Literature Review
Operations management is one of the management departments that are responsible for controlling and designing production processes and dealing with the business operations redesigning in the line of production of goods and services. It oversees all the activities from of conversion of raw materials to become finished goods that are tailored to meet the specifications of potential customers. Management, therefore, involves the relationship between the junior managers and the senior executives in making sure that the operations of the organization are running in a smooth way to maintain customer relations and efficiencies in the organizational activities (Paton et al., 2011). In the United States, the operations management entails keeping track of manufacturing and production of goods and making sure the supply chain is maintained to reach the customers efficiently.
The issue that is under study in the largest Canadian retailer best buy located in St. Catharine's is the issue of the use of an outdated inventory management system. The use of such inventory system has significantly inhibited the ability of the organization to offer their customers the up to date information concerning the stock and inventory that has brought about shrinking inventory problems.
The following are operations management theories relating to the issues that have been identified in the Canadian retailer, Best Buy:
Total Quality Management Theory (TQM)
The total quality management approach entails the use of quality management systems by the organizations with the aim of improving the efficiencies in their operations that can lead to maintenance of customers as well as increase the organizational profits. Total quality management systems involve the use of a variety of tools that empower employees to deliver products to customers with ease thus saving time. From the Best Buy issue of taking a lot of time looking for products manually due to a failed inventory system will lead to dissatisfaction of customers due to the unnecessary delays. An outdated inventory system does not support quality management of inventory making it hard to trace the customer’s goods with ease. As said, sometimes the products reflected on the system are not found anywhere on the actual stock, and it causes poor customer satisfaction and relations to the organization.
The use of the total quality management systems ensures continuous improvement in the groups that eventually lead to the development of the business conditions. The system will allow the employees to work in ensuring that there are minimal or no defects in all the operational activities of the organization (Suresh, Kumar & Anil, 2009, p.56). In the case of the Canadian retailer, the employees would better the operations by eliminating the errors, such as having conflicting data of the inventories as well as making sure, that shrinking of inventory through employee fraud is removed.
The advantage that is associated with the use of total quality management system is creation and maintenance of customer focus. In this case, each employee of the organization takes note of his or her clients and design the best way possible to satisfy their needs. This practice makes it possible to realize the different customer needs and fulfill them accordingly. In the Best Buy retail, the employees ought to have known the customer needs long before so that when delivering of inventories is reaches it becomes quite easy.
The total quality management system in most cases depends on individuals who work with an organization with the objective of improving the quality of the organizational processes. To achieve the best outcome it requires that all employees and the management team from the highest level of the Directorate to the lowest level should work together as a team. The TQM system helps to create an atmosphere of teamwork thus in the case of Best Buy retailer team would have worked, and the issue of misplaced inventories would have been a forgotten case.
Another problem concerning the use of TQM system is that it is data driven in nature. It enables the organization to get the statistics of the inventory that makes tracing of misplaced or missing inventory easy to find. The case we studied on the Canadian retailer is that the products the customers needed would lose or become hard to trace. The TQM system best solves the measurement and incomplete data.
Just In Time (JIT)
The just in time operations theory is paramount in a modernized supply chain of an organization despite the fact that it is simple in its nature. It is a cost effective approach as it seeks to reduce the number of products held by an organization as inventory. It functions in the following ways:
Producing goods and delivering them to the customers promptly thus there will be no need for storage of the goods as inventory which might be prone to outdated inventory system as in the Canadian Best Buy retailer.
The partially finished goods are immediately assembled to be finished products that save on high cost.
The raw materials are not allowed to lie idle. Instead, they are efficiently utilized and made into parts of the products to be produced.
The principle that lies on this kind of theory is that consumers are identified with their specific needs so that production of goods is based on the customer needs and specifications that mean that production relies on the consumer order of products (Brown, Bessant & Lamming, 2013, p.34). This requires a highly sophisticated management system to realize low costs of storage of goods.
The benefit of the just in time theory is that there is proper management of movements of products and inventory since production is made on order. Movements are efficiently monitored thus loss of goods and misplacement or shrinking is managed. Production lines also increase in its speed because of the minimization of wastages. It helps to eliminate any waste that makes the supply chain to be efficient and perfect in its operations.
Theory of Constraints (TOC)
The theory of constants is an operations management theory that identifies a constraint or a limiting factor that stands on the course of achieving a particular objective and changing that particular bottleneck to become a stepping-stone towards achieving success. Improvement of the theory takes an approach that is scientific in nature as it takes a hypothesis of manufacturing processes and creating a constraint on the weakest lines of production. For instance, the thin line of operating an outdated inventory system would have been made the restriction in the Canadian Best Buy retail (Suresh, Kumar & Anil, 2009, p.43).
The theory helps to achieve profitability goals of an organization by identification and getting rid of bottlenecks, provision of analyzing and resolving tools as well as measurement of management performance for better decision making.
The primary benefit of the theory of constraints is that it prioritizes on making organizational improvements thus the profitability is increased. Recovery is usually quite fast thus, the critically affected departmental segments will be saved quickly. More products will be produced, and the chains of distribution will be efficient and free from manufacturing bottlenecks.
References
Brown, S, Bessant, J. R., & Lamming, R. (2013). Strategic operations management
Paton, S, Clegg, B., Hsuan, J., & Pilkington, A. (2011). Operations management. London:
McGraw-Hill Higher Education.
Suresh, N., & Kumar, S. Anil. (2009). Operations Management. New Age International
