Analysis of Business Operations and Supply Chain Strategies Report

This report delves into the core aspects of operations management, examining key business functions such as operations, finance, and marketing, and their interrelationships. It identifies and addresses major challenges in managing business operations, including future uncertainty, technological changes, regulatory issues, and problem-solving complexities, offering potential solutions for each. The report further evaluates business operations and strategic planning within the manufacturing and service industries, using Amazon as a case study to illustrate supply chain variability and the importance of strategic alignment. It also analyzes supply chain management models, specifically the SCOR model, and compares logistics management with supply management, providing insights into best practices and performance measurement within the Amazon supply chain framework.

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INTRODUCTION
The term, operations management means undertakings that result in achieving organisational goals
and objectives through co-ordination, planning and controlling of business undertakings. Operation
management focuses on plans and policies with the company objectives, which helps the business to
improve its efficiency of products and services.
Q.1a. three key business function and the relationship between them
Key functions of operation management: Business contains three most important functions which help
to the business effectively. Those three functions are operations management, finance management
and marketing management. Finance function involves, the need for funds required to make
organisational decisions. Marketing management involves marketing research regarding customer
needs and demand for their product. Operations management focuses on operation function regarding
production of goods, delivery to clients on time etc. (Fortlewis, 2015)
Business function: Functions which involve production of products and services, research and
development process, market analysis and selling. It is basically a process of various functions
performed daily to achieve organisational goals.
Operations
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It is the business function which manages the process of production of goods and services, planning
and organising resources required to produce the product and service. Operations management is the
main function of every company. It is the process of converting material into goods to maximise
company's profit. The four functions of operations management includes planning, organising,
controlling and leading.
The aim of the business is to maintain the balance between the product and the customers demand. If
the supply is more than the demand, it will lead to wastage of resources and if the supply is less than
the demand, it results in customer dissatisfaction.
Finance
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from sales investment. The company uses the time between getting the book to the time and use. From
the short term investment that company will take time of a month or two to make a return. (Young
finance guy & Fortlewis, 2015).
Heizer & Render (2011) remark that finance/accounting, in order to track the way the company is
performing, paying and collecting the bill
Marketing
The term marketing is based on understanding the customers need and their satisfaction. It is an action
of promoting and selling goods or services through market research. Marketing is the process for
creating, communicating, delivering and exchanging that have value for customers. It involves
activities of the company with buying and selling a product or service. The goal of marketing is to
match company's product to the customers who want and need them. There are four P's of marketing
i.e. product, price, place and promotion (Young finance guy & Fortlewis, 2015).
The three broad classification management decisions
Decision makers in a company required the information which is directly connected to:
 the level of decision making management
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 the amount of problems manager faces in different decision situation
The levels of decision making management requires the information technology for a successful
organization (independently of its size, shape, and participants), here below is provided a managerial
pyramid – see the figure below (O'Brien, p. 393) and Lecture 4:
Strategic management: Strategies carried by a manager is to
i. develop overall organizational goals, achieve better performance, and
ii. conduct a SWOT analysis, to know organisational strengths, weaknesses,
opportunities and threats.
Tactical management: Allows manager to use the best method for different situations arises. It aims
to
i. develop strategic plans, lists of finances and policies, procedures, and
business objectives for their sub-units of the company, and
ii. monitor performance of their organization to gain an objective.
Operational management: Role of operational manager is to
i. oversees the production of goods and services in order to run the organisation
effectively,
ii. manage both raw material and personnel, and
iii. Controlling, organising and coordinating company's resources.
1b. Identify 4 major challenges involved in managing business operations and offer solutions to
them.
Managing business operation:
Managing business operations is a key role of operation manager. He is responsible for all buisness
functions like planning, organising, coordinating and controlling business resources. The 4 major
challenges faced by operation manager in business are:-
1.Future uncertainty
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In this world of business, time changes rapidly and so it is difficult to predict future uncertainty like
customer and market trends etc. Not every manager has a predictive power to see future changes
regarding PESTLE factors, future threats etc. By giving training in reading and predicting all
upcoming trends could make a bright future.
