QAB020N502A: Operations, Logistics, Supply Chain at Ford

This essay provides a comprehensive analysis of Ford's operations, logistics, and supply chain management. It begins with an introduction that emphasizes the importance of supply chain management in Ford's business expansion and the role of innovation in the automotive industry. The essay then reviews relevant theories of operations, logistics, and supply chain management, including operational management, social exchange theory, agency theory, and just-in-time (JIT) manufacturing. It explores Ford's implementation of these theories, highlighting innovations like assembly line technology and the company's approach to logistics, including partnerships with DHL for improved visibility and risk mitigation. The essay also discusses Ford's supply chain strategy, focusing on benchmarking, supplier engagement, and the company's commitment to environmental and social values, including the triple bottom line. It also provides solutions to operational management problems. Overall, the essay offers insights into Ford's strategies for enhancing production, managing resources, and adapting to industry challenges. The essay also highlights the benefits of JIT and the importance of investment in research and development.

Running head: UNDERSTANDING OPERATIONS, LOGISTICS AND SUPPLY CHAIN AT
FORD
Understanding operations, logistics and supply chain at Ford
Name of Student:
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1UNDERSTANDING OPERATIONS, LOGISTICS AND SUPPLY CHAIN AT FORD
Introduction
The concept of supply chain management is important because of the fact that through
the increased level of supply chain the Ford Company will definitely aim in expanding their
business in UK as well as outside UK. The implementation of theories in the form of innovation
will help the company to bring more updated automobile in the UK market. Now in order to
sustain within the industry the first and foremost thing the company need to focus is to counter
the competitors. Through the increased level of the production, the company will also able to
increase their customer base. Improving logistics management will allow the company to bring
in better level of communication within the managers that will really benefit the resource
mapping of the company. However, it has been seen that the Ford Company has brought in
assembly of line technology for the first time within the automobile industry so that they can
increase the profit through cost minimization.
Critical review of relevant Operation, Logistics and Supply Chain Management theories
In order to increase the rate of production ability for any company, it is necessary for the
companies to follow theories of operation, logistics and supply chain management theories.
Through the incorporation of these theories into the policymaking, the Ford Company will be
able to indulge development within their policymaking so that marketing of the products can be
enhanced.
Theory of operational management
Through the incorporation of management, the companies are mainly helping the
development of business as the companies are continuously bringing innovation within their
product and process design. Thus in order to increase the overall rate of the production, it ois

2UNDERSTANDING OPERATIONS, LOGISTICS AND SUPPLY CHAIN AT FORD
highly important to identify the scope or opportunity. Ford Company at first started the business
in US and later on the company expanded the business in outside US. Now in order to highlight
the incorporation of the business, the company will implement better grounds of operation that
will increase the marketing of the products. Ford Company also took the theory of operation
seriously and through assembly line techniques he used to import the technologies behind any
spare parts of the vehicle and used to manufacture the cars in the own manufacturing hub.
Theories of logistics
Use of Social exchange theory or SET is more predominant in case of automobile
industry as it claims the best method of practice that are being done by the automobile companies
to estimate the values of the customers for their automobiles. This actually helps in the
development of better and advanced level of automobile and bring them in the market. Ford also
used this theory and came into limelight. At first Ford was the pioneer manufacture of the
formula one cars and gradually they shifted towards the manufacturing of commercial vehicles.
Innovation is one of the important thing that will definitely bring in high quality of products and
the customer base will be intact through the use of innovation. In order to determine the value at
which society is ready to accept new products in exchanging old products is entirely lying on the
consumer behavior. It is in the hand of big companies to control the demand of customers
through their new products within market.
Use of agency theory is important for the development of high skilled technology and it
is important to bring new learning system for the agents regarding the marketing of the products.
It has been seen that when the agents are dealing with the products need to introduce the resource
making abilities and how they are dealing with problems that are coming on the way of their
business. Using agenda theory is one of the important concept that is continuously pertaining the

