Analysis of Operations Management Practices at Caterham Cars

This report provides an analysis of operations and service management practices at Caterham Cars, focusing on the impact of these practices on the company's efficiency. It highlights the use of automated stock control and evaluates its influence on effectiveness and efficiency. The report also explores how technology, specifically automated identification and data capture (AIDC), can be integrated to further improve operations. Furthermore, it examines various supporting functions, such as operational planning, finance, product design, and quality control, and their connection to operation management practices, assessing how these functions contribute to the overall success of the company. The analysis aims to provide insights into how Caterham Cars can optimize its operations management to achieve sustainable competitive advantage, motivate employees, and enhance customer satisfaction.

Operations and Service
Management

Contents
Contents...........................................................................................................................................2
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................1

INTRODUCTION
Operations and service management is responsible for the functions of the company for
providing services directly to the customers. For the production the decisions are taken by the
operations manager as well as consumption of an intangible product. Operations management
refers to a business function which is responsible for handling the creation of goods and services.
It benefits the mangers of the company in motivating employees, getting sustainable advantage
in the market, customer satisfaction and also provide high revenue. For better understanding of
the given topic Caterham Cars is the company taken into consideration. It is an automobiles
manufacturer of lightweight sports cars which was established in Caterham, Surrey in 1973 with
its headquarters located in Crawley, Sussex England.
The report highlights operation management practice as well as its impact on the
efficiency of organisation. Evaluation of the technology used in the process or already being
achieved in the company. Various supporting function which are connected to operation
management practice and also evaluation of their achieving it with the firms success.
MAIN BODY
1. Operation management practices taken in the company
Operation management practice refers to the management of business practices in order
to create the maximum level of efficiency in the enterprise (Barnes, 2018). With the purpose to
increase the profit in the company operation management of Caterham Cars is concerned with
converting labours and materials into good as well as services efficiently. The operation
management practice used by the managers of Caterham Cars is automated stock control. It is
the way use for the modern retailers in tracking, organising stock, suppliers and sales while
working in the company.
One of the biggest benefits of automated stock control is that it makes better and high
accuracy in the organisation (Bordoloi, Fitzsimmons and Fitzsimmons, 2018). The management
practices is helpful for the managers of Caterham Cars in making improvised decisions in order
to make healthy decisions which satisfy the needs of everyone in the firm. It also improves the
efficiency of the staffs to work which helps in achieving the organisational goals. The managers
of Caterham Cars saves their time by using the automation which includes the online inventory
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updation process of selling as well as delivering with the help of automated inventory
management system.
The sales figures are easily understandable as this practice is fed rules as well as
programs that automatically gain these estimations from purchases and sales (Brown, Bessant
and Jia, 2018). It also helps in reducing human error as the software for the task eliminate efforts
put in by the humans and also decrease the time, energy, power and money spend. They also get
the live updates as the retailer gets the latest information of inventory and also plans accordingly
to get new goods. The automated stock control also helps the managers of Caterham Cars in
tracking the exact performance of the people working in the organisation. It is the modern
approach which is used by the people with the purpose to manage inventory with supply chain.
2. Critical analysation of how the operation management practice influence
the company in context to efficiency
The operation management practice influence the enterprise as it ensure the effectiveness
and efficiencies while working in order to achieve organisational goals (Daradkeh and Moh'd Al-
Dwairi, 2018). The managers of Caterham Cars use the automated stock control for tracking the
people while working in the firm. The software used in the firm permit a person to react quickly
according to the needs and demands of customers and also makes sure the control over stocks
which is not to much or too less. It is an ongoing challenge for most of the firms as the strategic
inventory management makes organisation more effective as well as efficient.
The software used by the company not only helps to track the stock levels, sales, orders
and deliveries but also enhance communication within the business, streamline day to day
processes and also improves customer service (Docter and Fuchs, 2020). The operation
management practice impacts the managers of Caterham Cars in positive way as it increases the
efficiency of the people while working in the company. Good inventory management is when the
consumers ask for any particular product availability which is identified by the manufacturer.
This makes the customers give better feedback and impression for the company and creates less
chance of customers to switch to another competitor. The automated stock control contributes
greatly to Caterham Cars by leading to increased system accuracy, early problem detection,
turning of real time tracking and also increases efficiency. The operation management is
connected with the conversion of material and labours into goods and services in an efficient
manner with the purpose to increase the profit of the company.
