Time-Based Competition: Analysis and Implementation Report

This report examines the concept of time-based competition in operations management, emphasizing its role in achieving a competitive advantage. It explores the core principles, including 'fast to market' and 'fast to produce' strategies, and highlights the importance of time as a crucial resource for organizations. The report uses Tesco as a case study, analyzing how the company can implement time-based competition to enhance supply chain processes, improve efficiency, and reduce production lead times. Key elements for success, such as analyzing current business strategies, building measurement systems, embracing change, and fostering employee motivation, are discussed. The report also evaluates the effectiveness of time-based competition, comparing it to industry standards and emphasizing its significance in global business expansion and decision-making. It concludes with recommendations for effective implementation and the need for continuous improvement to meet customer demands and maintain a competitive edge.

TIME-BASED COMPETITION

Table of Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................................3
Overview of Time -Based Competition......................................................................................3
Time Based Competition........................................................................................................3
Identify the key elements required to be successful in delivering .............................................5
Key element required to be successful in achieving good quality in time sensitive
operations:..............................................................................................................................6
Implementation of Time -based competition in the organization for the effectiveness..............8
Critically evaluate the effectiveness and compare with the industry standard...........................9
Conclusion................................................................................................................................11
REFERENCES..........................................................................................................................12

Introduction
Operation management is the business practice, which increase the possibility of
efficiency in the organization. It will include the process where raw material converted into
finished goods, which increase the productivity or profitability of the organization (Chen,
Sohal and Prajogo, 2013). Operations management control the operation function, which help
the business to achieve their goals & objectives. Supply chain is the activity where individual,
functions, information or resources move from supplier to customer. Tesco Plc choose for the
better understanding of these concepts. It is UK based multinational company, which deals in
grocery and general merchant items. Company founded in 1911 and founder of the company
is John Cohlen. This report include the overview of the of the time based competition and
how they increase the supply chain process faster. Along with this, key elements, which
required for the successful delivery of quality on time. In addition, it includes how
organization deliver their products or services by using time-based competition concepts.
Overview of Time -Based Competition
Time Based Competition
According to time based competition concept, time is a resource and organization have
to use it in effective way and acquire for the competitive advantage (Damgaard and Weiner,
2017). Time based competition is the extension of Just in Time. This concept include the
product delivery cycle, market research, distribution of products and marketing of final
products. Quality is the major issue to maintain because it is the base, which provide the
competitive advantage. This strategy come into force in 1988 by George Stalk (Dubey,
Gunasekaran and Ali, 2015). Time based competitive strategy emphasizes the time as a major
factor, which help the Tesco to maintain their achievement and provide sustainable
competitive advantage. It will be classified into two forms such as fast to market or fast to
produce. Organizations have ability to reduce the time to deliverer new product in the market
or rapidly change the design of the product for the customers. Two type of time based
competition will be mentioned below:
 Fast to market: Time based competition reduce the time of product life cycle or
introduction of new product. In result market dominator provide the advance learning
which became barrier to the new entry (Hugos, 2018).

 Fast to product: In this form of time based competition, it reduce the production load
time as well as increase the delivery speed. It will provide the lower inventory in
warehouses and increase the revenue of the company.
In Tesco Plc, company follow the fast to product form in their organization, where they
reduce the production load time and deliver their orders to the customer in fully speed. Which
provide the higher efficiency to load their production in minimum time, reduce the cost of
carrying and increase the revenue of the company. Tesco apply this concept in their
operational functions, which increase the efficiency of supply chain. Company implement this
concepts within the organization, where manager of the company analyse or understand the
current business operation. After analysis, Tesco focus to reduce the time to deliver the
products from production to the stores or stores to the customer’s doorsteps.
Manager of Tesco, build various strategy regarding reducing time but before that, they have to
understand the importance of top management to support and provide sustainable change for
it. Company have to provide various reward and incentives to the employees to reduce the
time of their work. Organization have to provide the understanding of their job which help the
workers to reduce their time to compete their task (Turker and Altuntas, 2014).
Identify the key elements required to be successful in delivering
great quality in time sensitive operations.
According to Stalk 2012, time based competition provide the central idea, which
reduce the time of each step of general cycle of production. It helps to reduce the time of
planning, product creation, innovation, production, supply marketing distribution etc. With
the help of these concepts, organization reduce the time, which they acquire to deliver their
services to the customers. Every organization can achieve or reduce time with the help of
eliminating non-valuable activities and reduce the taken time for the valuable activities, which
increase the productivity or profitability of the company. This is the way where organization

