Operations Management - Lenovo Group Limited Presentation

This presentation discusses the operations management strategies of Lenovo Group Limited, a Chinese company that focuses on the sale of computers, smartphones, servers, software, and telecommunication solutions. It covers the company's history, operations strategy and competitiveness, product design and process selection, supply chain management, total quality management, statistical quality control, just-in-time and lean manufacturing, and forecasting. The presentation also includes suggestions for the company to improve its innovativeness, reduce costs, and eliminate defective processes.

Operations Management
Student Name:
Date: 08/10/2018
Lenovo Group Limited Presentation

INTRODUCTION
Lenovo Group Limited is a Chinese Company that focuses on sale of:
Computers
Smartphones
Servers
Software and telecommunication solutions
Has Headquarters in HongKong, Morrisville and Beijing
Hewle
tt
Packar
d
21%
Lenovo
20%Dell
14%
Apple
8%
Asus
6%
Acer
6%
Others
24%
Market Share
Company size compared
to the competition

HISTORY OF LENOVO
1984: Founded by Liu Chuanzi under the name New Technology Developer in
Beijing - China
Business: the company only provided language translation and transcription
services(to Chinese) on computers made by companies from the west.
1993: Company opened a branch in HongKong and changed it’s name from New
Technology Developer to Legend. Started Manufacturing Computers.
1996-2000: Grew to be the leading Asia-Pacific company dealing with computer
manufacturing
2000- 2003 Used growth strategies to expand to other parts of the world
beyond East Asia
2004: Acquired IBM Personal Computer division (ThinkPad)
2004-2018 Grew tremendously to become the second biggest OEM in the world

MY ROLE IN THE ORGANIZATION
Used to work for the company in the following capacity:
Software development at the ICT division
Cloud testing
Analyzing business trends
Updating web-applications
Forecasting future customer demand to optimize computer production
Troubleshooting the Enterprise Resource Planning system (ERP) system

OPERATIONS STRATEGY AND COMPETIVENESS
Lenovo employs defense and attack strategies
Defense: Safeguard home market against
foreign competitors.
Attack: Shores up new markets abroad by
acquisitions, subsidiaries, direct export and
online marketing
In terms of operational competitiveness Lenovo has
chosen:
 New product development strategy
Low-cost strategy.

PRODUCT DESIGN AND PROCESS SELECTION
The company uses four-stage criteria to come up with profitable products in the
market:
 The R &D division to researches new ideas
Company uses employees to brainstorm the ideas. The company then
analyzes the ideas to come up with feasible products.
Testing of the products
Release to the market
Process selection:
Outsources their non-core activities
Buy components instead of manufacturing them

SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT
Lenovo does the following to prevent a
loophole in their supply management
Customer order tracking
Just in time Manufacturing
Use of ERP

TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT
Lenovo recognizes that all elements in
the organization have to work as one to
ensure product quality meets and
exceeds customer expectations.
Any defective products and services
are identified and rectified using the
PDCA cycle
Company keeps everyone on the loop
through:
1. Management Commitment
2. Customer focus
3. Employee involvement
4. Training
5. Continuous improvement

STATISTICAL QUALITY CONTROL
To ensure products conform to the set company and industry
standards, Lenovo uses the following methods:
Sampling supplies to eliminate defects from the source
Statistical process control such as using project management
techniques
Use of variation techniques
Use of control charts

JUST-IN-TIME AND LEAN MANUFACTURING
Just in time or the TPS is a method used by Lenovo for inventory
control.
Used in eliminated waste and process inefficiencies
Manufacturing is pegged on customer orders to ensure that the
exact orders requested are manufactured, not more or less.
Likewise, the company uses lean manufacturing methods, for
instance, six sigma to continuously eliminate waste

FORECASTING
Lenovo always analysis the trends of their customers to predict future
outcomes such as demand.
This way the company is able to optimize their inventory to reduce shortage or
wastage.
The company is able to develop products that anticipate future customer needs
and deliver them on time.
Forecasting techniques used include:
Qualitative methods – mainly use of judgment instead of data
Quantitative methods- use mathematical models to predict the future.
Include methods such as discounted cash flows, decision trees among others

OVERALL THOUGHTS ON THE ORGANIZATION
The company should engage more researchers as the level of
innovativeness has declined over the last few years.
To cut on cost and maximize on quality, Lenovo should automate
their production systems to reduce human error.
Lastly, the company should use not root cause analysis to eliminate
all defective processes.

REFERENCES
Adamides, E., & Karfaki, E. (2017). How initiatives renew operations strategy and its linkage
to competitive strategy: a micro-level perspective. International Journal Of
Services And Operations Management, 26(2), 141.
Albiñana, J., & Vila, C. (2012). A framework for concurrent material and process selection
during conceptual product design stages. Materials & Design, 41, 436-440.
Alon, I., & Zhang, W. (2010). A Guide To The Top 100 Companies In China (1st ed., pp. 206-
209). Hackensack: World Scientific Publishers.
Boyer, K., & Verma, R. (2010). Operations & supply chain management for the 21st
century(pp. 144-147). Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning.
Hugos, M. (2010). Essentials of supply chain management (2nd ed., pp. 12-18). Hoboken:
John Wiley & Sons Inc.
Oakland, J. (2014). Total Quality Management and Operational Excellence: Text with
Cases(4th ed., pp. 31-79). New York: Routledge.
Sarokin, D. (2017). The History of Lenovo. Retrieved from https://bizfluent.com/info-
8081800-history-lenovo.html