Supply Chain Management Issues Faced by Dunsters Farm During COVID-19 Pandemic

This article discusses the supply chain management issues faced by Dunsters Farm during the COVID-19 pandemic. It covers the importance of analysing the business environment, identifying problems, breaking them down, and prioritising them for rectification. The article also highlights the top three issues faced by the company, which are supply chain management issues, delivery issues, and staff satisfaction issues.

BM561 Business
Consulting

Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................1
Client overview and its business environment mapping..................................................................1
Who is the client?...................................................................................................................1
Problem identification......................................................................................................................2
Summarising the problem they are facing..............................................................................2
Problem statement............................................................................................................................2
Using research, breaking the problem down by analysing and presenting areas of importance
to the client............................................................................................................................2
Problem issues trees.........................................................................................................................3
From the above analysis, what are the top three issues that the client is facing....................3
Problem prioritisation......................................................................................................................4
State clearly why
these issues has been ranked these as the top three...............................................................4
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................4
References........................................................................................................................................5

Introduction
Business management refers to the planning and organising along with the staffing and
directing and also the controlling functions in order to work collaboratively to successfully run
the business. It is basically the administration of a commercial enterprise which includes some
aspects such as supervising and overseeing the operations of the business. The following
discussion is based on the case scenario of Dunsters farm organization who is facing the
challenge of growth for a supply chain of wholesaler in the covid 19 pandemic period. Supply
chain management refers to the monitoring and the management of flow of goods and services
among several businesses and locations in an efficient manner. It basically includes the storage
and movement of raw materials, work in progress inventory and finished goods as well. It
monitors the end to end order fulfilment which means that from the origin point to the
consumption point (Paul, Chowdhury, Moktadir and Lau, 2021). The below discussion is based
on the client overview and its business environment mapping, problem identification, problem
statement, problem issues trees and problem prioritisation as per the given scenario.
Client overview and its business environment mapping
Who is the client?
Client is Dunsters Farm. It is one of the small and medium enterprise proactive catering
food and drink supplier company which is established in 1954 and based in United Kingdom. It
deals with the products and services like it supplies the wide range of chilled and ambient food
and drinks to the consumers in the north side. There are various clients to which the company is
offering its products and services such as schools and hospitals along with the hotels and many
more. It has the size of staff of approximately 30 people. In the current pandemic, organization
has decided to increase the range of products to the vast variety in order to gain expansion in the
market place. They have adopted the diversification strategy n w the company has added the
fresh and frozen vegetables which has enabled the firm's current ambient and chilled product
line. This has resulted in increasing of the more clients and also the well maintained position in
the market place as well. But even after the too much of planning, organization still faces several
problems regarding its supply chain management in this current pandemic. The following
discussion is based on the problems faced by the company and its prioritisation (Butt, 2021).
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Problem identification
Summarising the problem they are facing
There are various problems which are suffered by the company in its supply chain
management procedure due to the covid 19 outbreak. Dunsters Farm is considered as the
company which is highly proactive and devoted to its future. But talking about the financial
reserves of the company, it has severely drained because of the pandemic and the reason being is
that many of the customers has to close or shut down their shops due to lock down or losses
incurred by them. Then also the cash flow still got improved in March due to the reopening of
schools and also because of the slow resumption of hotel services as well. But it was still facing
issues by the middle of the April. Another problem suffered by the firm is a of delivery drivers
in the local areas after Brexit. This results in the difficulty for the company to grow on the
current basis. Company states that they have a lot of ideas to grow the firm but is unable to do so
due to the lack of drivers and also facing the lot of issues in recruiting as well and the reason
being is that the drivers were demanding the higher wages for the same. Moreover, firm also
states that the most affected month of pandemic has been a difficult month for the company
because due to the covid, everything slowed like a crawl. Furthermore, the co-director of the
food wholesalers also states that covid has hitted hard on the wholesalers. That is why it is
important for the company to focus and take steps to measure the strategies for improvement in
supply chain and deliveries along with the staff satisfaction in the expansion to new markets
(Burgos and Ivanov, 2021).
Problem statement
