Operations Management Analysis & Continuous Improvement: Unilever

This report provides a review and critique of the operations management principles implemented by Unilever Plc, a British multinational consumer goods company. It begins with an introduction to Unilever, highlighting its various product segments and global presence. The report distinguishes between operations and operations management, emphasizing the latter's role in planning, controlling, and managing operational functions to transform raw materials into valuable products and services. It analyzes the extent to which Unilever's operations management meets the organization's requirements, focusing on productivity, product quality, customer satisfaction, and competitive advantage. The report discusses continuous improvement as a philosophy, describes Lean principles, and proposes a continuous improvement plan with recommendations for enhancing efficiency and productivity within Unilever Plc. The analysis emphasizes reducing administrative work, intelligent resource management, monitoring utilization rates, balancing workloads, streamlining processes, and investing in technologies.

Review and Critique of
Operations Management
Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
An introduction to your chosen organization..............................................................................1
An explanation of operation vs. operations management............................................................2
A review and critique of the implementation of operations management principles within your
chosen organization.....................................................................................................................3
An analysis of the extent to which the operations management of the organization in the case
study meets the requirements of the organization.......................................................................3
Discussion of continuous improvement as a philosophy and describe the Lean principles........4
A continuous improvement plan, including your justified recommendations for improvement.5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Operations management is the process which involves the area of management which is
concerned with planning and controlling the procedure of production and manufacturing of the
business operations for making products and services. The operations management of the
organization involve many activities like planning, scheduling and controlling the operational
activities that change the input into desirable goods and products. In any organization the
operations management have three basic components and which are inputs, transformation and
outputs (Stevenson, 2019). The report will review and evaluate the effectiveness of operations
management principles of Unilever Plc. Company and also explain the concept of continuous
improvement in an operational context.
MAIN BODY
An introduction to your chosen organization.
The organization which has been chosen for reviewing and evaluating the effectiveness of
operations management principles is Unilever Plc.Unilever Plc. is a British multinational
customer products organization and its headquarter is in London , United kingdom. The products
offered by Unilever Plc. are food items, condiments, ice cream, cleaning agents, beauty products
and personal care products.Unilever Plc. is one of the largest manufacturer of soap across the
world. And the products and services of the company are available in almost one hundred ninety
countries at present. The Unilever Plc. Company has been categorized into three basic segments
which are food and refreshments, home care and beauty and personal care (Yaakub, Mohd
Susaimi,and Mohd Salleh, 2008). The research and development facilities of the company is
established into five various divisions which are china, India, Netherlands, United States and
United Kingdom.Unilever Plc. has its listing on the London stock exchange , Euronext
Amsterdam and Stoxx 50 stock market index.
The mission of Unilever Plc. is to add strength to the lives of people.
The company provide products and goods which helps in meeting the daily routine needs for
nutrition ,hygiene and personal care by providing valuable brands that benefit the public in
feeling good, looking good and getting more out of life. The organization produce multiple
brands like Dove , sun silk, Lipton , Knorr , Axe and many other as well. The company is
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gaining the trust and loyalty of the customers by providing good quality products at a reasonable
price.Unilever Plc. company sell their products and services to retailers, online stores , value
retailers, bricks and mortar store partners(Nayak,2018). The operations management of the
Unilever plc. Is providing a significant growth to the company as this department helps in
managing the whole process, buying, bookkeeping, and monitoring the internal process of the
organization.
An explanation of operation vs. operations management
Operations is the process of managing the internal work process of the organization I order to
run the business more significantly and effectively. This involves the process of managing and
controlling the activities for making, selling and promoting the products in the target market.
Everything an organization do in their day to day life for running the business and earning profit
from that business can be termed as operations. Similarly Unilever Plc. also have some
operations in their system for running their business and making income out of that business.
The term operations can also be termed as an end to end procedure of transferring and storing
the supplies of finished and unfinished products and services (Izadi,and et.al, 2021). For
instance, Unilever Plc. will produce and deliver the products in a systematic manner to their
customers.
