Operations and Project Management: Review and Critique of Operations Management Principles in Unilever Plc

This report reviews and critiques the implementation of operations management principles in Unilever Plc, including an analysis of meeting organizational requirements and a continuous improvement plan. It also explains the difference between operations and operational management, and discusses the lean principles and their applicability in Unilever. Unit 187 - Operations and Project Management.

ID
Unit Number and Title Unit 187 –
Operations and
Project Management
Title Review and Critique
of Operations
Management (Part
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Table of Content
Part 1: Business Report
1. An introduction to chosen organization 3
2. An explanation of operation vs operations management 3
3. A review and critique of the implementation of operations
management principles within the chosen organization 5
4. An analysis of the extent to which the operations management of
the organization in the case study meets the requirements of the
organization 6
5. Discussion of continuous improvement as a philosophy and
describe the Lean principles 7
6. A continuous improvement plan, including your justified
recommendations for improvement, based on your review and
critique of operations management principles within your
organization 9
7. Conclusion 10
References 10
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1. An introduction to chosen organization
Unilever Plc is a world renowned British consumer goods organization which
has its headquarters based in London. The product varieties at Unilever include food
products, cleaning agents, beauty products and personal care. It is one of the top
most brands as the biggest producer of soap globally (Carydias and Gregory, 2019).
The availability of the Unilever products is based across 190 different countries. The
company is divided into three divisions primarily: food and refreshments, home care
and beauty and personal care. The company has established upon its research and
development facilities in countries like India, china, the Netherlands and the UK. In
the year of 2010s, the company went on to shift its focus and developments towards
more healthy and beauty and personal care brands. The company brought a halt for
the food products which showed slow growth. Unilever has an objective of supplying
the safe dairy and farm products that provide customers with a healthy diet.
2. An explanation of operation vs operations management
Operations in business refers to the set of functions which relate to manufacturing,
productions and supply. These combine the set of procedures performed in each
and every organization to aim and attain their standards of profitability. The
operations area involves taking note for the quality of products, preparing plans for
business engagement and resource utilization's. It also aims to provide for all the
customers demands and needs in the market (Choi, 2022).
Operations management: It is the administration of the business practices that
intents at assuring the maximum efficiency inside a business that assists then to
improve and increase the profitability. It tends to utilize and manage all the
organizational resources to maximize the organizational efficiency. It considers all
the different resources that the business owns such as labor, material,s employee
staff, technologies and the physical equipment's to utilize them in generating an
efficient and effective output in the business on all the different levels in the
organization. Applying operational management in the organization in the
standardized way helps it to achieve better output, to have a competitive advantage
and increased higher profits. The overall objective of operational management is
ensuring efficient usage of all the resources of material, labor, techniques and
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equipment's in order to make the organization able to match supply and sandman for
the products manufactured (Choi and et.al., 2022).
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Operations Operations Management
 Operations involves the daily
tasks relating to the daily
practices which are regarding
the development of any goods or
products of the business, the
management of sales and stock
materials in the business
(Gajadhar, Jordan and Stomski
Jr, 2018).
 The Unilever in relation to its
operations of selling their
products and services in the
market to earn the business
revenue and profits in an
efficient manner.
 Operations management entirely
connects to the tasks that include
managing and maintaining the
production efficiency in the
business. As the management of
operations provides the
organisation with the capability of
maintaining overall business
efficiency and the faults or issues,
if any that the management feels to
remove from the business.
 For example, Unilever imparts
changes and modifications in its
products in any of the category that
they deal in utilising some better
usage of raw materials and labour
of the organisation. The usage of
better factors of production helps
the company to generate higher
revenues as compared to pervious
years.
3. A review and critique of the implementation of
operations management principles within the chosen
organization
Operations management principles: the operational management principles are an
essential tool that help the company to
1. Reality: The management of operations should aim to focus on the entire
problem and not just the tools or the techniques that are utilized. The reason
behind this issue is that no individual tool or techniques would help the
business in solving an entire set of problems and hence the organization
needs to look at the real situation and think for the solutions accordingly
(Gavião and et.al., 2019).
2. Success: The success of an organization can be computed and measured on
various basis depending upon the organizations objectives and targets. But
the most primary subject which is measured when calculating an
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organizations success is the ability of the company to meet and complete the
customer demands in he market.
3. Accountability: an accountable individual is the most important asset for any
operational manufacturing unit. The managers in the company are
responsible for setting up of targets, rules and regulations for the employees
to lay by (Hsu and Lai, 2022). This is necessary for the businesses to be
able to measure their goals and to check upon whether the goals are being
met or not. This assists in keeping the employees and workers accountable
for their work and provides the opportunity to contribute in the necessary and
requisite efforts.
