Operation management refers to designing and using of available resources in the company so that highest utilisation of resources would be attain (Wild, 2017). Main purpose of OM is to reduce inventory cost and avoid wastage with the aim of reducing overall price of the product (Khmelnitsky and Singer, 2015). For this report, First for Forensic (FIF) company’s case study is taken for consideration which manufactures products in forensic science industry. Overall operations unit of the case study will be analysed by considering every aspect of it. Apart from that, different strategies and techniques which company could use to enhance their productivity and efficiency is scrutinised. At last, various recommendations through which company can resolve their existing issues will be explained.
Overall Operations of The Company
It is vital for every company to manage their resources which includes human resources, raw materials, financial resources etc as it is directly linked with the success of it (Heizer and et. al., 2017). It means high utilisation of resources leads to higher profitability and productivity and vice versa. Main aim behind using operation management is to enhance quality of the product, meet with the changing needs and demands of customers by changing product accordingly, lessen delivery time so that higher customer satisfaction would be achieved in the future etc (Ravinder and Misra, 2016).
FIF has large and wide potential customer in the market but still their employees and management has been suffering from losses and poor inventory management due to bad management of operations and supply chain. For instance, FIF has been leading the market from past 10 years but still inventory time is 3.5 which show poor coordination of raw materials which leads to higher time for making the final product. Besides this, both the products which FIF is producing i.e., F1-Basic and F1-Advanced has same raw material requirements but still customer lead time is getting higher which implies the incapability of workers while coping with the external environment.
Production facility or shop floor is divided into three parts and overall batch processing is used by company to operate their business. Once the production is complete, product is stored in warehouse until and unless it goes to the final batch resulting in higher inventory cost. To avoid material handling cost, company must need to use the product as soon as it comes from the previous batch as then only it would become possible for FIF to provide product on time by earning more profit margin (Hübner, Holzapfel and Kuhn, 2015).
Product or demand forecasting is done by the sales and operations team on the basis of their expertise which is accurate in terms of overall product demand but failed miserably when it comes to individual product demand. Old information or trends of sales must be properly analysed by FIF before forecasting as it has direct impact on company’s profitability depending on the accuracy of it(Silver, Pyke and Thomas, 2016). At last, mis-matchability between recorded inventory and present inventory is always there due to which it becomes hard for FIF to manage their raw materials. So overall, it can be summarised that company needs to implement new techniques and bring reforms in to their business operations as then only they would be able to sustain in the market.
As mentioned in the case study, company has been suffering from poor operation management and inventory management techniques due to which they could not deliver the product on time which hampers their performance as well as profitability. To cope up with it, FIF must implement Just in Time technique in their business operations. It is way of aligning the demand of product with the availability of raw material in the company so that inventory cost would be eliminated from its base (Disney and et. al., 2016). For instance, if there is a demand of 15 products in the market then only raw materials which are required to make 15 products would be ordered and then the cycle goes on (Ancarani, Mauro and D’Urso, 2016). There will be many benefits which FIF can attain from it like reduction in material handling cost, increase in number of shipments on time, usage of space reduces as no inventory would be there, stock reduction WIP, cost of labour as they would be hired according to the work which company has etc. These are all the problems which are currently faced by FIF while operating their business. On the other hand, external market is highly volatile and vulnerable in nature and changes very regularly, so to tackle it; FIF must maintain minimum level of stock in their premises with the aim of tackling any uncertainty in the market (Balcik, Bozkir and Kundakcioglu, 2016). Way through which JIT would help First for Forensics is given below,
Manufacturing Capability: As mentioned, FIF produces two products which has been in the top but still could not manage to deliver product on time due to bad inventory management. With the help of JIT, FIF does not have to store inventory in their premises and will deliver the product when the demand comes resulting in low inventory cost.
Shop Floor operations: In first stage, raw material would be order according to demand and after producing the first phase of product; it will be transferred to next step without any waiting time. At the same time, motherboards and PCB will be produced so that material produced in the first stage does not have to wait. At last, final product from both stages would transfer to the final stage which leads to elimination of waiting time.
Planning and control system: Minimum level of stock must be maintain by FIF irrespective of forecasting and apart from that, whole process would be run on Just in Time strategy so that any mismanagement between forecasting and actual demand would be eliminated. Moreover, with the help of training to the inventory manager, holding of stock for 10 weeks will be lessen.
Various recommendations which must be implement by FIF to maintain their existing customer and gain new potential customer is given below,
Conclusion
From the above mentioned information, it can be said that company needs to continuously monitor their manufacturing process and try to improve it according to external environment and trends as then only it would be possible for them to compete with competitors and sustain in the market for longer period of time. To attain this, Just In Time technique would assist organisation to reduce their wastage of eliminate steps which does not contribute to the final product and its value to the customers. There must be proper flow of information from operations department to floor shop and manufacturing department as it assist them to enhance their utilisation of resources to certain level.
References
Ancarani, A., Di Mauro, C. and D’Urso, D., 2016. Measuring overconfidence in inventory management decisions. Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management, 22(3), pp.171-180.
Balcik, B., Bozkir, C.D.C. and Kundakcioglu, O.E., 2016. A literature review on inventory management in humanitarian supply chains. Surveys in Operations Research and Management Science, 21(2), pp.101-116.
Canyakmaz, C., Karaesmen, F. and Özekici, S., 2017. Minimum-variance hedging for managing risks in inventory models with price fluctuations. Foundations and Trends® in Technology, Information and Operations Management, 11(1-2), pp.107-123.
Chen, X., Hu, P., Shum, S. and Zhang, Y., 2016. Dynamic stochastic inventory management with reference price effects. Operations Research, 64(6), pp.1529-1536.
Disney, S.M., Maltz, A., Wang, X. and Warburton, R.D., 2016. Inventory management for stochastic lead times with order crossovers. European Journal of Operational Research, 248(2), pp.473-486.
Heizer, J., Render, B., Munson, C. and Sachan, A., 2017. Operations management: sustainability and supply chain management, 12/e. Pearson Education.
Hübner, A., Holzapfel, A. and Kuhn, H., 2015. Operations management in multi-channel retailing: an exploratory study. Operations Management Research, 8(3-4), pp.84-100.
Khmelnitsky, E. and Singer, G., 2015. An optimal inventory management problem with reputation-dependent demand. Annals of Operations Research, 231(1), pp.305-316.
Mahadevan, B., 2015. Operations management: Theory and practice. Pearson Education India.
Ravinder, H.V. and Misra, R.B., 2016. ABC Analysis For Inventory Management: Bridging The Gap Between Research And Classroom. American Journal of Business Education (AJBE), 9(1), pp.39-48.
Silver, E.A., Pyke, D.F. and Thomas, D.J., 2016. Inventory and production management in supply chains. CRC Press.
Wild, T., 2017. Best practice in inventory management. Routledge.
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