On the other hand the operations management of the company helps
in planning, controlling and managing all the operational functions of the organization and they
also provide a framework for the organization in order to manage the system and hence increase
the productivity and growth of the organization more effectively. The operations management
department of the organization helps in transforming the raw materials into valuable products
and services as per the requirements of the consumer. Similarly the operations management of
Unilever Plc. is responsible for managing and keeping the higher productivity through the global
organization of the customer products business (Castellanos, and et.al, 2020). This helps in
providing a strategy for helping the organization in achieving higher performance comparatively
and all these procedures has been done by the operations manager of the organization. There are
many benefits and decision areas of operations management in the Unilever Plc. like it provides
the design of products and services, supports in managing the quality of the product, helps in
ensuring about the acceptable resources and also develop process for supporting the production
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system, it provides an effective way of information and resources movement, supports in
managing the human resources and job design within the organization.
A review and critique of the implementation of operations management principles within your
chosen organization
The principle of operations management within the organization includes planning, controlling
the quality of products and services and proper placement of employees which provides a way
for meeting the needs and requirements of the customers. There are basically fiver principles of
operations management that the Unilever Plc. organization also follows for having an effective
and smooth work life balance. The five principles in Unilever Plc. Company are as follows like
the first one is the function of management which means palling and managing the management
of the organization and this process also comprises of five basic steps like planning, organizing,
leading, staffing recruitment and controlling (Slack, and Brandon-Jones,2018). All these five
steps in help the organization in effective management and this leads in increasing the
productivity and performance of the organization. The second principle of operations
management in Unilever Plc. is types and roles of managers within the organization. Having an
effective and strong organizational structure helps in running the business more efficiently and
increases the performance of the organization as well. Every organization have three level in
their organizational structure top level , middle level and lower level management and all the
level are equally important for managing the operations management. The third principle in
operations management of the Unilever Plc. is effective management of the resources in the
organization.it is very important for the organization to manage the resources as these are the
most strongest and powerful assets.
The fourth principle in operations management is to understand and apply
the four dimensions of emotional intelligence in increasing the potential of individuals
(Murugan, 2018). Having good and effective leaders in the organization helps in understanding
the context and the culture of leadership styles.in this there are four dimensions which are high
self-awareness, societal awareness, self-management and having good social abilities. The last
principal of operations management is to understand and know the business.
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An analysis of the extent to which the operations management of the organization in the case
study meets the requirements of the organization.
Each and every organization sell some products or either provide some services to their
customers. Similarly Unilever Plc. also offer their products and services into the target market
and need some operations management for running the business and making profit out of that
business. The operations management of the Unilever Plc. helps in meeting the requirements of
the organization by ensuring that the company is achieving their goals and meeting the
objectives (Zheng, Fang, and Mingze, 2021). The main aim of operations management is to
increase the productivity as well as the performance of the organization. The basic requirement
of every company is to ensure that the quality of the product and services they are offering to
their customers is good and valuable so as to ensure this operations management plays a vital
role. The operations management helps in identifying the durability and reliability of the product
before delivering to the customers.by providing good quality products to the customers it
ensures customer satisfaction which is very important factor to be considered for maximizing the
revenue rate and profit margin.
The main focus of the organization is always to gain the competitive
advantage in the target market and by the help of operations management the Unilever Plc. is
able to get better results in terms of products and services .this makes the company more
valuable and gain new customer base (Brito, 2018). The cost of operations always depend upon
the productivity, production of quality products and customer satisfaction. The reduced cost of
operations will result in increased revenue and this can happen only by having a good and
significant operations management.
Discussion of continuous improvement as a philosophy and describe the Lean principles
Continuous improvement is basically defined as an integrative viewpoint of managing for
improving the quality of products and services in a continuous manner and way of achieving the
customer satisfaction. The continuous improvement can help the Unilever Plc. Company in
motivating the team members for looking various ways in order to enhance the operations of the
business (Butler, Szwejczewski, and Sweeney, 2018). There are various ways by which the
organization can improve the operations like creating innovative ideas for improving the
efficiency, evaluating the current process of the organization and analysing multiple
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opportunities for removing the unproductive work. For continuous improvement of operations
management the company should adopt some basic steps like dividing the work into small
consignments, holding everyone answerable, sharing the responsibilities in the team and define
the process for pushing code live at a moment’s notice. Continuous improvement in the
operations basically helps in making a strategy for improving the process, increasing the quality
and removing the waste.
