Report on Operation Management Assessment for Marks and Spencer (M&S)

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Marks and Spencer's (M&S) operation management, focusing on internal and external buyers within a broad market context. It defines operation management and its objectives, emphasizing the importance of customer satisfaction. The report explores performance and cost objectives, highlighting the application of the Four V model (Volume, Variety, Variation, Visibility) to achieve efficiency and manage the supply chain effectively. The analysis includes an examination of M&S's customer base, both in-store and online, and identifies key operational objectives such as serving customers, improving e-commerce services, and enhancing inventory management. The report emphasizes the significance of quality, cost-effectiveness, and customer satisfaction in driving successful business performance within the retail environment. Recommendations for improvements and cost-effective strategies are also included.

Operation Management
Assessment

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................2
Internal and External Buyers of M&S with respect to Broad market criteria.............................2
Objectives of operation Management.........................................................................................4
ANALYSIS......................................................................................................................................5
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS............................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
Operation Management (OM) can be defined as one of the main practice of organization
which is aimed at delivering the highest level of efficiency within an organization. This area of
Management basically deals with the designing and controlling of the process of producing
goods and services. OM is basically concerned with conversion of the raw material into the
finished products with the helps if the human resources and tools and equipment of the
organization. The study will be based on the the operation management of Marks and Spencer
which is one of the best British Multinational retailing brand that deals with the variety of
products such as clothing, home products, luxury food products. This study will help in
providing a clear understanding about the concept of managing the goods and services M&S in
order to deliver the best quality of output. As the customers are considered as the king of the
market so all the procedure is being performed with the main perspective of satisfying the
customers of the company.
This report will provide various techniques and methods to deliver the efficient quality
of output which helps in satisfying the marketing needs of the customers (Albliwi and et.al.,
2014). It will also help in making an understanding that OM plays an important role in
improving the productivity. M&S organization consists of different departments and all the
departments are aimed at the achievement their different departmental goals. So This report will
provide dependency of each department with each other in order to achieve the main objective of
the company. It will also describes the significance of Operation Management in an
organizational context and it will also determine different objectives of OM. The below
discussion about the Operation and Management of OM will also helps in identifying the internal
and external customers of the company. Furthermore, the study will provide the main objectives
of OM with respect to the application of an appropriate model. Sit will also comprehensive
analysis of Operation Management and it will develop the ability among OM managers to deliver
a product that meets the requirement of the customers.
Also this research will able to develop a proper understanding about the implementing of
various different types of strategies in business which mainly contributes towards the successful
growth of the business. Moreover, it will also provide the application of appropriate model that
helps in delivering the quality based productivity. Quality of the goods and services in M&S are
the main success factor that derives the company towards the sustainable and successful business
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performance. The report also provides the recommendations and guidance about the changes and
alterations on the feasibility of the products in M&S. This article will also helps in
implementation of the cost effective strategies that will benefit the organization.
MAIN BODY
Marks and Spencer is multinational British retailing enterprise who mainly focus towards
the quality of goods and services delivered to customer. In retail, the idea of focusing on the best
current customers can be seen as an on-going opportunity (Bamber and et.al., 2014). So
providing outstanding customer services and increasing customer engagement are two main
strategies are ultimately end up creating a loyal consumers of M&S. Customers can be defined as
such people who pays a certain sum of money with a main perspective of consuming specific
goods and services. The person may be one time purchaser or a permanent customer who usually
prefers the products of M&S over other brands. As one of the main objective of the company is
satisfaction of the customers which can only be achieved by providing the goods and services
according to the marketing needs of the customers. The customers are also referred as a main key
that ultimately contributes towards increased sales of M&S and hence it will helps in maximizing
the profitability of Organization (Psomas, Vouzas and Kafetzopoulos, 2014). It may be internal
customers or external customers:
Internal and External Buyers of M&S with respect to Broad market criteria
Internal buyer
An internal customers are those who possesses a great relationship with the company,
though the person may not purchase the products of same organization (Bhatt, Manadhata and
Zomlot, 2014). These types of internal customers generally promotes the products and services
of the company to increase the sales of the M&S. Internal users may not be directly internal to
the company but they are the act as a link through which the goods are finally distributed to the
end users. These customers may be situational customers who might be depending on someone
inside the company for a specific period. It may be co-worker within the organization, another
department or a distributor who mainly seeks to deliver provide products or services to external
customers of the company. Internal customer services are generally flourish in only high
communication environment. In order to achieve the good internal services, all the department
need to work together to meet the main objectives of the business. As the internal customers are
not the actual buyers of the products of M&S however in broader marketing criteria they may be
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responsible for production of goods and services according to the the marketing demands of the
external customers.