3UNDERSTANDING OPERATIONS, LOGISTICS AND SUPPLY CHAIN AT FORD
manufactures to deal with best way of manufacturing the vehicles and deliver them in the
market.
The Delivery system at Ford over the past two decade have changed significantly in
Europe in a similar way it have transformed in North America. Ford has cut down its
unprofitable modes which impacts on the logistical flow. Ford nearly produced and sold around
2 million vehicles yearly in Europe by the end of 19090s (DHL Resilience360 2019). Across the
network in Europe, the outbound and inbound flow of logistics across differing infrastructure has
increased at Ford. The global exports and imports for both vehicles and materials in and out of
Europe have seen a significant rise. For improving visibility and tracking Ford have partnered
with its LLPs. DHL and Ford have combined information system from production system at
Ford with telematics tracking of the truck through its inbound network for gaining real time
information of the incidents (DHL Resilience360 2019). The innovation and technology
available to Ford to proactively mitigate risks and adapt to disruptions in supply chain ultimately
makes Ford stand out amongst its competitors.
As an automotive manufacturer with business operations in more than 60 countries and
with an approximate of 11,000 suppliers, the managing Supply Chain at Ford is undoubtedly
really challenging (Epa.gov. 2019). Ford lay its efforts in aligning is supply chain to keep up
with its environmental and social values. The strategy of for to maintain the effectiveness and
efficiency of the supply chain globally is the benchmarking of the supply chain done with the
scope of identifying the suppliers with highest impact on the organization and further prioritize
the engagement of the suppliers with the organization. Developing and managing a team and
building guidelines to support the suppliers on social and environment relate issues whilst

4UNDERSTANDING OPERATIONS, LOGISTICS AND SUPPLY CHAIN AT FORD
establishing a culture of learning and shared understanding with the suppliers is an objective of
the supply chain management at Ford.
Solutions of operational management
In order to deal with various problems within the operational management it is important
for the managers to know the knowledge and they must share the development of techniques
among the employees so that they can learn many new concepts and it is important to know the
pros and cons that are coming on the way of the company. This is mainly done because of the
fact that in order to forecast the development of better capability of resources. It is important to
bring in high quality of resources. In order to bring high quality of quality, it is highly important
for the economic activities as well as company production is highly verifying the development of
resource making abilities. Now in order to indulge the incorporation of better policy, it is
important to bring in better policy. In order to indulge over dependence on the resource it is
involvement of resource making abilities.
The profit or the loss is referred to the “bottom line” in common usage and traditional
business accounting purposes. This is usually noted or recorded at the bottom line on the
statement of expense and revenue. Social justice advocates and various environmentalist over the
past 50 years put in their efforts to give a broader definition to bottom line into consciousness of
public with the help of introducing full cost accounting. As an example, consider the business of
asbestos mining if the corporation is running successfully in the business and generating good
monetary profits but the asbestos mining is the cause for deaths in thousands and for the same
industry, the copper mines are a major reason for polluting the river. The government at last end
up using the money of taxpayers for cleaning the river and for the treatment and health care of
the workers. In such a case how well full societal cost benefit analysis of the industry can be

5UNDERSTANDING OPERATIONS, LOGISTICS AND SUPPLY CHAIN AT FORD
performed. For addressing the similar situation, the triple bottom line is considered whilst further
adding two more “bottom lines” the environmental or ecological concern and the social concern.
Following the ratification of ICLEI TBL standard for urban and community accounting and the
United Nations in the starting year of 2007, for full cost accounting of the public sector it became
the dominant approach (Campos et al. 2018). The similar standards of the United Nations is
applicable to human capital and natural capital measure for assisting with the measurements,
which are needed by triple bottom line, the EcoBudget standard as a metric for reporting
ecological footprint is an example. According to the study of worldwide national newspapers
from 1990-2008 it is reckoned that the use of triple bottom line is widespread in the media of
South Africa (Barkemeyer et al. 2009).
A social enterprise running as a non- profit organization, but pulling income by providing
opportunities to physically handicapped people referring them as “unemployable” of earning a
living by recycling can be acquired as an example of a firm to seek for a triple bottom line. The
profit earned by the organization is governed by a board of volunteers, and is ploughed back to
the community. The employment of disabled people in a meaningful way is the social benefit
credit to the system this as well reduces the welfare cost or the disability cost in the society. By
the recycling process carried out by these handicapped people, it also bring in environmental or
ecological benefits. In the case of privately owned institutions, the commitment to align to the
corporate social responsibility (CSR) imposes a moral obligation on the firm to address to public
reporting about the substantial impact of the business for contribution to better environment and
conditions to people (McWilliams et al. 2016). Triple bottom line is a type of framework to
report this material impact. It is a long-term outlook that sets sustainability concerns and