Using research, breaking the problem down by analysing and presenting areas of importance
to the client
Competitors
It is important to rectify the issues discussed above which are faced by the company. This
is because it can have the major impact on the competitors and also can create the negative
impact on competitive advantages. Therefore, competitors is an area of importance to client in
order to focus on the issues related to the supply chain management due to the covid 19
pandemic. The reason being is that competitors are busy in planning about the strategies to
improve the supply chain management through which they can easily gain the competitive
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advantages. Thereby, in order to win the competition against the competitors, it is essential for
the company to focus on solving out the issues (Sodhi and Tang, 2021).
Target customers
It is significant for the company to focus on the target audiences by enhancing the
delivery services. Target customers needs the timely and speedy services with good accuracy and
proper maintenance of the goods and services delivered to them. If this services lacks within the
organization then the company can loose the brand loyalty along with the good reputation in the
market p;ace. Moreover, it can also loose the long terms relationship with the customers which is
one of the most important criteria to be successful. Therefore, delivery services needs to be get
resolved as soon as possible as it is considered as the area of importance to the client.
Market
It is crucial for the firm to target the resolving of the issues on staff recruitment so that
the company can maintain the stability in the market place. Company highly needs the staff who
can has the ability to deliver the services and goods on time without any delay in an efficient
manner. Market is considered as an important area for the company to improve the image of the
firm among the people who are looking for the job, so that the people can work good for the firm
with their full effectiveness and potential in their respective job profile. This ultimately can
support the organization to expand its range in the market with staff satisfaction (Hoek, 2020).
Influencing factors from the external
environment
There are various factors from the external environment which influences the issues in
supply chain management and delivery along with the staff satisfaction issues. These are
required to get resolved for better functioning and growth of the organization. Some of the
factors which influences are such as the political and economical along with the social and
technological which is followed by the legal and environmental factors. These are the external
factors which influences the solutions for the issues faced by the firm as per the given scenario.
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Problem issues trees
From the above analysis, what are the top three issues that the client is facing
1. Supply chain management issues which has the problem in terms of the entire procedure
from initial point to the end point
2. Deliveries issues which has the problem in terms of the time delays and lack of efficiency
by workers
3. Staff satisfaction issues which has the problem in terms of the high wages they are asking
to pay just for the delivery services (Hobbs, 2020).
Problem prioritisation
State clearly why
these issues has been ranked these as the top three
The above issues discussed are ranked as the top three because they are considered as the
major functions of the organization without which the firm's workflow can get disturbed. These
are the issues which are directly related to the brand image in the market place and customer
loyalty as well. These elements are important to focus for better expansion even in the pandemic
(Barman, Das and De, 2021).
Conclusion
It is concluded that supply chain management is an important concept in business
management to learn and study so that its applications can be applied in the real world
organizations. This is because it administers the entire process of movement of goods and
services which highly involves the cost and time along with the energy. That is why in order to
use such important resources efficiently in the firm, it is essential to manage the supply chain and
identify the challenges in order to rectify it on timely basis. Therefore, it is important to analyse
the business environment of business, it is essential to examine the problems the business is
facing, it is necessary to determine the breaking down of the problems in competition, target
customers, market and external environment, it is significant to gain the knowledge about the top
and the most relevant issues faced by the business and it is vital to assess the issues ranked on its
priority of rectification. Hence, the above information covers all such areas on order to better
understand the conception of supply chain management in businesses.
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References
Books and Journals
Barman, A., Das, R. and De, P.K., 2021. Impact of COVID-19 in food supply chain: Disruptions
and recovery strategy. Current Research in Behavioral Sciences, 2, p.100017.
Burgos, D. and Ivanov, D., 2021. Food retail supply chain resilience and the COVID-19
pandemic: A digital twin-based impact analysis and improvement
directions. Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, 152,
p.102412.
Butt, A.S., 2021. Strategies to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on supply chain disruptions: a
multiple case analysis of buyers and distributors. The International Journal of Logistics
Management.
Hobbs, J.E., 2020. Food supply chains during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Canadian Journal of
Agricultural Economics/Revue canadienne d'agroeconomie, 68(2), pp.171-176.
Hoek, R.V., 2020. Responding to COVID-19 supply chain risks—Insights from supply chain
change management, total cost of ownership and supplier segmentation
theory. Logistics, 4(4), p.23.
Paul, S.K., Chowdhury, P., Moktadir, M.A. and Lau, K.H., 2021. Supply chain recovery
challenges in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of business research, 136,
pp.316-329.
Sodhi, M.S. and Tang, C.S., 2021. Supply chain management for extreme conditions: Research
opportunities. Journal of Supply Chain Management, 57(1), pp.7-16.
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