4. Organization: In a manufacturing organization, each and every activity in the
operations is well connected to each other. These are required to be
consistent and predictable for the organization. Failure of the operations
department in doing so may lead to inability while performing a task or while
achieving an objective.
5. Fundamentals: The organization needs to be aware of the areas which give
company the success it aims for. In operations management, the Pareto Rule
of Efficiency also termed as the 80-20 rule plays an important role which says
the 80% of the success and aims that the company achieves comes from
current processes whereas the 20% derives from the application of newer
techniques and processes (Joyce, Dahl and Sposto, 2018).
4. An analysis of the extent to which the operations
management of the organization in the case study meets
the requirements of the organization
Operations management is an indispensable part of any organisation as it is affected
by any or every business aspect in the surrounding. The principles of operations
management assists organisational managers to apply the suitable operations
principles where ever the implementation is necessary relating to the operations
management. Unilever applies these organisational principles to benefit from any
faults, hurdles or errors that are committed in the process of completing a task or an
activity. As the market base of Unilever has a wide and large reach in the market
hence utilises these principles to profit for their established targets. Operations
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management is assisting various organisations and fulfilling the requirements of the
organisations and demands of customers in the following ways:
 By adopting the operational management principles, Unilever has been
benefited upon in various ways in which it can benefit the customers by
providing them what they need in the form of most healthy and safer options
as compared to their previous productions and deliveries to their customers
(Kerzner, 2019). This will help the company in attracting larger bunch of their
customers as compared to their previous numbers as people are most health
and environment conscious in comparison to previous times.
 Unilever applies the operational principles for implementing the cost effective
techniques to enable the company to provide customers with reasonable
prices for their varieties of products. The pricing of the company is reasonable
among all its competitors and it focuses on avoiding any unnecessary
purchases from customers side. This makes the customers o place loyalty
above all.
 Unilever has a strong front when maintaining for their workplace environment
as it helps them in keeping the operations of the business in sync with other
processes at work. It also helps them to maintain quality control checks in
their operations. With the organisation having great relations with its suppliers
globally and availability of the raw materials with an easy access makes
Unilever able to utilise their operations, productions and sales at their best
capacity (Masmoudi, Jarboui and Siarry, 2021).
 The principles of operations management enable Unilever to produce and
design the products according to market trends and requirements. It
necessarily shows that the organisation puts the customers as the top- most
priority with converting even window shoppers into a satisfied customer. It
shows that the business managers are able to look for the marketing trends
and analyse them to overline the products accordingly.
5. Discussion of continuous improvement as a philosophy
and describe the Lean principles
Continuous improvements are the that involve an ongoing Improvement and
betterment of the company products, services or the organizational processes of the
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business for the purpose of implementing breakthrough improvements and
increments. These efforts of the organization which aim at continuous improvements
can either lead to incremental improvements in a period of time or a breakthrough
improvement all at once. It is based on the idea that slow and steady improvements
which are executed diligently can result in transformational changes in an
organization (Pivovar, 2021).
Lean methodologies is chiefly relevant to control the unnecessary wastage which
occurs in an organization. These principles assists in decreasing the production cost
and fix for a minimum products price.
The five lean principles are:
1. Defining value: Value is what the customer aims to pay in return of the
product or service that the organization provides to the customers. THE MAIN
focus of the customers is to have satisfaction which can be termed in
monetary terms. Hence Unilever always succeeds in giving its customers
worthwhile experience with a launch of exclusive products that satisfies and
fulfills the demands of its customer base.
2. Mapping of value stream: In this second lean principle, the aim is to find the
different factors that when combined together constitute the entire value of the
product which the customer wants to pay. It finds the activities which
contribute in the value and those which do not. Unilever then aims to reduce
all such activities which are adding to the unnecessary production cost.
3. Create flow: After the successful removal of all such steps which are
unnecessary, it is ensured through this principle that all the other steps in the
production run smoothly without any conjunction in the system (Poppi and
Molinari, 2020).
4. Establish Pull: In this pull based principle, it is ensured that the inventory and
the WIP in the production is limited only to the required amount and that the
requisite amounts of processes relating to inventory and wok in progress runs
smoothly. This basically ensures that the products are manufactured in the
needed quantities at the place where they are required creating efficiency in
the organization.