6UNDERSTANDING OPERATIONS, LOGISTICS AND SUPPLY CHAIN AT FORD
sustainable development besides the previous social, economic and environmental considerations
(Ibrc.indiana.edu. 2019).
The term JIT is the abbreviation used for Just in time manufacturing which is also
referred usually as Toyota Production System (TPS) or the just in time production. Is the
methodology applied in business under the domain of supply chain and inventory management,
with the primary objective of reducing time consumed between the production systems as well as
shortening the response time to the consumers from the suppliers. The methodology originated
and developed in Japan, during the 1960s and 1970s, particularly at Toyota (Lai and Cheng
2016). Various other companies were found adhering to similar methodologies under different
names. Motorola used the term Short cycle manufacturing (SCM) rather than JIT (High 1987),
Continuous Flow management was termed by IBM (Park and Park 2019) and consultant John
Constanza coined the term Demand flow manufacturing at his Institute of technology, Colorado.
One of the elements of the Toyota Production is referred as the “Kanban System” which is
usually mistaken to be a synonym to The Toyota Production System. However, Knaban is one of
the component of JIT production, as well as the TPS (Goddard 1986).
One example of JIT inventory system can be considered as of a manufacturer of
automobiles relying primarily on the supply chain for timely delivery of the products for
facilitating production, and not the inventory that is operating on low volume. This is advantage
of the Just in time production, it allows for lean inventory and reducing the size of inventory
related costs, whilst exploiting and strengthening the supply chain system of the company. JIT
also allows the manufacture the agility to switch between products and cut down redundant cost
from the equation such as the heft cost of warehouse management and material handling.

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Ford Motor Company invest a large amount into the development, research and
development of new products and innovative technology, recently Ford mad an investment of
$45 million into its Advance Manufacturing Center (AMC) based at Redford township,
Michigan (Sae.org. 2019). The investment was made to help in developing innovative solutions
to deploy scalable new technologies for manufacturing. Twenty three additive manufacturing
machines are available at AMC currently, Ford is working with 10 industries having expertise in
3D printing to develop product development prototype and legit intricate production parts. The
agility to produce custom production tool is one of the most valuable prospects of additive
manufacturing. Ford is also working on integrating Augmented and virtual reality to the
automotive. The AR and VR tools , identified by the company as potential area for competitive
advantage and thus, the company looks forward in compressing the production time for operating
in the global market (Ford Social. 2019). One another tech that Ford is working in to increase the
production process is collaborative robots or the “cobots”. The robots are smaller than usual
production machines and operate on smart technology. The robots are developed to assign task
such as picking and holding or ergonomically taxing (Sae.org. 2019).
The essay tries to put a definition of Supply chain management and understands it
different functions like logistic management, inventory, warehousing or material handling. The
obligation to adhere to the CSR policies for sustainability and contributing the triple bottom line
is detailed. Further, for effectiveness of the operations at ford the concept of JIT is applied. The
JIT is the effective methodology to reduce the inventory, redundant costing of ware housing and
optimize the logistic and supply chain operation to its full potential. For the development of new
products Ford, invest a majority in the R&D department. At present Ford is engaged in

8UNDERSTANDING OPERATIONS, LOGISTICS AND SUPPLY CHAIN AT FORD
developing 3D printing solutions, integrating augmented and virtual reality and developing
efficient collaborative robots to exploit the manufacturing functions.
The research is made considering the case of Ford Motor Company, which is having its
presence in United Kingdom and have few manufacturing facilities as well operating in the UK
serving the European region primarily. For manufacturing Ford is investing in 3D printing
technologies and identifies it a potential area for competitive edge and development of
manufacturing processes. Further Ford collaborates with DHL to pull off the logistics activities
effectively throughout the Europe relying on top-notch management and technology for the
purpose. The triple bottom line is understood for the industry and its importance for
sustainability of the organization is highlighted.
Managing the quality of product
The most popular sign of Ford Motor Company has the overall management practices
that helps in improving the overall quality of the products along with managing the overall
project management technology. The process of improvement methodology is directly based on
the customers which includes quality driven process that helps the customers to buy the right
kind of product for them. The process that is led by quality driven process includes certain
guidelines which is mainly set by the management for its first utilization along with starting the
overall joint venture. The partnership in the form of PPG industries mainly wants to produce
better quality of products that would be delivered to the customers along with meeting their
needs after the overall process of sales. Ford Motor Company mainly wanted to produce better
quality of their products that is required to work on a stable environment that would help the
community to work in a better condition. The development of the quality product mainly ensures

9UNDERSTANDING OPERATIONS, LOGISTICS AND SUPPLY CHAIN AT FORD
the needs of the customers that are required to be met by the manufacturer after producing the
goods for the customers.
Managing people in operation
Management of operation includes management of people which is required to be
implemented in overall course of business. The business can be improved with its condition as
per the article consist of theory of managing people which would be beneficial for the company.
The theory of operation has been useful for the business as it includes the effective
implementation of the operation standard that would include the people who are useful for
overall procedure of supply chain. Supply chain management of the company includes certain
channels of logistics that would be beneficial for the company along with managing the available
inventory. Working in an effective management by maintaining the profitability of the company
generally became the quality product for the quality people in their normal course of business.
Management of business with the overall supply chain mainly points out the effective
measurement of managing the people that are directly associated with the business.

10UNDERSTANDING OPERATIONS, LOGISTICS AND SUPPLY CHAIN AT FORD
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