Applied Operations Management

This document provides a SWOT analysis and recommended solutions for Inner-City Paint Corporation in the field of Applied Operations Management. It discusses the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats affecting the business. The document also provides insights on improving management functions and decision-making processes. The subject is Applied Operations Management and the course code is not mentioned. The document type is an essay or report.

1
Applied Operations Management

2
Table of Contents
Executive Summary...................................................................................................................3
SWOT Analysis.........................................................................................................................4
Strengths.................................................................................................................................5
Weaknesses............................................................................................................................5
Opportunities..........................................................................................................................6
Threats....................................................................................................................................7
References..................................................................................................................................8

3
Executive Summary
Inner-City Paint Corporation is a small and medium scale paint manufacturing organisation
based in Chicago. The company is following a centralised decision making and business
operation structure headed by Stanley Walsh. The on-going issues are analysed in the
following SWOT analysis. The corporation is operating with several problems, such as lack
of financial and management control, lack of skilled workforce, the high manufacturing cost
of products, high business operation time, and the poor delivery deadline of products, poor
customer loyalty, old manufacturing plant and office premise, and lack of engagement of
stakeholders in decision making. Moreover, the American housing industry is also going
through challenges due to the recent Housing Bubble. These issues and problems are
affecting business profitability and sales growth as the company is facing substantial net
losses and rising debts.
Stanley Walsh needs to bring changes in the management operation functions, decision-
making process, and decision-making structure. Since its establishment, Inner-City Paint
Corporation is following centralised strategy development and decision making method and
these needs to be changed by introducing decentralised decision making and democratic
managerial approaches. Instead of part-time employees, full-time skilled employees need to
be hired to strengthen the experienced and knowledge level of the workforce (Mingers,
2015). Moreover, the management control team and the financial control team should be
developed and headed by the professionals.
The recommended solutions are highly appropriate. First of all, replacing part-time
employees by full-time employees will strengthen the workforce of the company, and it is
necessary for Inner-City Paint Corporation considering current situation as the company is
facing product quality, deadline management, and service efficiency problems. Secondly, the

4
consideration of management control and financial controlling team development process is
also noteworthy considering the on-going debt rising issues, high business operation cost
issues, and poor managerial efficiency issues (George et al., 2016). Lastly, the establishment
of the decentralised and democratic structure, as well as culture, is essential in Inner-City
Paint Corporation as Stanley Walsh need to motivate all the employees and stakeholders
critical to share individual views on the on-going issues and better fruitful strategies. Hence,
it is evaluated that the solutions as mentioned earlier are highly justified considering the
current organisational management situation of Inner-City Paint Corporation.
Stanley Walsh should adopt the employee engagement approach by introducing
decentralisation in the workplace on an immediate basis after developed a full-time and
skilled workforce to improve service quality, product quality, deadline management, and
operation efficiency approach. Secondly, Stanley Walsh also needs to establish a two-way
and robust communication approach by maintaining both the top-down and bottom-up
approach (Wang et al., 2016). Bottom-up will allow the involved employees and essential
stakeholders to communicate with the management and top-down will enable the
administration to further interact with the lower level management and employees. These
changes in the communication process should be initiated on an immediate basis to overcome
the challenges.
SWOT Analysis
SWOT is an essential analytical tool, which will significantly analyse the internal business
operation strengths and internal business operation weaknesses of Inner-City Paint
Corporation. In addition, the potential external opportunities, as well as critical threat factors,
will also be evaluated in the following section.

5
Strengths
The strengths of the business operation process of Inner-City Paint Corporation are very
much limited due to several on-going issues associated with the operation management
process. Low manufacturing and office unit rent can be considered as a significant strength of
Inner-City Paint Corporation, which is allowing the company to maintain a low business
operation cost. Stanley Walsh has selected a 45-year-old building for manufacturing works
and official activities, which is in disrepair. This disrepair facility is also a suitable strength of
Inner-City Paint Corporation as the dirty and dusty nature of the manufacturing process will
significantly assist Stanley Walsh to continue with this low rent model, which will allow the
company to enhance effective cost control and improve the profitability shortly (Dyllick &
Muff, 2016). Also, tighter control over financial and management activities also can be
considered as a significant strength of Inner-City Paint Corporation, which has allowed
Stanley Walsh to transform an annually 60,000 USD business to annually 1800000 USD
business-enterprises in last five years; this also can be considered as an essential strength.
Strengths
 Highly competitive Price
 Fast response and delivery process to
contractors
 Low-cost materials with consistent
quality
 Consistent Growth
Weaknesses
 Lack of reliability in the inventory
system
 Lack of employee empowerment
 Meagre financial resources
Opportunities Threats

