). The company may improve the dependability by the addition of the following considerations in the operational structure: The can make improvement in the baskets to ensure good use of the space and contain the more capacity goods and use less space. Big C can further improve the condition for the providing the safety and clear price tagging, For example in the price tags the company can ensure the use of the yellow tags for signifying the discounted goods, the company can further use the white tags for other goods. This will segregate the types of the goods and provide better segregation of the goods. The dependability aspect can be further improved by considering then after sales service provided based on the warranty service available on the different products. This will ensure the customers can rely on the warranty policies given by the company and this in turn will lead to higher amount of satisfaction among the customers of the Big C (Fullerton et al. 2014). Flexibility As per the current situations of the company, it has taken several initiative for the introduction lines of the new lines and making availability for wide range of products. The various types of the initiatives taken by the company in terms of maintaining the flexibility is seen ability to adjust the number of the customer served to avail the out of stock items. Big C has further taken several, initiatives to include private labels like in-house bakery brand, known by the name of Bakery by Big C (Ivanov and Sokolov 2013). The different types of the improvement opportunities to be made by the company are mentioned below as follows: Improving and making way to include the various types of the service related to the availability of the health and sustainability products. This can brought by making changes in the carrier bags and promoting then usage of more number of the user friendly bags. Big C should incorporate then flexibility aspect by offering gift vouchers according to the choice of the customers. This would ensure customized gift products availability to the special ones. The company can further enhance the service by looking forward to include the support of the different types of the credit card service provided by the company such as the Amex and JCB cards. The company will be able to able to ensure the flexibility of the products by making good relationship with the suppliers. This will ensure that then companies are able to attain the delivery goals of the out of stock items. The company has a huge scope to improve the operational efficiency by keeping the stores opened for longer duration of the time. This would ensure that even during the peak season the stores are to maintain the high demand of customers and continuous procurement of the products. Cost Offering of the best price should main objective for any retail sector. Big C is no exception to this notion as the then companys slogan is to offer low price for every family. The company formulated this objective of the slogan in the year 2007. Big C is known to position itself as a low price retailer and actively takes initiatives in the innovative procurement policy to obtain the different types of the vegetables and readymade availability of the food products, which are sold by the company at a more attractive price. The company is known to hold special events for beauty week designed to showcase the various type of the availability of the beauty products (Costa et al. 2013). Some of the initiatives that the company can take in the operational management to improve the present conditions is: Big C can offer attractive promotion offer to the customer which will involve the 50% reduction in the purchase of the products. The margin reduction strategies can be considered by the company in to offer the competitive price to the customers in this way this customer will be able to attain the goods at a best price possible there by making way more number of availability of the customers. The company has huge potential in bringing down then cost bought for the material and the services cost borne by the company. By proper, sourcing of the supplier of the company can ensure that it is able to offer the best price to the end customers of the products at the supermarkets (Gunasekaran and Ngai 2012). The key performance indicators (KPI) for the Big C are listed below as follows: KPI for the five performance objectives Quality Score of customer satisfaction No. of customer complaints Total number of the merchandises Warranty/ claims for the exchange returning Flexibility Varieties of the services and products available Providing different types of the payment methods Maintaining the time and the quantity of the order Dependability Adhering to the schedule Proportion of the products available in the stock Speed Time required for customer queuing Lead time for the orders Frequency of the delivery Cost Price charged from the customers Productivity rate of the labor Per hour operation cost Gap analysis: Figure 2: Radar chart showing the GAP analysis of Big C Source: Rating 1 2 3 4 5 Market Requirements Irrelevant Somewhat relevant Relevant Most relevant Extremely relevant Operations Performance Not efficient Somewhat efficient Efficient Very efficient Extremely efficient Evaluation and analysis of the above data: The five performance objectives relating to costs, quality, speed, dependability and flexibility are requested by the market in a significant way. The factors of cost, flexibility and costs are the extremely relevant and they have been rated 5 and it indicates that such performance objectives is satisfying the customers (Liu and Seite 2015). The market requirement and the operating performance of the Big C are not aligned and there exists a gap. The dependability factor has been rated 4 being very efficient. However, speed has been rated 3, which indicate it being only efficient in the operations performance. However, there is a required need for improvement because the actual market demand and the actual operations are not matching (Eizenberg et al. 2015). Performance Benchmarking: Nine point performance scales Rating Description 1 Providing the customers with the vital or crucial advantage 2 The most important advantage is provided to the many of the consumers 3 The beneficial advantage to the most customers are provided 4 The standard should be aligned with the industry standard 5 The standard has to be around the median standard of the industry 6 The standard ha to be in the closest range when comparing with the industries 7 Becoming relevant in future though not usually considered by the customers 8 Considered by the customers rarely 9 The customers do not considered and not likely to be considered in the future. Scales for appraising the performance against the competitors: Rating Description 1 Considering the competitors not better in consistency 2 The competitors are not better in clear consistency 3 Better than the nearest competitor marginally 4 Better than most of the competitors 5 Matching as most of the competitors 6 At a shrinking distance from the main competitors 7 Worse than most of the competitors marginally 8 Most competitors are better usually 9 Most competitors are consistently better Key: X relevant to customers Y Performance against competitors Figure 3: Benchmarking performance indicators (Source: Rolstadas 2013) Figure 4: Importance performance matrix of AEON (Source: Keong 2014) Evaluation and analysis: Relevance to customers- the objective relating to the cost and quality provides a relevant advantage from the perspective of customers. The objectives relating to the spend and dependability have been rated as the need to be raised up to the standards of industry. This concludes that these objectives are less relevant than the above objectives (Ic et al. 2015). The key performance indicator of the flexibility objectives is rated as providing a crucial advantage. Performance against competitors: The factors, which are same as the most of the competitors, are flexibility, cost and quality objectives. Therefore, the above objectives are well performed by Big C. However, the speed and dependability objectives have lower performance as compared to competitors (Robinson et al. 2015). Winners of orders Cost Flexibility Quality Objectives of qualifiers Speed Dependability However, there are field of improvements relating to five objectives provided by matrix: ZONE KPI Zone considered appropriate Services and products range Price Level of customer complaints Exchange claim or return policy Zone of improvement Productivity of labor Per hour operation costs Methods of payment Delivery frequency Late delivered order percentage Merchandise defects Zone of urgent action Queuing time of customers Stocks product proportion Conclusion The company needs to improve the operational services based on the various types of the aspects discussed to improve the cost and service as aspect discussed in the assignment. The company should further consider the various types of the KPI, then suggest and make recommendations based on the GAP analysis, and need to work on the operational strategies based on that. Reference List Bi, H.H., 2016. 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