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5. Pursue perfection: The waste in the entire production system is removed
with the help of above mentioned four steps. But the step of perfection is the
most important among all the steps given. This assist to apply lean thinking
and continuous improvement in the organization a part of the enterprise and
its culture. It states that a business organization should always be in the
learning phase and should search for ways to make the organization a little
better with each process (Usenko and et.al., 2021). (Safronova and et.al.,
2021)
6. A continuous improvement plan, including your justified
recommendations for improvement, based on your review
and critique of operations management principles within
your organization
Continuous improvement plan includes the set of procedures which are formulated to
convey changes and modifications in small stages, bring continuous transformations
in the products, services or the processes with proper consents, reviews and suitable
necessary actions. The continuous improvement plan for Unilever as an organization
can be formulated as follows:
Plan : It means identifying on an opportunity and planning for change. With
continuous planning procedures, Unilever can get ahead with the understanding of
the market needs and planning upon its future products and activities as per the
demand and needs of its customers.
Do: This step involves the actual implementation of the project starting out from a
small scale. It involves the execution of the plans that the company made on the
basis of the market trends and customer needs.
Check: This step in the continuous improvement involves checking upon the works
and practices being followed in the company as to understand on what scale the
plannings have been executed and what are the developments or hurdles in the
implementation of the plan in Unilever. It should check and analyze the results that
are achieved from executing the plannings and check upon whether it brought any
positive effective changes or not.
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Act: In situations where the changes planned were successful, Unilever should aim
to implement those on a higher scale and where the changes were not effective, it
should start with this cycle of continuous improvement plan again.
7. Conclusion
From the above report, it can be concluded that operations and operational
management are two different concepts where operations include the production of
the goods and services and the completion of daily tasks whereas operational
management involves the activities and tasks which aim at providing the completion
of the tasks in the most efficient and effective manner. It also concludes upon with
mention of Unilever, explanation of it as an organisation and how it applies the
continuous improvement principles in its working. This report also explains the lean
principles and how they are applicable in Unilever as an organisation.
References
Carydias, P. and Gregory, J., 2019. Risk-based asset performance management in
CSG production operations. The APPEA Journal, 59(2), pp.776-779.
Choi, T.M., 2022. Achieving economic sustainability: operations research for risk
analysis and optimization problems in the blockchain era. Annals of
Operations Research, pp.1-26.
Choi, T.M., and et.al., 2022. Disruptive technologies and operations management in
the Industry 4.0 era and beyond. Production and Operations
Management, 31(1), pp.9-31.
Gajadhar, S., Jordan, C. and Stomski Jr, P., 2018, July. Understanding the risk of
unattended nighttime operations at WM Keck Observatory. In Modeling,
Systems Engineering, and Project Management for Astronomy VIII (Vol.
10705, pp. 50-58). SPIE.
Gavião, L.O., and et.al., 2019. Selecting a cargo aircraft for humanitarian and
disaster relief operations by multicriteria decision aid methods. IEEE
transactions on engineering management, 67(3), pp.631-640.
Hsu, Y. and Lai, J.C., 2022. The Influence of Strategic Agility on Product Design
Organizations’ Operations and Cultures. In International Conference on
Human-Computer Interaction (pp. 41-57). Springer, Cham.
Joyce, M.J., Dahl, L.B. and Sposto, L., 2018, September. Advanced multi-mission
operations system instrument toolkit: an open source instrument and small
satellite operations toolkit. In CubeSats and NanoSats for Remote Sensing
II (Vol. 10769, pp. 274-280). SPIE.
Kerzner, H., 2019. Using the project management maturity model: strategic planning
for project management. John Wiley & Sons.
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Masmoudi, M., Jarboui, B. and Siarry, P. eds., 2021. Operations research and
simulation in healthcare. Springer International Publishing.
Pivovar, M., 2021, October. ETL for Aviation Maintenance and Operations as a Multi
Objective Optimization Task. In International Conference on Reliability and
Statistics in Transportation and Communication (pp. 144-157). Springer,
Cham.
Poppi, S. and Molinari, E., 2020, December. A kanban approach for the Sardinia
Radio Telescope operations. In Observatory Operations: Strategies,
Processes, and Systems VIII (Vol. 11449, pp. 150-155). SPIE.
Safronova, N.B., and et.al., 2021, November. Innovation Management in RUSNANO
Corporation. In International Scientific and Practical Conference Operations
and Project management: strategies and trends (pp. 411-416). Springer,
Cham.
Usenko, L.N., and et.al., 2021, November. Analysis of Management Paradigms in
the Contemporary Finance Theory. In International Scientific and Practical
Conference Operations and Project management: strategies and trends (pp.
