Business Operations Management: A Case Study of Marks and Spencer

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BUSINESS OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT
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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Discussion........................................................................................................................................4
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................12
Bibliography..................................................................................................................................13
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Introduction
Operation management is responsible for the administration of the practices that are beneficial
for business. The working efficiency of an organisation can be enhanced to the highest level by
managing the operations of an organisation. The operation management department of an
organisation manages the profit of the company by using different inventories. The operation
management plan is developed for Marks and Spencer’s in this study.
Marks and Spencer’ is a popular multinational retail company based on Britain. The company
was established in 1884. Marks and Spencer’s was headquartered at Westminster in London. The
company has 979 retail stores in the UK. The product line of this company includes clothing,
grocery, home, and kitchen appliances and others (marksandspencer.com, 2019).
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Discussion
Layout planning
The layout planning is a tool for planning the arrangements in a company. This allows the
company to identify the high-frequency areas and develop logical relationships with these areas.
The layout planning has helped Marks and Spencer’s, to lower the operational costs. There are
four levels in the layout planning process, which includes site layout, Block layout, Workstation
layout, and detailed layout. Layout planning is formulated for Marks and Spencer’s.
Marks and Spencer’s should use Block and Detailed layout. The company is a retail company
and sources various products that are different from each other. The company needs to customise
the products in a way that it can be easily found out by the customers. The company will need to
develop the sizes of the department in its stores by using block layout planning method. The
equipment should be arranged in the departments so that they will need to use the detailed layout
planning.
The design layout plan
Store designs: The firm should develop strategic floor plans that will be beneficial for enriching
the shopping experience of customers and reducing customer irritations. The organisation will be
able to assure that the store is addressing the demands of the target customer segments. The floor
planning process helps the retail sector to understand and determine the space requirement for
each department of the stores. Marks and Spencer’s will be able to reduce the confusion by
developing the strategic floor plan.
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Figure 1: Strategic floor plan
(Source: Wardah and Khalil, 2016)
Plan
 The operation management team of this company should draw up an architectural floor
plan for the stores of a company
 The architectural floor plan should include notes regarding the size of the spaces that are
allocated for different departments
 The leader of the management team should gauge the plans and make a decision on the
plan, which is appropriate
 The flow of the stores should be gauged and the front area of the stores should include
promotional offers to attract the customers
 The operation management team should prepare strategies for increasing the sales in
those departments, which foresees fewer amounts of customers
 The floor plan should be re-evaluated in the time frame of one year that will be beneficial
for increasing the selling potential of the stores
 The management team of the company should analyse the business environment of a
geographical location while opening new stores
 The exterior design should be the same for every store of the company so that the
customers can experience similar experience while shopping from different stores of this
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company
 The transition zone should be avoided while opening new stores]
 The company should fix the budget of 10 million pounds for this plan
Process layout
The process layout will help the company tackle different routes and address the requirements of
the customers (Anderson and Bolton, 2018). This will increase the working efficiency of the
employees, as they will get to perform various similar tasks. The group technology is a layout is
an important type of process layout.
Plan
 An analysis should be conducted before grouping the working departments of stores
 The Muther’s grid process should be used while deciding the departmental locations of a
store (Martel and Klibi, 2016)
 The own labelled goods of this company should be grouped properly
 The machines that are beneficial for producing the family of similar products should be
grouped together
 All the similar functional departments of the stores should be located in a common area
that will be beneficial for increasing the efficiency of the employees
 The company should fix 3 million pounds for the process layout process and the
timeframe should be 6 month
Figure 2: Process layout plan
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(Source: created by the learner)
Work system Design plan
The work system design will help the company to manage the activities and performances of the
employees. The worker salary, job design, and other factors will be developed with the help of
this process. The employees are the backbones of Marks and Spencer so that the company needs
to achieve the satisfaction of the employees. The employees add value to an organisation, which
helps the organisation to accomplish its goals. The work system design is beneficial for
managing the growth of the employee.
Plan
 The human resource management department of this organisation should provide the
employees with the job description, which will help the employees to understand the
duties that they need to perform
 The skill variety of the employees needs to be checked before giving a particular
responsibility to the employees
 The employees should provide training for developing the customer service process
 The salary of the workers should be provided on time
 The management department of the company should benefit their employees with some
rewards and incentives, which will help to maximise the performance level of employees
(Berdicchia et al., 2016)
 The standard time of working should be set by following the working time regulations act
 The performances of the employees need to be monitored to avoid any unpleasant
situation in the workplace and manage the service quality
 The budget of 1 million pounds should be fixed for the rewards and incentives
 The performance of the employees should be monitored daily and the learning curve
should be created
Inventory control policies
The retail organisation uses the just in time and total quality management inventories to manage
their products. Marks and Spencer’s should use the Just in time inventory for reducing the
wastages. Just in time inventory allows storing the number of raw materials that are required for
one-time production only, which lowers the extra monetary deduction by reducing wastages. The
quality management process is beneficial for managing the product qualities of the company.
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This reduces the chances of a product recall. The plan is formulated here to guide the operation
m management team. The operation management team of Marks and Spencer’s need to fix a
budget of 100 million pounds to control the inventory costs. The inventory control is classified
into two categories, which includes the protecting inventory and the product inventory. Most of
the product in this organisation is sourced from different companies so that Marks and Spencer’s
should focus mainly on the protecting inventory.
