Logistics and Operations Management

Logistics and Operations Management

Contents
Contents...........................................................................................................................................2
Four V’s of Operation management.......................................................................................4
ERP system.............................................................................................................................5
Ethics and Sustainability........................................................................................................7
Big Data..................................................................................................................................8
Procurement..........................................................................................................................10
Conclusion............................................................................................................................11
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................12

OVERVIEW
Marks and Spencer is one of the largest multinational retail chain in the world and deals in
various products and services like clothing, toys, fast food, home products etc. M&S headquarter
is in Westminster, London and have been serving in more than 1400 store locations with the
revenue of 10,377 million Euro and employees more than 80,000 people worldwide (Scott and
Walker, 2017). Company has been going into transformation as management or board of
directors are planning to cut 100 stores worldwide with the aim of reducing operations cost thus
improving profitability to a certain level. After removal of St. Michael brand from its brand
name, company has seen downfall or lower customer footfalls in their clothing section. But on
the other hand, their food sales has been increasing due to increase in variety available to
customers.
Operation management refers to a process of managing overall supply chain of a company with
the aim of decreasing operations cost and increasing profit margin for a product. In other terms,
monitoring of transformation of raw materials in to final products and then consumed by final
customers by considering reduction in cost price without compromising in quality of a product.
Logistics is the brand of operation management which deals in transportation of products to
customer as well as within working premises (Adhikari, Biswas and Avittathur, 2019). Main role
of logistics is to eliminate those steps which are not adding any value added services in the final
product and reduce processing time of a product so that less human resource and machinery will
be used thus improving overall efficiency of working operations.
According to Cole, Stevenson and Aitken, (2019) there are various problems which are faced by
logistics due to which whole company gets affected from it in a negative way. Like managing
supplier is a complex task as if more suppliers are in contact with the company then distances
travelled to get the raw materials also becomes high thus poorer efficiency. For instance, if M&S
has three different suppliers, one from Westminster and other two from Nottingham and Bristol
respectively. Then M&S will be benefited in terms of financial number if raw materials are
coming from Westminster but when it outsourced from Nottingham then overall efficiency
becomes lower due to increase in distance.
In past era, cloths product life cycle was considered longer as shift from one trend to another
takes time as said by (Templar and et al., 2017). But due to increase in competitors and change in
customer buying process, product life has become lower which are hampering efficiency of retail

chains like Marks and Spencer. Moreover, company needs to procure low inventory in the
starting for a new product as customer thought process is very volatile and changing in nature.
But Fixed cost which incurs for buying the product in low or high inventory will be same thus
more transformation cost is paid by company just to sustain in the market for longer period of
time. Other problems are increase commercial property prices for stores, skilful labour,
maintaining staff productivity with limited salary, flow of product due to poor supply chain
management, rising consumer expectations and competitors etc.
Four V’s of Operation management
It is known in the market that if any retail chains want to get success in the market then they have
to mould their strategy and working operations according to customer expectations and external
environment as negative impact can be seen if their requirements are unsatisfied or ignore by
company as stated by (al Habibi, 2019). To maintain it, company needs to identify their internal
and external performance and how it could be improved in the future for the betterment of
company. So Marks and Spencer must analyse their performance with the help of 4 V’s of
preparations which are explained below with functional example of M&S.
Volume: Volume refers to number of customers served by company in a limited period time or
per day. For instance, if Marks and Spencer is able to satisfy the customer they are serving
worldwide then their volume efficiency is higher and vice versa. But on the other hand, quality
of the product must be considered while serving customers as if they are not attain marginal
utility from the product customers have paid then low customer retention rate would be seen by
company. So quality must not be compromised by M&S while catering the needs and demands
of potential customers.
Variety: It refers to number of variety company has in their store to serve their customers. For
instance, if company has more than one product or has variety of product in their stores then it
becomes easier for customers to purchase their product accordingly. Moreover, chances of
increase in sales are also high as customer has wide number of choices to select to satisfy their
needs. M&S has been able to fulfil this category of operation as they are fully stocked with
products like home product, clothing, and foods etc which assist them to increase their
profitability over a period of time (Bek and Lim, 2018).
Variation: According to SDSD, if there is more than one variation available in the store for
customers then there are high chances that customer will end up buying more than what they