645-650). Springer, Cham.
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Table of Content
Part 2: Project Portfolio
Project Title 13
An overview of the case study you have been given 13
An explanation of each stage of the PLC that applies to your
selected project, including supporting documentation for each
stage (e.g., business case, the project plan, cost-benefit analysis
and work breakdown structure):
 Project initiation 13
 Project planning 13
 Project execution 14
 Project closure 14
Analysis of the project methodologies and tools used 14
Review and critically evaluate the effectiveness of the PLC in
application to your project using the appropriate theories models
and concepts 15
References 16
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Project Title
The objective of this project aims to provide for an on-site catering services at
the assigned place and in the allotted hours. further to develop a healthy lifestyle and
reduction in employee absenteeism.
An overview of the case study you have been given
The case study aims at an organization consisting of 1250 employees as a mid-sized
organization. The objective of the organization is to reduce the congestion that takes
place due to continuous movement of the company staff during the lunch hours in
the premises. As it impacts the organizations image due to the continuous
disturbances and congestion's and affects the working efficiency and the working
environment of the organization. The case study also deals with maintaining a
healthy lifestyle for its staff members and employees as it is the Corporate social
responsibility of the organization and will also assist the company in reducing the
absenteeism of employees in the organization (Wilson, Bhakoo and Samson, 2018).
The company need to formulate upon a project structure to deal with this issue and
to improve the working environment in the organization. It also needs to bring upon
some strategies and a suitable plan of action to help th employees in imploring their
lifestyle and working efficiency.
An explanation of each stage of the PLC that applies to
your selected project, including supporting documentation
for each stage (e.g., business case, the project plan, cost-
benefit analysis and work breakdown structure):
 Project initiation
Project initiation is the first measure in the entire set of starting with planning a
project. It generally defines the entire project that the company plans for. In this
phase of project initiation, the primary focus is to ascertain why the business choose
to do the particular project and what value would be ascertained by doing that
Project. The use of this information is taken when the business aims to provide and
utilize this info to secure buy-in from shareholders. The project initiation always takes
place at a higher level to demonstrate its business value. For the organization in the
case study, the project is initiated to provide for an on-site catering facility to the
employees to reduce congestion and also to plan a strategy to help employees to
improve their lifestyle (Muñoz-Villamizar, Solano-Charris and Romero-Silva, 2021).
 Project planning
Project planning involves the creation of detailed goals and targets of a project to
create a road map to be followed in future. It is the measure where the organization
defines this step and divide it into two further steps as setting for the company
specific and measurable objectives, what it will deliver and the project road map. It
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contains a set of defined set of time frames with defined stages and selected
resources. Planning pertains to accumulation of resources, fixing the budgets and
analyze the risk related with the project. The project planning for the organization in
the case study starts with setting up a budget for the project. Then to decided on the
planning process how the plans will be taken into action with the company
employees ensuring maximum contribution from their side (Yueand et.al., 2020).
 Project execution
This step of project execution involves the launch of the project utilizing thee
information that the company secured from the first step of project planning. In this
step, the project is ready to be executed as everything that the team or the company
planned upon has been converted into real existence and has been put into action.
The company and its project team tries its best to set off higher level success for the
project executed. It is done by utilising all the necessary business resorces, risk
factors while eliminating any factor which is unnecessary in the success of the
project (Ivankevich and et.al., 2019). The execution of the project in the organization
needs to take place in an effective and feasible manner. The way the plan is
executed, strongly affects whether the plan will be successful or not. Hence the
organization should consider upon every suitable planning tools, techniques,
procedures to make sure that the execution of the canteen facilities and the lifestyle
balancing and improvement ideas are executed in the best way possible.
 Project closure
This step of project closure involves debriefing with the shareholders of the
company. it involves the actual and final result of the project that was initiated as the
project life comes to an end. The final result is faced by the owner of the business
whether it is beneficial or in loss. After getting the results in the project closure, the
clients check upon the project deliverables with the desirable outcome and give upon
their decisions (Hussain and et.al., 2022). This step will be the most important for
the organization in the case study as it will decide upon whether the project and the
plannings benefited the organization to reach its aimed targets and achieve the
objectives decided. The project will be termed as successful for the organization only
when the absenteeism of employees has reduced and the congestion taking place
due to the continuous movement of employees has been stopped with the help of
project plannings. All the project targets must be closed in an effective manner and
employees must be satisfied with the final results.
Analysis of the project methodologies and tools used
Project Methodologies: A project management methodology constitutes a set of
principles and activities that provide for a set of plans which assist the organization in
organizing the projects to ensure an effective and optimum performance.