6
 Increasing market share
 Recruiting professional salesperson
 Automatic inventory system
implementation
 Shipping cost
 High competition
 Low economy
Weaknesses
Inner-City Paint Corporation is operating with several flaws in business. First of all, the
company is working in Chicago without any presence of financial or management control,
which is affecting the strategic decision-making process. This is considered to be a significant
weakness for the company. Secondly, the size of the office premise is quite small of the
company, which might be affecting the official works and brand image of Inner-City Paint
Corporation. In addition, inventory records are not managed and kept in a documentary
manner, which is also considered to be a significant weakness (Collings et al., 2018). Except
for the white paint, the manufacturing, as well as the operational cost of other colours, is
exceptionally high than other SMEs due to the lack of management and financial control
team, which is also a vital weakness of Inner-City Paint Corporation. The level of
competency, skill and knowledge level of employees is too low as the company always prefer
the recruitment and selection of part-time applicants instead of skilled and professional job
seekers, which is a critical weakness of the company. The company is following a centralised
decision-making framework in which other employees cannot be involved, which is affecting
the quality and effectiveness of the decisions (Fernie & Sparks, 2018). This particular
weakness is stopping Inner-City Paint Corporation from recruiting and selecting professional
employees. Lack of customer trust and customer loyalty due to the manufacturing of
insufficient volumes of paint and late delivery also can be regarded as the essential internal

7
issue of the company. Last but not the least; the financial strength of the company is feeble as
the company is going through problems like high debt, high net loss, and senior loan amounts
(Foss & Saebi, 2017). These weaknesses are affecting the business growth of Inner-City Paint
Corporation.
Opportunities
Stanley Walsh needs to adopt and implement decentralisation in the management function in
order to bail out Inner-City Paint Corporation from this challenging scenario. Employment of
skilled employees will automatically help to improve the quality of the products, efficiency of
the operation, and significance of the product delivery process, which will assist in
strengthening the customer loyalty and trust (Hillary, 2017). The management and financial
control unit should be headed and controlled by specialist professionals from their
management and economic field respectively. Consideration of the engagement of all the
critical stakeholders and management of tasks by specialised professionals will significantly
improve the quality and efficiency of the operation management process. Lastly, a revised
business plan needs to be developed by Stanley Walsh siting the changes in management
function, employment, and operation management approaches to impress the banks and
investors to take some bank loans, improve the business output, and clear Inner-City Paint
Corporation from growing liabilities and debts (Kandachar & Halme, 2017).
Threats
Intense market competition is considered to be a significant threat for Inner-City Paint
Corporation (Kocakulah et al., 2016). Moreover, challenging economic scenario of the
United States of America due to housing bubble and downfall of the growth of the housing
industry also can be considered as critical threat factor for the management of Inner-City
Paint Corporation.

8
References
Collings, D. G., Wood, G. T., & Szamosi, L. T. (2018). Human resource management: A
critical approach. In Human Resource Management (pp. 1-23). Routledge.
Dyllick, T., & Muff, K. (2016). Clarifying the meaning of sustainable business: Introducing a
typology from business-as-usual to true business sustainability. Organization &
Environment, 29(2), 156-174.
Fernie, J., & Sparks, L. (Eds.). (2018). Logistics and retail management: emerging issues and
new challenges in the retail supply chain. Kogan page publishers.
Foss, N. J., & Saebi, T. (2017). Fifteen years of research on business model innovation: how
far have we come, and where should we go?. Journal of Management, 43(1), 200-227.
George, G., Howard-Grenville, J., Joshi, A., & Tihanyi, L. (2016). Understanding and
tackling societal grand challenges through management research. Academy of
Management Journal, 59(6), 1880-1895.
Hillary, R. (Ed.). (2017). Small and medium-sized enterprises and the environment: business
imperatives. Routledge.
Kandachar, P., & Halme, M. (Eds.). (2017). Sustainability challenges and solutions at the
base of the pyramid: Business, technology and the poor. Routledge.
Kocakulah, M. C., Kelley, A. G., Mitchell, K. M., & Ruggieri, M. P. (2016). Absenteeism
problems and costs: causes, effects and cures. The International Business &
Economics Research Journal (Online), 15(3), 89.

9
Mingers, J. (2015). Helping business schools engage with real problems: The contribution of
critical realism and systems thinking. European Journal of Operational
Research, 242(1), 316-331.
Wang, G., Gunasekaran, A., Ngai, E. W., & Papadopoulos, T. (2016). Big data analytics in
logistics and supply chain management: Certain investigations for research and
applications. International Journal of Production Economics, 176, 98-110.