Woolworths Group Australia: Operations and Project Management

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Operations and Project Management
{Woolworths Group Australia}
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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Operations vs. Operation Management...........................................................................................3
Review and critique of the implementation of the Operations management principles within the
Woolworth.......................................................................................................................................5
OPERATIONAL MANAGEMENT OF THE WOOLWORTH:....................................................7
The continuous improvement:.......................................................................................................10
Lean principle:...............................................................................................................................10
Continuous improvement plan for the Woolworths:.....................................................................10
Recommendation and conclusion:.................................................................................................11
References......................................................................................................................................12
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Introduction
Among all the supermarkets present in Australia, Woolworths is the largest of all. The
supermarket is currently operating a total of 995 stores all over Australia. The company
Woolworths is having approximately 115,000 working members all over the stores, support
centres as well as the other distribution centres. All these things are operating efficiently only to
provide an excellent service, value as well as convenience to their customers. The company
works with the majority of the Australian farmers as well as the growers for ensuring the best
products delivered to their customers. Around 96% of the fruit, as well as vegetables available on
the Woolworths supermarket and the total fresh meat, come from the farmers as well as growers
of Australia. This service of the Woolworth makes the company successful in providing the best
fresh foods in Australia. This company understands the actual needs of the customers and the
simpler things regarding shopping making it more innovative retailers in the world. The
customers have the convenient option of shopping from their home too, with the help of
computers and smart phones by using the application of Woolworths Supermarket. The most
interesting thing about the delivery system of the company is the foods are delivered in the
kitchen bench directly.
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Operations vs Operation Management
Business Operations
The operations in the business of Woolworth Supermarket are meant for allowing the overview
and to provide proper oversight related to the various activities of the organization. A business
operation helps for the assigning of the various roles as well as responsibilities with the different
teams of the management such as risk, resources as well as the allocation (Ibrahim 2016). It also
reveals the best action required for managing things all the time. Operations guide the company
for staying within the budget and to cooperate efficiently among the different departments within
the company. Depending on the production of the company, the supply chain will vary as it may
be long or short. The number of workers will also depend on the number of automated business
processes within the organization. For the Woolworth, the selling of their food products are from
the retail stores or the supermarket, and for these stores, a proper location is a must for
maximizing the sales of the company. It has to regulate the other factors also if the company is
involved with eCommerce, then it is very crucial to choose the right application software for the
customers. These are the few factors that are mainly responsible for influencing the operations of
the company (Wall and Van Gorp 2017).
Main functions of the Business Operations of the Woolworth Group
The functions of the operations are always changing with the various factors within the
company. The founders, as well as the stakeholders of the company, decide the processes needed
for the functioning of the business operations (Abu Naser and Al Shobaki 2016). The other
factors, like the inventory of the human capital, various roles, and the fruitfulness of the various
leaders, are responsible for managing as well as adapting the operations of the company.
Followings are some common factors that are common for the boards:
 To maintain the effective communications among the stakeholders or the partners
 Ensuring the required training and mentoring of the senior management
 To audit and re-engineering the various processes in the business
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 Increasing the business performance by balancing the different groups as well as
departments
 To manage the planning as well as business budget at the strategic levels.
 Managing as well as mentoring the different cooperation with the third party
 Ensuring the compliance issues by performing the reviews of the contracts.
Operations Management of Woolworth
The operations management involves the various planning, managing as well as organizing the
different processes and to make required improvements for enhancing the profits. Adjustments of
the operations daily will have to consider the various strategic goals to proceed for the data
analysis as well as the measurements for the processes that are running presently (Hitt, Xu and
Carnes 2016).
The operations management is functioning with a multidisciplinary nature along with the finance
as well as the marketing of the company. The ops management of the company ensures the
different materials and the workers or other resources to be used in an effective as well as
efficient way that will be possible by the company (Walker et al. 2015). It will make the output
of the company more maximizing.
The various activities of the Operations management
Three major activities are performed by the management team of operations. From the initial
stage of the planning to organizing as well as supervising the various functions of the business.
The factors mentioned above also involve the assets, human resources, as well as the costs of the
business that are proceeded with a deep analysis of all the processes.