They get attracted to the price at which the product is sold. All the facilities provided by
the organization also attract the internal customers. There are number of internal customers
within the M&S like that of including that of suppliers and wholesalers as well. There are more
than 1300 direct and indirect suppliers of M&S who are spread all across the world and then
further divided into more sub suppliers and then wholesalers with transport operations as well.
While within the production chain of M&S like the one who are manufacturing cloths and then
those who are packaging it all would surely be having certain level of expectations from quality
or each other. Like packaging staff will expecting that quality of product which they are getting
should be of best one (Dombrowski and Mielke, 2014). Other than this warehousing department
should be having consideration that all products which they are receiving must be properly
packed so that it is easy to distribute them all in proper manner. Everyone is likely to have
concentration within the output of product as they need that to be one of the best one so that
managing task would be becoming possible. For these internal customers there will be many type
of complexity reduction techniques which will be helping in modification of products. These
techniques include like that of standardization, commonality and modularization with the help
internal customers would be able to maintain their expectations.
External consumer
Theses are those customers who pays for the goods and services offered by Marks and
Spencer. These are the person who is not directly connected to M&S products. The external
customers are aimed at consuming the best quality of goods and services which they have
purchased in exchange with the money. It may includes the repeated purchasing that may be
resulted in giving referrals and positive reviews which may end up creating more customers for
company. These customers may expect the best quality of productivity in terms of broad
marketing criteria. Marketing needs can be identified by analyzing the demands of the specific
goods and services and this resulted in meeting the demands of the consumers (Impact of
Performance Objectives on Operation Management, 2018).
There are various factors that affect the external customers such as: they get attracted
from the quality of the product, discounts and offers available on the products. Environment in
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which the company operates also attract them. For customers who buy their products from their
e-commerce website have different requirements that attract them such as: if cash on delivery
option is available then it also attracts them as well as home delivery facility is one of the main
reason that attract them.
Objectives of operation Management
operation Management mainly consists of the different types of functions and all the
functions are basically done to achieve the effective and efficient productivity of M&S which is
based on the quality of product. Objectives need to be clearly identified and structured according
to the requirement of the products. Operation Management model are helpful in achieving the
main objectives of the operation Management. Attainment of the Operation Management
objectives in the company helps in obtaining the efficient and effective performance of the
business (Goncalvès and Charrière, 2014). These objectives need to be explicitly stated and the
Operation Management also considers certain objectives in order to achieve the competitive
advantage, which can be grouped in following ways:
Performance Objectives
This objective helps in determining the effective and efficient operations of M&S which
can be achieved by the optimum utilization of the input resources that focused in achieving the
organizational goals. Along with the effective and efficient output of the company, quality of the
goods and services of M&S is also one of the important aspect that helps in attracting large
number of customers towards the production of organizations (Jain, Aagja and Bagdare, 2017).
However, performance objective is also aimed at delivering the flexible output that helps in
satisfying the needs of the different types of customers. Performance objective is also focused
towards achieving the best quality of products by applying the appropriate amount of manpower
and machinery in order to achieve the efficiency and effective of Operation Management.
Application of Four V model helps in determining the main objectives of the Operation
Management and hence this model will be helpful in achieving the the desired output in
managing the successful operations of Marks and Spencer. This model includes Four processed
steps which includes the Volume, Variety, Variation in demand and visibility of the product
(Oakland, 2014Ooi, K.B., 2014). This objective mainly helps in balancing the supply chain of
the company which contributes towards the management of the stock and producing the goods
accordingly.
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Cost objectives
This is also considered as the main objective of the Operation Management as it helps in
achieving the the cost effective methods that helps in delivering the effective objectives of Marks
and Spencer. This objective is mainly aimed at minimizing the cost of goods and services (Jiang
and Zhang, 2018). This can be referred as an important objective of the Operation Management
system that is aimed at consuming less cost of labor and material involved in production of the
goods and services.
Cost effective operations can also be achieved by implementing the appropriate policies which
may be related to the designing. In order to achieve the higher degree of customer satisfaction.
Various cost effective measures need to be considered as it helps in minimizing the expenses of
production and result in the increased profitability of Marks and Spencer.
In addition to this customers are always been at the forefront of every aspect in the
business so quality of the goods and services could not be compromised anyways (Modelling
objectives of Operation Management, 2017).