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A business organisation having good accuracy, revenue and inventory management leads
to increase in bottom line return of investment (Jaswal, 2019). Furthermore, it free up the flow of
cash to order to invest in the greatest and largest emerging tech in the organisation. It helps in
processing the order deliveries of the customers providing them with quality service in order to
satisfy their needs. The managers of Caterham Cars get benefited in achieving sustainable
competitive advantage as they use better technology in the company. The employees get
motivated to work hard for achieving the future goals as they are able to attain individual goals
also, which makes them learn new things, grow themselves and get advantage from the firm.
They get maximum level of efficiency which results in profit of the company while working.
3. Evaluation of how technology can be inbuilt in the process of operation
management
The technology that can be embedded by the managers of Caterham Cars is the
automated identification and data capture technology. It refers to a vast category of technologies
which can be used for collecting details from a person, image, object or sound by not using any
data entry manually. Automated identification and data capture technology are used in managing
the orders, assets, security and also documents. The current AIDC technology involves barcodes,
smart cards, optical, character recognition, radio frequency identification as well as biometrics.
The managers of Caterham Cars will get benefited in putting less human efforts which also
saves times of the people working in the company.
The productivity will be improved as the technology used helps the mangers in working
hard for achieving the organisational goals (Lee, 2018). The managers can also built in by apply
it in all the branches of the company and taking a proper meeting with the employees to tell them
about the same. They can provide the people working with trainings with the purpose to make
them understand the reason to embedded the technology. It will give them high profit with less
cost incurred and also it will save the efforts put in by humans which will motivate everyone in
the organisation. And people will work effectively in order to achieve the set target, individual
and organisational goals both can be attained by using the technology in effective way.
It aids in identifying the objects and tracking the moving objects in the firm, hence it is
useful for most of the industries (Lee and Tang, 2018). The automated identification and data
capture technology is group together various different technologies which is used to
automatically identify item, ability to enter that data electronically in computer systems and
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collect data about them. It obtain the external data, specifically through analysation of sounds,
images or videos. Some different automatic identification methods includes data encoder,
machine reader or scanner as well as data decoder. The managers can also use the saved time in
expanding the business so that they can earn more profits and also dependency on manual labour
can be reduced. With the accurate processing of paperwork, automation of documents, most of
the industries, banking and insurance uses.
By using the AIDC technology, the identification if people has more accurate as well as
efficient. They will also get to know about the latest technology which is used by most of the
organisations. And the workforce in the firm will also get motivated towards the work which
gives high productivity of the people for the company and they can achieve the goals with the
given time period. The employees will also get a surrounding where they can learn new things,
discuss with each other and execute it with mutual understanding of everyone (Tönnissen and
Teuteberg, 2020). This technology will be beneficial for the people of the company as they can
achieve their set goals in very less time period with less efforts put in and more usage of the
technology which is embedded in the company.
4. Various supporting functions which are connected to the operation
management practice as well as evaluation of how they can attain it with
the success of the company.
Supporting functions are the functions which provides with support and indirect
contribution to the main objective, including human resource, training and development, salaries,
IT, auditing, marketing, legal and many more. These are the factors which helps the people in the
organisation in order to achieve the set goals (Lewis, 2019). The role of supporting functions in
context to business is that it helps in creating a surrounding of accountability which provides
supports to the integrity of professional judgement. And it also sustain the confidence of public
by that judgement in the business organisation. The employees are also benefited through these
functions as it supports them in relaxing themselves while working so that they can work
effectively an efficiently in the firm. There are several supporting functions which are interlinked
with the operation management practice are as follow:
Operational planning: This is the foundational function in the operation management, it
role of operational planning in Caterham Cars are monitoring daily production of cars,
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controlling the manufacturing, keep a check on team member performance and their well being
and also production planning. The automated stock control is linked through operational
planning as the managers of Caterham Cars keep check on the process of manufacturing, daily
work of the employees and also their needs as well as demands from the company. This helps
them to achieve the success of the company which fulfil needs and demands of the managers
while working.
Finance: It is an important function of operation management as all the firms reduces the
cost and increases the profit. The finance function plays essential role in Caterham Cars as they
identify various opportunities for investment, manage the resources and also allocate the budgets
in the company. Finance function is connected with automate stock control as it helps in creating
the budgets with the purpose to meet production goals, grab the opportunities for investment,
manage the resources and also do budget allocations which leads in attainment of organisational
success.
Product design: These are the people who work for the organisation in their creativity,
whereas the operations team collect all the information related to the company from the
marketplace. The mangers of Caterham Cars use product design by using the latest trend going
on in the market which is identified by the team and executed for achieving the organisational
success. Product design is interlinked with the operational practice taken that is automated stock
control as they consolidate the market research into successful results, offer a direction for the
design in order to help the designer in making product and also discuss the design with the
product design team fro the success of the enterprise.
