MBA503 Operational Strategy Report: Downer EDI's Success

This report analyzes Downer EDI's operational strategies, supply chain, and logistics systems, focusing on how these elements contribute to the company's business outcomes. The report examines Downer EDI's supply chain management, including supplier selection, employee development, continuous improvement, leveraging new technologies, and return management. It also explores the economic, social, and environmental impacts of Downer EDI's operations, considering the triple bottom line and the importance of sustainability. The report further discusses key operational and management approaches, such as globalization, sustainability, effective communication, and ethical conduct. The analysis is based on the Australasian Reporting Awards and aims to demonstrate how Downer EDI's strategic decisions and operational practices support its overall performance and sustainability goals. The paper identifies the crucial factors such as ethical, global or social in relation with sustainability as well as organizational performance. The paper also identifies the key management or operational matter which are required by Downer EDI.

Running head: OPERATION MANAGEMENT
Operation Management
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Supply Chain...................................................................................................................................2
Economic, Social and Environmental impacts................................................................................4
Operational or Management Approaches........................................................................................5
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................7
References........................................................................................................................................8

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Introduction
Downer EDI is the integrated service organization, which is active in New Zealand and
Australia. This company provides infrastructure management and engineering services to the
private and public road, rail, mining, telecommunication and the other resources industry in Asia
Pacific, New Zealand and Australia. This company provides the services of drilling and rolling
stock for mine planning and management industry and exploration industry including the
highway maintenance (O'Brien 2018). Downer EDI employees more than 53 thousand staffs and
also has the operation in Asia, India, South America, Africa, Australia and the UK and the
headquarter of this company is in New South Wales. The purpose of this company is to sustain
and create the advance environment by building the trusted relationship with the customers. The
global operation of Downer are divided into five divisions such as:
 Utilities Services
 Transport Services
 Construction, Engineering & Maintenance
 Facilities
 Mining
Supply Chain
There are multiple processes of the logistics system or the supply chain management by
which the company Downer EDI has built the effective supply chain management system, which
supports the sustainability and the operational process of the company.
Find Reliable Suppliers

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While selecting the suppliers, there will be multiple factors such as cost and the trust of
the suppliers, which is most important. This has allowed the organization in fulfilling the
responsibility to deliver the best quality of service product to the customer (Marshall et al. 2015).
The company has done a thorough research for identifying those, who have the strong reputation
to maintain the high quality and standard, practice in the ethical way and better customer care.
Investment in Development of Employee
The workers of Downer EDI has assured for operating the supply chain management in
an efficient way. Every day, there were multiple obstacles, which the workers have solved
effectively such as perishable or fragile products and high price (Fritz, Schöggl and Baumgartner
2017). The strategies of staff development involve the formal training, mentoring, and rotation
through various assignments, coaching and so on, which helped the workers to understand the
work process and work in a better way.
Continuous Improvement
The company has the stable supply chain and logistic system. Continuous monitoring for
the ways for innovating and improving have helped the organization to accruing the significant
cost benefits, delivers great quality of customer service and improve the market speed.
Leverage New Technologies
Technology has played a huge role to strengthen the supply chain and logistic system of
Downer EDI. They have implemented a worthy Warehouse Management System, which helped
the company to streamline their supply chain and logistic system very effectively and
successfully (Büyüközkan and Göçer 2018). WMS has made it easy for the company to track and
evaluate the effectiveness of the supply chain. This has strengthen the data collection method and

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has provided the valuable insights by data analytics. The company has also considered to invest
in the transport management tool. The use of the computerized tracking and shipping system
have helped the company in integrating the operations from a single panel.
Improve Return Management
They have the solid supply chain management strategy, which has the effective return
management system (Govindan, Jha and Garg 2016). This has provided the company the return
the attention as the shipping is out of stock. The potential return management has enabled the
company for re-manufacturing or re-processing for improving the service efficiently and quickly.
Economic, Social and Environmental impacts
There is a concept of the sustainable operation management, which is defined as
integrating the efficiency and profit orientation of the traditional operation management with the
huge consideration of the internal and external stakeholders of Downer EDI including the
environmental impact. Multiple ways are there for measuring the performance and sustainability
of the company (Baumgartner and Rauter 2017). The common division has been divided into
financial and non-financial performance. The company performance must have the broad scope,
which includes the triple bottom line, which will focus on the multiple aspects of the company.
The performance of the company Downer EDI refers to the aspects of environmental
performance, economic performance and social performance.
In the context of these developments, the company’s perspective on the operation
management has expanded to the environmental and social aspects in the recent trends from the
economic aspects (Carayannis, Sindakis and Walter 2015). The company Downer EDI is not
only aiming for improving the operations in terms of the cost, quality, delivery and flexibility but