ANALYSIS
Marks and Spencer is a retail organization with global presence. They have various kind
of customers based on their choice. M & S is said to be a non-trending store and best brand
selection for aged people. So their main customers are above 50+ age. They have online presence
with their own e-commerce websites (Kato and et.al., 2014). So they also have many online
shoppers. Expectation of store and online shoppers are totally different from each other. Store
shoppers' expectation is availability of variety of products while expectations of online shoppers
is availability of home delivery, discounts and variety of products. Identified operational
objectives are: to serve customers by providing them with different and variety of options to
shop. Develop and improve e-commerce website and its services such as home delivery. To
improve their inventory management system to manage their products and sales. For this they
have improved their process for meeting their operational objectives. They need to improve their
process through which they will transport products to their customers i.e. all the activities related
to selling products to their customers (Sadikoglu and Olcay, 2014). To obtain all those objectives
Marks and Spencer will be needing to apply a 4-V model i.e. volume, variety, visibility and
variation in demand.
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 Volume is the operations is the key to how the business is managed profitably. For this
proper process and standards should be set at each level of the organization. For this
special and effective manufacturing machinery might be needed in order to maximize the
efficiency of the operations.
 Variety refers to various types of products that are made by the operations. Flexibility in
the service should also be offered to the customers. Large variety of products to the
process should match the complexity of customers requirements to the products or
services.
 High variation in demand means that management of all the process are always easy if
there is prediction of demand by the customers (Wangand et.al., 2015). In such case
resources can easily and effectively be utilized to meet the customers needs and
requirements.
In visibility it is seen that how much of the process is actually experienced by the customers.
Lack of communication between customers can company should be removed so that visibility in
process is more clear (Laudon and Laudon, 2016). The environment in which the company
operates as well as the immediate response given to customers needs also helps the company to
increase visibility in their process. For this connection with the customers should be high in order
to increase the visibility.
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
As per discussion, it can be concluded that operation management is a process that help
for organization to handle the business aspects in effective manner. The main purpose of
operation management to deliver the high quality of product and service to the customers. It is
also deals with design and control the business process for producing the good and services. This
assignment has discussed about the operation management to use the raw material that convert
into the quality of goods. It summarized that human resource management is used the tool to
increase the performance and efficiency in proper manner (Muralidharan, 2015). This study has
been completely based on the operation management of Marks and Spencer which is based on
multinational company that deals with the variety of products such as clothing, home products,
luxury food products. This report has also described proper and clear understanding about to
manage the goods and services M&S in order to deliver the best quality of output. This report
had discussed about the different type of techniques and methods that help for delivering the
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best quality of services whereas many people are attracted towards their quality of services.
Furthermore, it also consists of different departments and the basic aim of organization to
achieve their goals and objectives. This report is discussed about to develop understanding for
implementing of different types of strategies for the business process. As per conclusion, it is
recommended for changing the business process that help for increasing their feasibility in the
organization.
Recommendation
It has found that effective implementation of the Four V's model of the organization that
includes the suitable planning and execution of the various operation's management activities and
measures within M&S. It helps in achieving its targeted goals and operations and thus will lead
the organization top carry out its operations. However certain scope of improve the quality of
services and thus will lead the firm to improve performance of an organization. Certain
recommendations that can be effectively followed by the firm for enhancing the feasibility of its
operations management operations are:
 As the organization is using a variety of data handling measures, that will help in proper
assessment of tools and techniques to be used for storing and analyzing the data. Hence,
in this case, M&S is required to maintain the balance between the traditional and digital
data handling measures. This will help in getting precise and appropriate structured and
unstructured data.
 As different digital data sources will be utilized, maintaining the suitable data security
and authentication measures are required to be taken within the organization to improve
feasibility of the OM measures undertaken within the firm.
 As per the 4 V model of OM, the value creation is one of the major aim of the firm.
Hence, the effective utilization of the raw materials implemented is to be ensured. Other
than this, the customer requirements and current trends can be assessed that will improve
the effectiveness of the organization. Other than this, it will prove out to be cost
beneficial approach for M&S by getting suitable price of their manufactured product.
Following of all these recommended measures and following of all these operations will
help in increasing the customer satisfaction and increase the brand equity of selected retail
enterprise. Feasibility of these changes can be measured using the small scale implementation
and suitable assessments by experts.
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REFERENCES
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444.
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Sadikoglu, E. and Olcay, H., 2014. The effects of total quality management practices on
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Online
Modelling objectives of Operation Management. 2017. [Online]. Available
through:<https://www.nap.edu/read/23557/chapter/4>
Impact of Performance Objectives on Operation Management. 2018. [Online]. Available
through:<https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23311975.2017.1405718>
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