Plan
 The operation management team should develop a healthy bonding with the suppliers so
that they can be able to avail an uninterrupted supply of goods
 The best seller product of the company should be identified correctly and discriminated
from the other products that move slow
 The inventory management should be readjusted periodically
 The priorities should be set after analysing the sales of the products that will help to
identify the bestseller products and generate more revenues by sourcing more such
products
 The operation management team of this company should keep a manual track of total
sales by using spreadsheets
 The quick order processing system contributes to the management of the inventories
 The inventory audit and budget should be prepared after analysing the sales and financial
data
 The turnover ratio of inventory should be higher so that will increase the sales volume
 The three ways match should be performed properly, which will help to keep track of the
invoices and the number of received goods
 The inventory should be counted physically so that the management team will be able to
know how much inventory the company still have
 The operation management team should also prepare a paper count of the inventories that
will be represented to the top management of the company
The objectives of inventory management are to provide the customers with the developed quality
of services and products. The company will be able to provide customers with high-quality
products and services in a cost-efficient manner. Another objective of inventory management is
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to lower inventory costs. The scientific control of the inventories helps to reduce the clinical
shortage. The just in time inventory is beneficial for reducing the order costs as it allows the firm
to place an order for only those products that are required at this time. The financial resource
blockage can be avoided by the inventory control method (Tsingou, 2015). The Total quality
management process is beneficial for supplying customers with fresh products. The economic
order quantity model is used in the inventory control process to calculate the total quantity of
orders that are required.
The operation management team of this company should use the EOQ for calculating the number
of remaining units that need to be added to the batch of order. This will help to reduce the costs
of a company (Aguswahyudi et al., 2018). The company can reduce wastages by ordering fewer
products. The setup and holding costs will also be minimised with the help of this inventory
management. The operation management team of Marks and Spencer’s will be able to adjust the
optimal order quantity in this method. Generally, the optimal order quantity is not used by the
organisations as it allows sourcing limited quantity of products. The organisations cannot be able
to address the sudden demand increase so that this method is used less by the organisation.
Single period model
The single period model is a unique inventory model, which is used by the organisations that
order one-time goods. The quantitative analysis conducted in the inventory model to determine
the optimal order quantity of the products. The highly perishable products are managed with the
help of the single period model. The demands of the products changes accordingly and the
products have a lower salvage value. The company sells these products during a single period at
regular prices. This allows the company to balance the gross profits. The buffer stock inventory
should be used by Marks and Spencer’s too moderate the challenging situations such as a
shortfall in goods. The difference between the maximum lead-time and the average lead-time is
required for determining the safety stock. The operation management team of the company
should calculate the safety stocks for lowering the risks.
Operation scheduling
Operation scheduling is basically the process of arranging, optimising the works that are
beneficial for increasing the productivity of the company. The company will be able to reduce
the store employee costs by using the operation scheduling method (Zamani et al., 2016) . The
proper budgeting and scheduling process help to acquire the desired quality of customer service.
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The operation management team of this organisation will be able to identify the areas of
improvement based on the operation scheduling process. Retail companies use this method for
controlling employee costs. This process also supports the employee retention process so that
employee satisfaction can be achieved.
In recent times, most of the retailers in UK are converting the workforce management systems
to activity-based budgeting and scheduling. The working hours of the employees can be balanced
with the help of this operating scheduling method. The operation management team of the
company has efficiently distributed the workload to the employees, which has been beneficial for
enhancing the performance level of the employees.
The high volume process is used in retail to manage the high volume products. The operation
management team of the retail company should use the high volume operation for managing
discrete products such as food items and appliances. The low volume operation is also important
for the management of high-quality products (Gurvich et al., 2019).
The job should be sequenced in order to maintain the operation management procedure. The
steps of sequencing jobs include operation sequencing, priority rule, queue, local and global
priority rules. The operation sequencing allows identifying the jobs that are required to be
performed based on the priorities and capacity. The priority decision is made based on global,
local priorities. Johnson’s rule is beneficial for processing job sequencing in service
organisations. According to Johnson’s rule, the jobs should be listed and the processing time
should be developed for managing the operations of an organisation (Companys and Ribas,
2018).
Job scheduling based on Johnson rule
Job Processing time 1 Processing time 2
1 3 9
2 5 7
3 8 2
Table 1: Job scheduling based on Johnson rule
(Source: created by the learner)
This table contains the data of the time that are required for performing a job by using two
different methods. The operation management team will be able to identify the short processing
time and use the method for reducing the cost of the project. The bottleneck is beneficial for
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determining the throughput of the supply chain. The operation management team of Marks and
Spencer’s should schedule the bottleneck of the company so that they can be able to increase the
cash flows of the company (Braune and Zäpfel, 2016). This process can also lower the
processing time, as the bottlenecks require a long time for performing supply chain operations.
The theory of constraint is considered as the methodology for identifying the important
constraints in order to achieve the goals of an organisation by developing the systematic process
of management (Diez and Rudolph, 2018). Workforce scheduling is beneficial for designing an
important solution for managing the hourly paid workers of a company across the stores of
different locations.
Workforce scheduling
Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Cost per hour
Employees
required
3 7 2 £5
Table 2: Workforce scheduling
(Source: created by the learner)
The operation management team of Marks and Spencer’s should fix the budget of 100 million
pounds before scheduling the operations. The operation and job should be scheduled every
month so that they can be able to improve the efficiency of the employees. The performances of
the employees should be measured. This table shows that three, seven and two employees are
required for day 1, 2 and 3. The cost per hour of working is 5 pound. In this way, the
organisation should schedule the workforce based on the demands.
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Conclusion
This can be concluded that the operation management is beneficial for managing the sales of a
retail organisation. Different theories and models are used for guiding the operation management
team of the company. The store layout plan and other process plans are provided for the
organisation so that they can be able to improve their store outlook. The important jobs that are
required to be performed are developed in this study followed by the discussion on the
bottleneck. The job sequencing and workforce planning method are provided for guiding the
operation management team. This study highlights the importance of inventory control in
operation management.
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