Quality control: It goes with product design, once the product is prepared, the operations
team ensures the quality of the product that meets the quality standards or not (Liu, 2019). The
managers of Caterham Cars keep proper control over the quality of the cars as it is very
important to maintain the quality because it directly affects the sales of the company. The quality
control is linked through the practices used by the organisation that is automated stock control
conflicts is managed which creates negativity in the company, in order to find the potential
problem risk analysis is performed, organise test for checking product quality and also inspect
the products to ensure quality standards of the products..
Forecasting: This term is used to analyse the current need or demand for the product in
the market (Netessine, S. 2021). The managers of Caterham Cars can easily use this forecasting
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in the company by questioning themselves that what can be the demand of particular product in
near future, what promotional and marketing techniques can be used and what can be the sales
initiatives for the product. Forecasting function is interlinked with the automate stock control as
the skill of data driven decision making which helps them in predicting the future and allow to
take risk for the business. When the predictions of the managers of Caterham Cars gives positive
results then it leads to success of the organisation.
Strategy: It is a broad function of management of operations that includes the operation
planning, monitoring as well as analysis (Santos and Frederico, 2018). The managers of
Caterham Cars ensures the production decisions align within business goals in order to achieve
with the given time period. The strategy function is associated with automate stock control as it
prioritize the satisfaction of the customers, control cost while maintaining competitive edge and
also improve the production system. Critical thinking is the skill required for making good
strategies in the business which helps in achieving the organisational success of the company.
Supply chain management: When a company produces any products or services, they
need supply chain management fro producing, sourcing and also delivering if required (Su,
2022). The managers of Caterham Cars have a separate department for the same as only those
people are responsible for the whole process in the firm. Automate stock control is linked with
supply chain management as it is an ongoing process which involves raw material, supplier,
manufacturer, distributer, retailer and also consumer.
CONCLUSION
From the above report it is concluded that operations and service management in an
organisation is very important as it helps the managers in increasing productivity of the
employees as well as organisation. Operations management practice helps business to increase
their efficiency and effectiveness in the company. Operation management practice impacts the
companies in positive way as it benefits them in increasing their level of efficiency by achieving
the set goals with maximum profit. The supporting functions which are interlinked with the
operation management practice involves operational planning, finance, product design, quality
control, forecasting, strategy and supply chain management. The technology used by most of the
companies is automated identification and data capture technology as it increases the accuracy,
less human efforts are put, cost saving, tracks performance and many more.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals:
Barnes, D., 2018. Operations management: an international perspective. Bloomsbury
Publishing.
Bordoloi, S., Fitzsimmons, J. A. and Fitzsimmons, M. J., 2018. Service management: operations,
strategy, information technology. ed. New York: McGraw-Hill Education.
Brown, S., Bessant, J. and Jia, F., 2018. Strategic operations management. Routledge.
Daradkeh, M. and Moh'd Al-Dwairi, R., 2018. Self-service business intelligence adoption in
business enterprises: The effects of information quality, system quality, and analysis
quality. In Operations and Service Management: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and
Applications (pp. 1096-1118). IGI Global.
Docter, Q. and Fuchs, C., 2020. Management and technical operations.
Jaswal, R., 2019. Managing Food & Beverage Outlet (Bar Operations and Beverage Control)
Supervisory Skills.
Lee, C. K. H., 2018. A review of applications of genetic algorithms in operations
management. Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence. 76. pp.1-12.
Lee, H. L. and Tang, C. S., 2018. Socially and environmentally responsible value chain
innovations: New operations management research opportunities. Management
Science. 64(3). pp.983-996.
Lewis, M. A., 2019. Operations management: A research overview.
Liu, J., 2019. Data-driven operations management in bike sharing systems (Doctoral
dissertation, Rutgers University-Graduate School-Newark).
Netessine, S., 2021. A vision of responsible research in operations management. Manufacturing
& Service Operations Management.
Santos, E. O. D. and Frederico, G. F., 2018. Evaluating knowledge management maturity: a case
study of a service operations company. International Journal of Business
Excellence. 16(1). pp.1-18.
Su, Q., 2022. Healthcare Operations Management: A Holistic Care Chain Perspective. Springer
Nature.
Tönnissen, S. and Teuteberg, F., 2020. Analysing the impact of blockchain-technology for
operations and supply chain management: An explanatory model drawn from multiple
case studies. International Journal of Information Management. 52. p.101953.
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