Assignment Sample on M25294 Operations Management
1. Introduction
The following assignment will critically evaluate the major principles and theories of operations management by analyzing a range of literature available on the “Digitalization” aspect in supply chain and operational management. It will be discussing relevant techniques and methods that are used by the operators and managers for mitigating the risks and challenges in the operations of “Farmfoods” in the UK’s retail sector. The report will also be analyzing business issues and applying suitable decision making, control as well as planning techniques by using a number of academic and industry sources. A conclusion will also be provided at last for summarizing the overall understanding and findings from the assignment.
2. Literature review
The retail sector companies in the United Kingdom (UK) are extremely devoted towards enhancing their supply chains which have been affected severely due to disruptions with the major one being “Covid 19”. As per the view of Agrawal & Narain (2018), the retail companies have been trying to accomplish their full potential by implementing digitalization in their operations in order to increase their overall competitiveness. It has been evaluated that the operation manager has been digitalizing the entire process including the supply chain management as well for meeting the advanced technologies on the global level. This in return will be assistive in matching steps of other big retail companies or even leaving them behind with effective technological “supply chain management” (Agrawal et al. 2019). It is noteworthy that the “supply chain” at the majority of the organizations and even the sector around the globe has been observing disruptions due to the lockdown imposed by governments worldwide as per the Covid prevention norms.
The majority of the differences in between actual as well as potential profits regarding the “supply chain’s” digitalization might be evaluated through management choices and “technology gaps”. In the words of Muñoz-Villamizar et al. (2019), the technology gaps are occurring because of the advancements in the “supply-chain technologies” and introductory innovation in operational management. The yielded digital technologies have enabled retail companies to expand their capabilities in multiple systems, streamline their routine activities as well as enhance their analytical practices. Although these technologies are of great value to the retailers but are unable to perform particular functions that might transform the supply chain management (Seyedghorban et al. 2020). It took significant time to undertake crucial technological innovations for offering new digital technologies for improving the performance as well as management of the supply chain management. It has been evaluated that seizing the advantage of technological advancements in supply chain practices is still a difficult task for many retailers as they overlook the critical operational changes.
As per the “Scientific management theory” changing technologies with complimenting it with operational management might be of no use in course of mitigating supply chain management disruptions. The retail and consumer goods companies have been improving their supply chain management by undertaking significant operational changes along with the implementation of the latest technologies. It has been assessed that the perfect approach for digitalizing the overall supply chain is by integrating suitable “leading-edge technologies” with shuffled and revamped operations (Seyedghorban et al. 2020). It is the responsibility of the operational managers and other administrators to ensure that the technologies and the operations are well-integrated. In addition to this, it has to be assessed whether the organization has ample talent and an efficient structure that might assist innovation and consistent improvement. Managers around the globe are looking to create a transformation roadmap with compressed timeframes.
“Supply chain management” recently has been facing too many disruptions in the retail sector due to a void created by the lockdown measures and travel restrictions in the wake of Covid preventive norms. In the words of Muñoz-Villamizar et al. (2019), supply chain management has undergone substantial technical advancements as the creators have developed applications for taking full advantage of the data generated by “ERP systems”. It has been assessed that those applications are mainly focused on enhancing the three areas: “streamlining transactional activities”, “supporting major operations”, and “sharpening the analysis”. User-friendly “analytical tools” make it easier for the operational management to accumulate as well as compile a larger set of data that is unstructured along with extracting relevant insights from it. “Artificial-intelligence applications” are a huge find and useful integration into the supply chain as they are capable of tracing the root causes of the problems regarding performance on their own. These AI applications go further to predict declines as well as suggest effective recommendations for mitigating the issues.
In simple words, digitalization has made it possible for retail companies to transform their operations and supply chain management at their convenience. At the organizational level, digitalization refers to the employment of analytics, robotics, artificial intelligence, the “Internet of Things (IoT)” and many more updated technologies. These technologies are assistive in collecting and processing data and support the management and decision-making of the individuals responsible. Therefore, digitalization in the supply chain practices and management is all about accomplishing a vision for digital applications improving cost, agility, service, and inventory levels for driving operational excellence.
3. Company application
The chosen company “Farmfoods” in the retail sector of the United Kingdom (UK) is one of the most renowned consumer goods companies as its management practices are effective in sustaining the level of competitiveness. As per the view of Krasyuk, Yanenko & Nazarova (2020), supply chain management combined with operational management is pivotal to the competitiveness of the company in retaining the customers’ base. The selected company is popular for its packed and finished products and groceries which is eventually the result of effective supplies by the significant supply chain network it has. It has been assessed that “Farmfoods” similar to its counterparts have been undertaking effective digital transformation in its supply chain management backed by effective operational management. It has been observed that the company has earned significant gains and profitability by integrating the latest digital technologies in its operations and supply chain.