can achieve the competitive advantage in term of reducing time to produce some thing or to
deliver goods or services from one place to another.
As per Yang, Vericourt and Sun 2013, implementation of time-based competition in
the organization will reduce the cost of the organization and increase the quality of work. It
will also increase the efficiency as well as effectiveness of their work, which further help the
business to increase their goals & objectives. According to established convictions, work
under pressure will increase the chances of defective production of products or services. If
organisation have main goals to achieve speedy work then it will increase the cost and reduce
the quality. Those organizations implement the time-based competition, which complete their
work on, vary quickly and these firms does not have any fixed working hours. Along with
this, they reduce the time of completing each performance in the operations (Yang, De
Vericourt and Sun, 2013). Otherwise, company face the lots of issues regarding product
quality or cost where quality will be reduced and cost of the product will be increased. Time
based completion is essentially required for the companies because it helps in decision-
making and make this easy for the management to build effective strategy regarding
eliminating time for the non-valuable activities.
According to the Demeter 2013, Time Based Competition is important for the
organization if they wanted to expand their business globally. Organization settle their
factories in the foreign countries for the expansion and where it become more difficult to
implement because it might be completely overridden by the core competency and supply
chain integration issue. Partner proximity is important for the time based competition at the
time of implementing in global context.
Key element required to be successful in achieving good quality in time
sensitive operations:

 Firstly Tesco need to analyse their current business strategy which followed by the top
management to complete their operational functions. Manager of the company, with
the help of process analysis understand their current situation and the requirement of it
(Kauppi, 2013).
 Management have to build measurement system, which focuses on time where
organization complete their task on deadline to achieve their operational objectives.
Tesco have to implement these elements for the competitive advantage with the help
of time-based competition.
 Company have to increase their efficiency to produce new product in the market and
increase the speed of introducing new product by using various methods. Such as
concurrent engineering and cross-functional team. These techniques help the
operational functions to increase their effectiveness as well as efficiency, which
reduce the time and increase the quality of work.
 Top management of the Tesco analyse all the managerial decisions along with it's
alternatives as per the time required to perform their task. Basically, they have to
choose those decision which required less time to perform their duty in order to
achieve their goals & objectives (Marra, Ho and Edwards, 2012).
 Company have to adopt embrace change strategy where organization can change their
current strategy according to the requirement of operations. For example: Tesco
required more production to fulfil the current demand of the consumers. Therefore,
they have to have to purchase new machinery for the more productions as well as need
to hire more human resources for the effective performance. Manager will change
their strategy as per the requirement of company. So, organization can change their
strategy which help to increase productivity as well as profitability. Manager of Tesco
will change the amassment practices or methods for the effective performance or
development of the business (Godinho Filho and Saes, 2013).
 For the effective implementation of time-based competition, management have to
understand or critically evaluate the importance of top management support for the
sustainable change.
 When organization face the conditions like bottleneck, downtimes and other related
problems, which affect the production as well as profitability of the company. So they
have to learn from their fast experience and then try to convent these problems in the
opportunity of the future. Tesco organization have to learn from their past experience
which create problems.

 Manager also try to reduce the time for the outcomes, which help to increase the
employee reward structure. Effective incentives or reward system help to motivate the
workers to perform their task in order to achieve their objectives. Motivated people
will done their work effectively or they complete their task on deadline, which
increase their efficiency.
 Manager have to guild their staff members regarding their role & responsibility in the
organization. Also provide the basic understanding regarding their job which helps in
time shrinking for the each task (Martínez-Jurado and Moyano-Fuentes, 2014) .
 Company have to balance their work with distribution in order to keep their consumers
happy for the longer period. Tesco need to improve their supply chain management
and ensure that goods are delivered on time and make sure the availability of stocks in
the stores.
For the effective implementation of time based competition, Tesco organization have
to adopt latest technology such as more productive machinery which increase the productivity
as well as profit margin in order to achieve their goals & objectives. For example: Tesco's
distribution channel spread all over the country where they supply their products. So they
have to shift goods without wasting time with the help of effective team in logistic
department. Company have to build effective team for the successful results and have to
focus on integrated variable components of the supply chain (Ellram, 2011). Reduce time on
each stage will increase the productivity but it can reduce the quality of work. So manager
need to ensure that or build strategy which help to reduce time but also increase the quality of
work.
Time based competition help the manager of Tesco organization to improve their
product quality and delivered to the consumers with the help of time sensitive operations.
Company have to adopt following steps, which required to achieve for the better performance
in the workplace. It will reduce the time to producing products and along with this, they
majorly focuses on their quality which satisfy the customer and their demands (Rexhausen,
Pibernik and Kaiser, 2012).