2. Technologies
Rapid changes in the technologies, which is vital for companies to grow and innovate their products
or services. Some managers are not aware of these latest technologies, as a result they face a big
problem regarding this. Bringing new technologies in the organisation, in mobile, app development,
and cloud could help the manager to achieve and accomplish organisational goals.
3. Regulations
A change in regulatory environment, manager is always concern about financial policy, certain
industries, tax rates, etc. Environmental problems are the biggest challenges to businesses. The
problem can be solved by understanding the meaning of regulation, its impact on business and to
develop skills to deal with it. Taxes and health care are the two main parts of regulatory challenges.
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4. Problem solving and risk taking
A major challenge for all companies is identifying and analysing the risk involve
including financial capital. Manager identifies and assess the risks and take various
measures to solve it. Problem solving is the key to business and to do well in the
future. The key is to learn how to deal with different problems and risks which can
adversely effect the business.
How does this all work
The Key Elements Solution
That idea is quite simple, all systems have the same key elements and these key elements take up
about 50 - 70% of the time to build a modified solution. Form a framework that is highly
customisable that has all these key elements and can be reprocessed on every solution and you
are already halfway there. The rest is the bespoke stuff that makes your solution totally unique and
perfect for you.
All system has a login and password recovery, user management and authorisations, some have
distribution functionality and download functionality. Then all systems use lists to display data, forms
to input and edit data and some have plans to illustrate data, then there are features built into the lists,
forms and charts that allow you to order the data, search, save etc. All these are the key elements that
every system contains.
The Framework
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The framework has all these key elements already made in and highly customisable from an admin
console so the bare bones of your whole solution can be put together quickly without any need for
high progress work.
Our framework is updatable so that we can apply improvements, bug fixes and security patches
quickly and easily to your solution. This ensures that your system has an on-going level of support to
confirm your solution is kept up to date and more importantly secure.
As these are written for a framework that is used across many solutions the on-going maintenance
cost is dramatically reduced compared to the cost of maintaining a completely bespoke solution.
Further Development
The whole framework is then highly customisable from a progress viewpoint so we can then take the
bare bones of your solution and develop it further to make your perfect solution, developed exactly
the way you want it but for a lot less than you would pay for a solution built from scratch.
Large or Small
This principle can be applied to large or small builds so whatever your requirements, get in touch.
We are more than happy to finished how we would solve your problem, what the advantages and
disadvantages are and offer you with a quote so you can make a fully informed decision and
ultimately, get the right solution for you.
Additional Benefits
There are many additional benefits to using a framework and this is becoming a popular way of
developing system solutions.
Our framework is updatable so that we can apply progresses, bug fixes and security patches quickly
and simply to your solution. This ensures that your system has a continuing level of support to ensure
your solution is kept up to date and more importantly secure.
As these are written for a framework that is used across many solutions the on-going maintenance
cost is dramatically reduced compared to the cost of maintaining a completely adapted solution.
Q2. Critically evaluate the business operations and strategic planning within the
manufacturing and service industries.
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Strategy Manager is to stay focused on normal- and long terms objectives in state of
operational delivery. Making and managing smart KPI to track strategy assistances and
benefits across the board, will offer a strategy manager to stay focused.
Amazon (services industry) Supply Chain Variability
Facilities:
 places where inventory is stored,
 production and storage sites
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Inventory:
moving inventory in a supply chain
 raw materials, finished good
 Transportation
 inventory policies
:
Information: data and analysis regarding register, transportation, facilities throughout the
supply chain.
The performance of business operations as a great impact on the growth of the organisation.
These business operations must support the overall organisational goals and reach the targets.
Further more, strategic plan connects your mission to your vision, it makes your plan
realistic, and integrated. It maintains a balance between customers, internal business process
and learning goals.
Q3. Analyse one model and one framework of supply chain management in an organisation.
. This is supply chain management study case at Amazon
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Supply Chain Management
Basis for Comparison Logistics Management Supply Management
Meaning It is the part of supple chain
that plans, implements, and
controls flow and storage of
goods and services from origin
to its consumption.
Management activities
which involves flow of
goods and services. It
manages resources and
suppliers which are
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