Present company has been years integrating its supply chain process with the latest “ERP system”. It has been assessed that the “Farmfoods” in its process of integrating the latest technologies into the operations and supply chain has been effective in setting up “data streams” from multiple sources. The majority of the sources are from within the organizational network and the supply network as well. However, it has been identified that the company faced many issues in monitoring the multiple activities dispersed across its “supply chain’s network” performance.
It has been observed that this problem occurred as the company was not able to link the relatable data sets for obtaining relevant as well as informative insights from the data sets. The major reason behind the issues came out to be the feeding of the “incoming information” and “data” into one same “processing engine”. As stated by Attaran (2020)-, a processing engine is a place where information from multiple sources is connected for depicting the ways in which one activity or decision might influence the other in the operations. It has been evaluated that just after some weeks of deploying the data engine; “Farmfoods” had met with various systematic issues that were uncovered earlier. These issues were creating an issue by preventing the relevant indicators of customer demand in the future to reach the suppliers. It has been learned that the “data engine” since then has assisted by enabling the “Farmfoods” in reducing the inventory by a significant percentage (farmfoods.co.uk, 2022). In addition to this, it has also helped in enhancing the overall productivity of the company’s planners by one-third means.
The retail company’s overall experience with the implementation of analytics depicts another significant profit of the digitalization in the supply chain or operations as they are easier to use and set up as compared to the ones earlier. For instance, “cloud-based offerings” were piloted readily as well as extended at a rapid pace across the entire organization. Apart from this, many latest techniques are very simple and easy to integrate into the existing systems (Akram et al. 2021). For instance, the “off-the-shelf S&OP software packages” are easily connected to the “ERP systems” with the usage of “systems using standard application programming interfaces (APIs)”. Therefore, it can be concluded that a company planning to transform its supply chain through digitalization must envision the technical capabilities as well as the business that they are aiming to plan and develop.
4. Conclusion
The following assignment has critically evaluated the theories and principles of operations management with a focus on analyzing the literature available on the “Digitalization” aspect impact on supply chain and operational management. It has also discussed relevant techniques used by the managers and firms for mitigating the challenges in the operations and disruptions in the supply chain of “Farmfoods” in the UK’s retail sector. The report has analyzed business issues by applying suitable decision making, control along with planning techniques which are done by using multiple academic and industry sources. At last, the conclusion provided has summarized the overall findings and understanding evaluated from the assignment.
Reference list
Agrawal, P., & Narain, J., Holweg, M., Lawson, B., Pil, F. K., & Wagner, S. M. (2019). The digitalization of operations and supply chain management: Theoretical and methodological implications. Journal of Operations Management, 65(8), 728-734. retrieved on: 29.01.2022, retrieved from: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1002/joom.1073
Agrawal, P., & Narain, R. (2018, December). Digital supply chain management: An Overview. In IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering (Vol. 455, No. 1, p. 012074). IOP Publishing. retrieved on: 29.01.2022, retrieved from: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1757-899X/455/1/012074/pdf
Akram, U., Fülöp, M. T., Tiron-Tudor, A., Topor, D. I., & Căpușneanu, S. (2021). Impact of digitalization on customers’ well-being in the pandemic period: Challenges and opportunities for the retail industry. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(14), 7533. retrieved on: 29.01.2022, retrieved from: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/14/7533/pdf
Attaran, M. (2020, July). Digital technology enablers and their implications for supply chain management. In Supply Chain Forum: An International Journal (Vol. 21, No. 3, pp. 158-172). Taylor & Francis. retrieved on: 29.01.2022, retrieved from: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mohsen-Attaran/publication/340816529_Digital_technology_enablers_and_their_implications_for_supply_chain_management/links/5ec7d556458515626cbfd86a/Digital-technology-enablers-and-their-implications-for-supply-chain-management.pdf
Krasyuk, I., Yanenko, M., & Nazarova, E. (2020). Conceptual and strategic framework for the digitalization of modern retail as part of innovative marketing. In E3S Web of Conferences (Vol. 164, p. 09006). EDP Sciences. retrieved on: 29.01.2022, retrieved from: https://www.e3s-conferences.org/articles/e3sconf/pdf/2020/24/e3sconf_tpacee2020_09006.pdf
Muñoz-Villamizar, A., Solano, E., Quintero-Araujo, C., & Santos, J. (2019). Sustainability and digitalization in supply chains: A bibliometric analysis. Uncertain Supply Chain Management, 7(4), 703-712. retrieved on: 29.01.2022, retrieved from: http://m.growingscience.com/uscm/Vol7/uscm_2019_8.pdf
Seyedghorban, Z., Tahernejad, H., Meriton, R., & Graham, G. (2020). Supply chain digitalization: past, present and future. Production Planning & Control, 31(2-3), 96-114. retrieved on: 29.01.2022, retrieved from: https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/140327/3/Manuscript%20-%20Resubmit%20-%20Final%20Version%20-%20Zahra%2020Sep2018.pdf
Website
Farmfoods.co.uk, 2022, Farmfoods great food amazing prices, retrieved on: 29.01.2022, retrieved from: https://www.farmfoods.co.uk/
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