Planning or Designing
The ops management of the company stays busy in the market analysis before the introduction of
the planning or designing the services and the products. If the analysis gives a positive result,
then it can target for the new products or services and can start to plan accordingly. Majority of
the cases have the planning for designing the product from its concept to the final launching
several phases related to the testing are involved (DuHadway et al. 2017). While the ops
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management planning for the product or the services, they have to consider the technical as well
as business requirements.
Organizing
The organizing factor plays a crucial role in ops management where it can give the base for
enhancing operational efficiency. Also, there is a need for a constant management team for the
correction of the mistakes happened accidentally while planning. This is required for the
adjustment of the productions or the supplies to the changing regulations and keeping them more
efficient in other levels.
Improving
There should always be a room for the improvement in the processes that are used along with the
various qualities as well as the capacities achieved. There is as need of the ops management tasks
for the long-term planning. The better the way in forecasting the demands will take the business
for the improvements in the various business processes. There will be a high quality of product if
the “Total Quality Control” processes are implemented along with the risks of the operations
(Miyaoka et al. 2018).
Review and critique of the implementation of the Operations management principles
within the Woolworth
After the implementation of the operations management, there are some adjustments made for
supporting the Woolworth for achieving the strategic goals of the company. These goals are
achieved through the various understanding of the crucial principles of ops management; also, it
provides deep visibility within the operation. There are some critical principles with the food
supplying of the Woolworth:
Reality:
The management will have a focus on the actual problems faced in overall business processes
instead of techniques only. These things have to consider as there is no such tool that will be able
to present an effective solution to the company (DuHadway et al. 2017).
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Organizing:
Inside the food supply facility of the Woolworth, all the things associated with operations are all
interconnected. These elements of the operations are needed to be consistent as well as
predictable.
Humility:
The process of trial and error is most costly, and that is why the managers of the company should
understand this factor and the various limitations. Considering this factor will help to save the
costs as well as the time of the production in the long-term.
Success:
The main interests will have to be always considered, even if there are several definitions of
success. The main thing of a successful business is to meet the satisfaction level of the customers
and giving effective services (Wall and Van Gorp 2017).
Accountability:
This principle of the ops management will have to be considered by the managers of the
Woolworth. The managers will have to set the various rules as well as metrics and checking
them regularly that the goals are meeting or not.
Causality:
The problems that occur in the business processes will be very similar to the indications. To
eliminate the problems in the long-run, the cause of the problem has to be removed.
Changes:
With the changes in the demands of the customers, changes within the operations management
are also required for the innovative business. With modern business techniques, it is most
important for the company to make some changes with the requirements of the customers.
Collaborating:
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The proper understanding of the customers’ needs is very crucial for supplying the foods. What
the customers want to purchase as well as use are to be understood by the company.
Understanding the competition:
Another principle of ops management is to understand as well as analyze the other competitors.
Their practices, products and the customers’ service understanding is also important for the
analysis.
Operational management of the Woolworth:
Woolworth Limited is a very renowned retailer in Australia. It gives the best food and grocery
services to the customer of Australia as well as the customer of New Zealand. The operational
management principal of the company is to coordinate with a primary contractor like textiles
factories, manufacturer of food and beverages (Methner, Hamann and Nilsson, 2015.). The
Woolworth gives the various goods production instructions to the sub-contractors. Sometimes
the company itself takes the whole responsibility to make the raw material and to plan, and
control the sub-contractors. The principle of operational management is to identify the
constraints. To enhance productivity, the full system has to get the theory of the constraints. The
Woolworth retail industry gains the maximum profit from the theory of constraints. The main
four major excellence of operational of Woolworth is the quality of the product, intimacy with
the customers, and good presence of online and large distribution of the network.
The technology strategy of the process:
To enhance the recent operation and the development of the future, the Woolworth have to be
process oriented. The main objective of the team of process design is to develop the capabilities
of the business process management and to upgrade the methodology, which is currently used in
this organization. Woolworth develops some key initiatives for the business. These are:
 Methods: strategy and guidelines for the project of the Woolworth limited to do the
activity of the process.