For using the continuous improvement process into operations within Unilever
Plc. the company can use everyone’s ideas and can contribute their opinions as well, by this
employees feel motivated for solving the problems, the team can review the progress on regular
basis (Lam, O’Donnell, and Robertson, 2019). The continuous improvement in operations is also
used for improving the products and services they offer to their customers and this requires a
four step framework which is called as PDCA- plan, do, check and the last one is act.by the help
of this framework the organization will able to improve the operations management as well as
the quality of the products and services they are providing.
A continuous improvement plan, including your justified recommendations for improvement
In the Unilever Plc. it is very important for the company to have an effective and significant
operations process for running the business in a smooth manner and achieving the goals and
productivity more effectively. For improving the operations process within the organization
there are some recommendations there should be followed by the system for improving the
efficiency and productivity as well. The first one is to reduce the administrative work and by this
it becomes easy for the employees to share the data on time and more accurately. The next way
of improving the operations is to manage the resources intelligently as it is very important for
the organization to have skilled employees for performing the tasks more effectively(Gordon,
and et.al, 2020). They are the one who are responsible for running the business and generating
revenues so managing them is very crucial step.
Some of the other way of improving the operations is to monitor the utilization
rates in the organization and balancing the workloads. This will leads to the improvement in the
productivity as well as in the performance of the organization. Streamlining the process will also
help in increasing the efficiency of the operations management and the last one is to invest in
technologies is the best way of improving the process of operations within the organization.
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CONCLUSION
The report have concluded that operations management is the process of planning, controlling
and managing the operational process in the organization. It supports in providing a planned
forecasting of the goods manufactured and created by the firm. The operation management in
the association guarantees in monitoring the creation process and also the business operations in
the most substantial manner. The report have described the effectiveness of operations
management principles and concept of continuous improvement in an operational context within
Unilever Plc.
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REFERENCES
Books and references
Stevenson, W.J., 2019. Operations management. New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.
Yaakub, N.S., Mohd Susaimi, N.D. and Mohd Salleh, N.N., 2008. Unilever Company.
Nayak, A.K., 2018. Unilever PLC, 1932–2004. In Multinationals in India (pp. 107-134). Palgrave Macmillan,
London.
Izadi, M., and et.al, 2021. A critical review on definitions, indices, and uncertainty characterization in
resiliency‐oriented operation of power systems. International Transactions on Electrical Energy
Systems, 31(1), p.e12680.
Castellanos, M., and et.al, 2020, April. ibom: A platform for intelligent business operation management.
In 21st International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE'05) (pp. 1084-1095). IEEE.
Slack, N. and Brandon-Jones, A., 2018. Operations and process management: principles and practice for
strategic impact. Pearson UK.
Murugan, M.S., 2018. Management principles and practices. New Age International.
Zheng, G., Fang, L. and Mingze, S., 2021. Research on Economic Benefits in Power Economic
Operation Management. Academic Journal of Business & Management, 3(1).
Brito, B.D.R.M.S., 2018. Centralization of supply chain management operations: the case of Unilever
Ultralogistik.
Butler, M., Szwejczewski, M. and Sweeney, M., 2018. A model of continuous improvement programme
management. Production Planning & Control, 29(5), pp.386-402.
Lam, M., O'Donnell, M. and Robertson, D., 2019. Achieving employee commitment for continuous
improvement initiatives. International Journal of Operations & Production Management.
Gordon, D.B.,and et.al, 2020. American pain society recommendations for improving the quality of
acute and cancer pain management: American Pain Society Quality of Care Task Force. Archives of
internal medicine, 165(14), pp.1574-1580.
Vancouver
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Vancouver
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