Introduction
The goal of this essay is to explain the various functions and strategies of value chain management and discuss how to implement them in a flat screen display business, so as to improve the performance of the operating system which ultimately will increase the efficiency and quality of production thereby helping them gain a competitive advantage over their competitors. Which will result in increased the profits for the business.
Value Chain Management: Development of a set of functional-level strategies that increase the performance of the operating system a company uses to transform inputs into finished goods and services. (George and Jones, 2006:267)
Operating System: The different functional activities an organization combines and uses to acquire inputs, convert inputs to outputs, and dispose of the outputs. (Answers, 2006:1)
Value chain
Refers to the idea that a company is chain of functional activities that transform inputs into an output of goods and services that customer's value.
Production function
Responsible for the creation of a good or service
Marketing and Sales function
Increase value customer perceives to be contained in a product
Service function
Provide after-sales service and support
Materials management function
Controls the movement of physical materials through the value chain
Information systems function
Controls the electronic system for managing inventory, tracking sales, pricing products, etc.
(Michael E. Porter, 1985:37-43))
Therefore one must divide the business up into the fore mentioned functions, specifically: creating an efficient and productive process whereby producing the flat-screen displays. Design and come up with a competitive and catchy marketing campaign which promotes the quality of the product and its value for money so as to increase the customers' perceived opinion of the product. Establish an after sales service department within the company so as to offer consumers after-sales service and support with any problems which may arise with the product. Develop an efficient and simple method in which the physical materials needed to produce the flat-screen displays move along the value chain so as to lower costs and increase overall efficiency, and lastly establish and maintain a electronic system whereby one can efficiently manage the flat-screen inventory, the recording and progress of the sales of the screens and the pricing of the inventory.
Improving Responsiveness to Customers
Usually customers prefer:
A lower price to a higher price.
High-quality products to low-quality products.
Quick service to slow service (also prefer good after-sale support)
Many features over few features.
Products that are; customized or tailored to their specific needs.
(George and Jones, 2006: 271)
Therefore to improve the responsiveness to customers, the company must evaluate the needs and wants of the consumers, this can be done by conducting market research and surveys.
The tool essentially shows the chain of activities required to develop and deliver the products. The effectiveness of the organization vastly improves when all the key activities such as customer, vendor, suppliers and partner within the value chain working smoothly. The value chain used to reduce operational and production cost using low-cost producer strategy. If two service or products are delivery by two separate divisions for two different markets, there are functionality and process that can be integrated to save cost.
The series of activities that are enacted by a firm that add value to a product beyond the cost of the production are referred to as the value chain. Harley Davidson offers a combination of superior performance and unique attributes within its value chain that promotes their core competencies and provides them with a competitive advantage.
In a high competitive world market and with the increasing rational buyers a company can only win by creating and delivering the best customer value than the others competitors do. To succeed, a company needs to use the concepts of value chain.
Royal Caribbean Cruise Ltd (RCCL) has two distinct supply chains which create a unique challenge. Each supply chain is managed by a Provision Master. The first supply chain includes all food, beverage, and lodging inventories that needed for the trips. The second supply chain encompasses “corporate spend” materials, such as office supplies, printing services, hardware and software, printed materials, computer supplies, marine consumables (spare parts, fuel, lubricants, any and all services associated with the ship maintenance and etc).
To get started, we first need to understand what Crocs' value chain is and how that process plays a role in the strategic direction of the company. The authors of our text, views the value chain as "the entire series of organizational work activities that add value at each step, from raw materials to finished product. In its entirety, the value chain can encompass supplier's suppliers to the customer's customers"(Robbins & Coulter, 2009, p.430). At Crocs, the entire series of organization work activities may be broken down even further using Porter's value chain model of viewing a manufacturing (or service) primary and secondary activities as a "system made up of subsystems, each with inputs, transformation processes and outputs"(Ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk, 2011). A diagram, compliments of Porter(1985) can be seen below:
The aim of the value chain structure is to maximize the value creation while minimizing costs. Value Chain Analysis is a useful tool for working out how you can create the greatest possible value for your customers. Value chain analysis relies on the rudimentary economic principle of competitive advantage -companies are best served by operating in divisions where they have a relative prolific benefit compared to their competitors. Concomitantly, companies should ask themselves where they can deliver the paramount value to their customer. To conduct a value chain analysis, the company begins by identifying each part of its production process and recognizing where steps can be purged or enhancements can be made. These improvements can result
An operating system (OS) is an intermediate program which used to run other program in a computer. OS is considered as backbone because hold the responsibility to manage both hardware and software resource used in a computer. OS responsible to control and allocated memory to recognize input from external devises then transmit the output as computer display. OS also manage the file in a computer drive and control peripherals, such as printer and scanner.
Value chain model highlights specific activities where the information systems could be applied. This model is set to identify leverage points in which IS could have a strategic impact to enhance company’s competitive position. The value chain perceives firm as a series of interconnected activities that add a margin of value.
Every company in any industry consists of collection of activities that help the company to create value for their customers, these collection of activities celled “ value chain”. The value chain has two types of activities: the primary activities and costs, and the support activities and costs. We will explain both of them that are related to Nintendo.
With the various products (i.e., Xfinity) and services (i.e., Universal Studios) that Comcast offers, it is difficult to narrow down the overall one item that Comcast offers and builds a value chain around. Is it our core products of internet, television, phone, and home security that make up Xfinity or services that we offer such as Universal Studios and much more? If we are to incorporate all that Comcast is made up of, I think we could indicated that as a whole, we provide entertainment. Entertainment is what makes up Comcast and building around that thought is how we can envision what the value chain
By adopting the value chain into a manufacturing company, it will gain efficiency, effectiveness, reduce the product cost and improve continuously. For example, Toyota has implemented Toyota Product System (TPS) integrated information system with the business process which allowed the company to be more efficiency, effectiveness and reduce inventory cost. (Toyota
Value chain analyses a firm 's internal activities such as planning, production, and development, packaging and distribution so as to create value for clients. The function of the value chain is to identify the sources for cost reduction along with quality improvement. It means value chain is used to identify the strong and weak points, positive and negative points, the scope of improvement; in a nutshell, the advantages and disadvantages of the activities taking place in the system. The value chain is also called as a strategic analysis tool and it is a well-known concept in business management industry.
The operating system is a remarkably complex set of instructions that schedules the series of jobs (user applications) to be performed by the computer and allocates them to the various hardware systems of a computer, such as the central processing unit, main memory, and peripheral systems. It is the master program based on which all other program work. Popular operating systems are Microsoft Desk Operating System (MS-DOS), Microsoft Windows, Red Hat Linux, Apple Mackintosh, etc.
An Operating System (OS) is a manager which manages hardware and software components and makes them usable to the end user.
Explain how the company’s value-chain activities can be better linked to create value for the company.