 The training of the internal staff: to get better performance from the project, the internal
staff should be well trained about the material and the process model.
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 Communication: the team of project design engages the business to make communication
with the process approach also the organization (Keeves, 2017.)
 Governance: it is used to calculate the consistency of the material, which is process
related as well as the accuracy of the materials.
 Set the benchmark of the process
 Use the methodology to improve the process
 Reutilization: to make the execution of the process faster, capture the intelligent part of
the process and then reuse the property.
In this way, the Woolworths manage the strategy of the process technology. Woolworths is one
of the biggest supermarkets, and it includes two trails constantly. The first trial is responsible for
producing the fresh product and employing some technologies to move it to the supply chain.
Another trail is used to monitor the temperature of the different segment of the supply chain. To
gain the benefit, the Woolworths improves the efficiency of the fresh produce tracking, and it is
completely done by using the paper or manually. They wanted to use the electronic to track the
fresh produce. Thus, they reduce the time as well as the paper to improve the process of the
documents.
Control management: to handle the high number and small order, the Woolworths implements a
system of supply chain management. After checking the already exists network system, this
company decided to remodel its management of the supply chain. The operation of e-commerce
is capable of taking a large amount of order. The websites of the Woolworths consists of 200000
products may be more, which is small and for sale (Zutshi et al., 2016). To manage this huge
order, Woolworths needs some improve the management system. Now a day they are capable of
serving the better product in Australia.
Material requirement planning for the Woolworths is the important factors, which is used to
develop the system. For the implementation of MRP, they need to follow some guidelines
(Taylor, 2018).
1. Determine the sequence of the assembly
2. Check the method of the invention
3. Requirement forecast
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4. Determine the schedule
5. Control the process
The strategy of performance and improvement:
To develop the performance and the improvement of the strategy, use the statistic outcome. In
the technique of six sigma, reduce the several element variations to enhance the process.
1. Definition
2. Measurement
3. Analysis
4. Improvement
5. Controlling
The five main divisions for the Woolworths are:
 Supermarkets are one of the biggest divisions, and it is fully user-centric also, it is very
much quality conscious.
 General Goods
 Electronic of the consumer
 Petrol
 Liquor etc
The Woolworths concentrate on the business and to maintain the position they make a plan for
improvement by using IT technology. For this reason, they include TCS to do the process
improvements. Using the six-sigma methods, the Woolworths retails the cost of the operation.
The strategy of the development of the supplier:
The strategy of the supplier development provides the one to one relationship between the
supplier with the organization to improve the performance. The Woolworths decided to make the
relationship with its suppliers (Pearson, 2017.). They also have the right to accept or reject the
product, which is not reaching their standard. The price is the bigger issue in the competitive
supermarket for these reasons all time suppliers have some pressure to reduce the cost of the
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product. Woolworths make some ideas of partnership with the buyers and the suppliers. There
are seven stages. These are:
 To develop the supplier make some commitment with the senior manager
 Evaluate and audit the Woolworths internal standards
 Define and quantify the changes which is required
 Agree with the particular supplier
 Form the team for the training of the developments.
 Definition of the time, aim, delivery system by the team
 Monitor the impact and implement the changes.
Continuous improvement:
Continuous improvement includes the ways of improving operations continuously. It is used to
identify the benchmark of the process (Ross, 2017). In this case, the employee can be involved to
identify the changes in the operations. An employee plays a vital role in the programs of
continuous improvement. The main goal of this in the Woolworths is as follows:
 To reduces the time of process request for the supermarket product
 Focus on the issues of the customers as well as the supplier.
 Concentrate on the changes in the operations of the process.
Lean principle:
The main aim of the lean principle is to maximize the value of the customer and minimize waste
(Alrashed and Kang, 2017, December.). With the help of a minimum number of resources, it
increases the value of the customers. According to the Woolworths, they continuously check the
needs of the customers and improve the process continuously (Majerus, 2017. ). The five
principles of lean are:
1. Identify the values of the customer
2. Mapping of value stream
3. Creation of flow
4. Pull establishing
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