Implementation of Time -based competition in the organization for the
effectiveness.
Variation and availability of the products is the most essential factor of the market, which is
beneficial for the consumers because they want a vast spectrum of goods. In the Tesco Plc,
company provide a huge number of products with their availability, which keep these
products in stocks. When organization produce the huge quantity then it will increase the
value of inventory in terms of cost (S eS, Z, 2012). Reliability of future will be reduce with
the number of products. For the avoidance of high logistic cost and low efficiency Tesco Plc
adopt the time based competition. Which help the organization to increase their effectively as
well as their logistic operations cost. There are few steps, which is required to follow by the
business for the implementation of time - based competition concepts:
 Firstly, organisation have to identity their current business strategy and current
strategy of Tesco is to make zero carbon business by 2050 and then take decision
according to the requirement.
 Manager also need to ensure that, this strategy will be completed as per their
standard time without any further delay.
 Company increase their speed to develop new products or implement strategies
and these functions will be done with the help of cross-functional team (Manuj and
Mentzer, 2018). This team include the group of people who have different
speciality or expertise to achieve common goal and give efforts for the successful
completion of their business strategy.
 To achieve zero carbon business by 2050, manager have to evaluate the various
alternatives of managerial decision.
 To complete their business strategy, company required change in management
practices or in methods, which increase the effectiveness or reduce the time for the
completion of task & goals.
 Top management of Tesco Plc provide the great support for the sustainable
change. Because without their support company not able to implement time based
competition. Management people will analyse the strategy and then take their
decision whether it is apply or not in the organization.

 More speedy work can reduce the quality of product so organization have to
ensure that implementation of time based competition will maintain along with
quality of products (Phillips, 2013).
 For the effective application of these concepts, management have to provide the
incentives of reward to encourage their employees to perform well and complete
their task on time.
 Manager also provide the understanding of their job, which help the employees to
complete their task before the deadline of project. Distribution of products among
across the country will take time but they have to maintain the system, which
avoid the unavailability of products in the stores.
 Tesco need to balance their work for the sustainability in the organization for the
longer period which make customer more happy (Schaltegger and Burritt, 2014) .
Time based competition help the Tesco Plc to improve their supply chain management, which
increase the availability of their goods across the whole nation. It is a continuous process
where products are delivered to the stores from warehouses and consumers are ready to buy.
It is very important for the Tesco to maintain their products availability otherwise; customers
can shift on competitor's products (Togelius, 2014.). So they need to ensure that, product or
services both are required on continuous basis otherwise they lose their customer because of
delay stocks.
Critically evaluate the effectiveness and compare with the industry
standard.
Time based competition is the defence mechanism where time could be feasible alternative
strategy for the organization (Time Based Competition, 2019). Time will affect the business
and play influence role due to two reasons. First one is that, it helps in reducing and
eliminating the delay of delivering products to the stores. It will help to gain more profitable
consumers with the help of them business can increase their sale and market share. Second
one is that, business can build their strategy which include lots of flexibility to adopt changes
which further helps in sustainability for the timely production or quality of work.
Time based competition helps in building strategy and majorly focus on the
development of holistic approach. It will helps in managing internal as well as external retail
supply chain for the purpose of high performance in order to achieve their target or goals.

Main purpose of using this concept is to gain more competitive advantage in the consumer
market (Maskooki and et.al., 2016). Time based competition will be achieved through
reducing time of every stage of retail supply chain. Tesco manager ensure that, every non
valuable activity are required to remove from the supply chain functions and only focus on
valuable activities which help the business to increase their productivity or profitability.
This concept also have some disadvantage where it focus on drive organization to
operate accelerated pace. If time is the only element to achieve success in their business then
it will negatively affect the business and its competitive advantage (Silvestre, 2015). Specific
industry will able to considered so firstly Tesco have to determined that weather it is feasible
for the completive strategy or not. For example: research team need to analyse that, consumer
will pay extra charges for the delivery of their products or not. If yes then what are their
willing cost because according to many consumers they prefer to buy products through
visiting store rather buying online (Swami and Shah, 2013). Most of the time it happen that,
those organization follow the Time Based Competition to increase their efficiency or
effectiveness which face the lots of issue due to adopting this concept. It will negatively affect
the organization. When management create pressure in the operation to reduce their time to
increase productivity to fulfil the demand of customers. What is affect the employees in
negative way because it will generate pressure on workers to increase their potential. In
results they done various mistakes which face the business with various losses. Along with
this, to complete their work on time employees produce low quality of product which also
affect the company in order to reduce reduce their consumer based and reduce the demand as
well. So organization have to ensure that, they does not build any pressure and provide proper
training to their employees to reduce time for completing any task. Along with this, need to
ensure that quality of product also good which maintain their customer lotyalty.
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it has been concluded that, time based completions help
the organization to reduce their time to compete their task which improve the productivity as
well as profitability of the company. Management need to ensure that, logistic function will
continuously work to eliminate the chances of shortage of stocks in the stores. In addition,
change in the technology will reduce the time for the each task but it can also reduce the
quality. So, the manager of the company have to ensure that product quality will be maintain

for the whole production period. Times based management help the company to take effective
decision in order to compete their task or achieve business goals & objectives.

REFERENCES
Books & Journals