The project methodologies utilized while planning, initiating and executing this
project are:
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 Waterfall methodology: It is the traditional approach to project management
as a concept. In water methodology, the tasks and phases are divided and
completed in a linear and sequential manner and ensures that the previous
step of project is finished before the next step of the project begins. In
waterfall method of project management, the room of error is very high as
everything in the project is already planned. So, in case the expectations do
not match with the results the project can not be then termed as effective as it
was expected to be. It is hard for this traditional methodology to adapt with the
changes that occur as and when the project progresses (Kiani and et.al.,
2019).
 Agile methodology: this methodology involves short spans of work which is
constantly dealt with frequent testings, reassessments and suitable
adaptations necessary in the project. The key principle of this methodology is
it is very collaborative and quick as compared to other methods of project
managements and it is also very open to the data driven changes that are
needed in the project accordingly.
These are the two project methodologies that the organization mentioned above in
the case study uses to aim for effective adaptation and success of the project and to
ensure that the project is initiated, executed and closed in the best way possible with
positive results (Alexander and et.al., 2022).
Project Tools: The project tools used by the organization for effective initiations and
completion of the project are tools such as network diagrams, project evaluation and
review techniques and project documentation tools. These tools help the
organization to keep an effective check on the project and its developments which
take place with time. These also assist the administration and the project managers
of the organization to apply the suitable review and rectify with the necessary
changes as an when they are needed in the project. The network diagrams is used
to connect the different steps which are required in the completion of the project. It
also shows the inter dependencies in the different steps of the project. The project
evaluation and review techniques assist the project managers to review for all such
areas where the project is not going as planned and apply the necessary rectification
policies and steps (Loginov and Nosov, 2021).
Review and critically evaluate the effectiveness of the PLC
in application to your project using the appropriate
theories models and concepts
The project life cycle refers to the sequence of the steps which are necessary for the
progress and completion of a project. It is basically the arrangement of all the steps
required by a project manager to successfully start and finish a project. The
sequence for the project life cycle is of initiation, planning, execution and closure. For
the case study given above, Project life cycle played an essential role to plan,
initiate, execute and review the project of establishment of on site catering services,
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maintenance of a healthy lifestyle in the employees and reduce staff of the
organization. The project life cycle helped the organization to analyze, evaluate and
review any problems or deviations from the planned project and work on those areas
to improve the final result of the project as desired. The project methodologies used
by the organization of Waterfall and agile methodology. The waterfall methodology is
the one which helps the organization to plan and divide the project into small phases
to complete the tasks in the project suitably. It also applies many frequent testings,
reassessments through the agile methodology to check upon whether the project is
going in the desired way or not (Montes, and et.al., 2019).
References
Wilson, K.B., Bhakoo, V. and Samson, D., 2018. Crowdsourcing: A contemporary
form of project management with linkages to open innovation and novel
operations. International Journal of Operations & Production Management.
Muñoz-Villamizar, A., Solano-Charris, E.L. and Romero-Silva, R., 2021. Mapping
operations research in project management: a bibliometric
analysis. International Journal of Logistics Systems and Management, 39(1),
pp.52-76.
Yue, S.H.I., and et.al., 2020. Research on Integration of Military Facilities
Construction Project Management Force. Operations Research and
Management Science, 29(10), p.221.
Ivankevich, A., and et.al., 2019, September. A proactive strategy of ship
maintenance operations. In 2019 ieee 14th international conference on
computer sciences and information technologies (csit) (Vol. 3, pp. 126-129).
IEEE.
Kiani, M.,and et.al., 2019. Risk assessment of blasting operations in open pit mines
using fahp method. Mining of Mineral Deposits, 13(3), pp.76-86.
Loginov, D.A. and Nosov, A.L., 2021, November. Implementation of Project
Management in Russian Agriculture. In International Scientific and Practical
Conference Operations and Project management: strategies and trends (pp.
28-35). Springer, Cham.
Montes, J.M., and et.al., 2019, October. Smart Contracts for supply chain applicable
to Smart Cities daily operations. In 2019 IEEE International Smart Cities
Conference (ISC2) (pp. 565-570). IEEE.
Alexander, A.,and et.al., 2022. Managing the “new normal”: the future of operations
and supply chain management in unprecedented times. International Journal
of Operations & Production Management, (ahead-of-print).
Hussain, A., and et.al., 2022. Developing resilience in disaster relief operations
management through lean transformation. Production Planning & Control,
pp.1-22.
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