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also trying to be more competitive in the context of social and environmental issues. For the
company operating in the competitive global environment, studying about the sustainability
issues are very important and must be prioritized in the process of decision making by the
management of Downer EDI.
A positive relationship is there between the better performance of the company and the
sustainable practices. The improved social and environmental practices of the company can help
in gaining the competitive advantages as well as improving the performance (Longoni, Golini
and Cagliano 2014). A positive association can be facilitated through the transfer of the
technology and the environmental management of the total quality of Downer EDI. Innovation in
the organization can help the company to increase and improve the market share and to reduce
the cost and this results in the greater financial gain for the company. There can also be the
negative relationship or association between the performance of the company and the sustainable
initiatives (Montabon, Pagell and Wu 2016). The sustainable initiates mainly increases the cost
of the operation and increase the price of the service or products. In this way, the negative
relationship can impact on the market share and financial performance of the company. Despite
of this facts, the company will be able to contribute to the economy of the world significantly
and this is very important to conduct the indepth investigations into the strong relationship
between the industry and performance of the company.
Operational or Management Approaches
Multiple factors are there, which the organization can face such as:
Globalization

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Globalization is the process of integration and interaction among the companies,
governments among multiple nations and people, which can be driven by reduction of the
barriers of the trade and advancement of the transportation and the information technology
(Gerasimov and Gerasimov 2015). The operation management of the company can face the
competition from their competitors from their country or the other country. Because of this, it is
very essential for the operation management of the organization for following the softwares and
the trends, which are available for increasing the production of Downer EDI and for enabling
them for maintaining the competitive advantages.
Sustainability
This is the frequent matter that can arise in the organization. The company should have
the sustainability by using the proper amount of the resources that is needed for having the
sustainable future. Three pillars are there of the sustainable organization, which is included with
the economic, social and the environmental aspects (Longoni and Cagliano 2015). The operation
management team must be aware of the results of these pillars, which will include the production
facility. The effective operation management can help in implementing the practices, which will
address the concerns those are pertaining to the sustainability.
Effective Communication
The effectiveness and the consistency of the communication is very difficult in the
organization. The issues for the operation manager is for being able in communicating with the
external and internal stakeholders effectively. This will allow for the more transparency in the
facility of production that will id the factory floor of Downer EDI hugely. Having all the staffs
on the single page can increase the efficiency in the operation very easily and the operation

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management must look into the software, which can make it very simple for the company.
Effective communication is very important for the manufacturing facilities, which are trying to
improve the operational efficiency.
Ethical Conduct
Ethics in the organization is defined as the business ethics subset, which is meant for
ensuring that the production activities or the functions are not damaging the society or the
people. Understanding the business ethics will help in ensuring that the company will not fall put
in the context of keeping the business safe including the workers and the environment (Meredith
and Shafer 2019). Unethical behavior can contribute to the departure of the organization, which
is very understand to understand and consider.
Conclusion
The paper describes about how Downer EDI has built effective supply chain and logistics
system that supports sustainability as well as operational process of Downer EDI. This paper also
identifies the crucial factors such as ethical, global or social in relation with sustainability as well
as organizational performance. The paper also identifies the key management or operational
matter which are required by Downer EDI. Downer EDI created logistics and supply chain
system for making this cost effective. As the supply chains constantly are changing as well as
evolving, Downer EDI have developed several strategies of logistics for certain product lines or
customers. Supply chain changes constantly which could affect logistics system of Downer EDI.
For adapting flexibility of supply chain, Downer EDI developed as well as implemented formal
strategy of logistic. This would allow Downer EDI for identifying imminent change’s impact as

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well as make functional and organizational changes for ensuring there is no reduction of service
levels.
References
Baumgartner, R.J. and Rauter, R., 2017. Strategic perspectives of corporate sustainability
management to develop a sustainable organization. Journal of Cleaner Production, 140, pp.81-
92.
Büyüközkan, G. and Göçer, F., 2018. Digital Supply Chain: Literature review and a proposed
framework for future research. Computers in Industry, 97, pp.157-177.
Carayannis, E.G., Sindakis, S. and Walter, C., 2015. Business model innovation as lever of
organizational sustainability. The Journal of Technology Transfer, 40(1), pp.85-104.
Fritz, M.M., Schöggl, J.P. and Baumgartner, R.J., 2017. Selected sustainability aspects for
supply chain data exchange: Towards a supply chain-wide sustainability assessment. Journal of
Cleaner Production, 141, pp.587-607.
Gerasimov, B.N. and Gerasimov, K.B., 2015. Modeling the development of organization
management system. Asian Social Science, 11(20), p.82.
Govindan, K., Jha, P.C. and Garg, K., 2016. Product recovery optimization in closed-loop supply
chain to improve sustainability in manufacturing. International Journal of Production
Research, 54(5), pp.1463-1486.
Longoni, A. and Cagliano, R., 2015. Environmental and social sustainability
priorities. International Journal of Operations & Production Management.

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Longoni, A., Golini, R. and Cagliano, R., 2014. The role of new forms of work organization in
developing sustainability strategies in operations. International Journal of Production
Economics, 147, pp.147-160.
Marshall, D., McCarthy, L., Heavey, C. and McGrath, P., 2015. Environmental and social supply
chain management sustainability practices: construct development and measurement. Production
Planning & Control, 26(8), pp.673-690.
Meredith, J.R. and Shafer, S.M., 2019. Operations and supply chain management for MBAs.
Wiley.
Montabon, F., Pagell, M. and Wu, Z., 2016. Making sustainability sustainable. Journal of Supply
Chain Management, 52(2), pp.11-27.
O'Brien, S., 2018. NSW EDI downer workers win. Green Left Weekly, (1189), p.6.