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Advantages and disadvantages of inventory control
Advantages and disadvantages of inventory control
Advantages and disadvantages of inventory control
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Through reading The Goal, by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox, I have learned that there is a great importance for productive organization when running a business. The book is an investigation into the life of a redeeming plant that was headed into a downward spiral that would have closed them down. The book is an investigation into the life of a plant that is in a downward spiral until new management ideas start to arise and turn the business upside down and back on track to making money. The book portrays how scientific and systematic thinking processes helped this plant turn its functions into a more positive business, increasing their cash flow by reorganization within the plant.
The first positive step toward a comeback occurs when Alex Rogo, the plant manager, recognizes the true goal of his company: to make money. The goal of every company is oftentimes lost in statistical, production, and efficiency data. In order to make money, a customer must have a want or need for the company’s product(s). A customer is going to value the satisfaction they get from the product. Customers want to find the best deal for the product they are buying. Usually customers look at prices, quality, and dependability. In this book we discover just how important it is to the plant’s customers to get their shipments on time. Fast delivery proves to be a key factor in gaining clients for the plant. When Alex realizes how well his plant is doing with the shipment dates, he decides to take it a step further by cutting the batch sizes in half. Not only does this benefit the customers but the plant as well by reducing the time parts sit in the plant and increasing the flow speed of parts. This gives Alex’s plant an advantage in the marketplace because customers come to them for their faster delivery.
Before the new system, the plant was not giving their customers what they wanted. Jonah helped the plant realize that what was really needed was to have the orders sent to their customers on time. The plant was having trouble getting shipments out on time creating a backlog of orders. When there was a demand for a certain order, more expenses were added to put all efforts on one sale. This caused a negative chain effect throughout the plant because of their faulty cost management system.
We have cumulated a profit of $206 million over this period, second of the industry. Our goal of escalating profit has advised us to increase automation level and for cutting costs, which enabled us to have the margins of all products above 30% in 2019 and an average margin of 53.4% in 2024. Additionally, we invested to keep our products updated to the market trend with an attention to customer buying criteria. Moreover, starting from recent years, we run our full capacity with second shifts whenever the market need has a possibility to accommodate our production. To achieve a greater profit, we based our pricing strategy on the market movements in general by decreasing our price by $0.50 every year except for our Low End product-Acre.
1. Management Improvement - Mr. Walsh should take up management degree. He needs to learn employee empowerment and delegation. He needs to learn employee empowerment and delegation. The plant manager needs to be trained on leadership since he has no experience in management. He should also start hiring a public relations specialist and a marketing specialist to improve on these two aspects of the business.
Many people believe that in order to succeed in a business that is having difficulties, it is important to focus on a particular area in order to be better productive in each of them, and be able to reach the goal. Instead, Goldratt and Jonah demonstrates that is important to focus on the company as a whole, but at the same time, it shows that it is incorrectly to only focus in an specific manufacturing department, or one plant, or a department within the plant, because people should not be concerned in local optimums.
Introduction: The Goal, written by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox, is a management-oriented novel that illustrates the process of ongoing improvement. The novel revolves around several significant characters, including the main character, Alex Rogo, who is a manager in a manufacturing plant. Another prime character is Mr. Bill Peach, the vice president of the manufacturing plant. Lastly, the key character in the novel is the physicist, Jonah, who was a former professor of Mr. Alex Rogo. There were some other characters too, but these were the most fundamental ones.
Understanding the changes in the market and the growth of e-commerce prompted the organization to invest heavily in its supply chain management forecasting and management system. The development of a network of distribution centers and Direct Fulfillment Centers to position the company to capitalize on the growing e-commerce market indicate a strong understanding of the need to adapt to changing market forces. The company spent over $300 million on new distribution center facilities in 2014 alone, and continues to expand to maintain efficiency in product movement (Cassidy,
From what I haven taken from this book, I have come to a conclusion that with a few steps, you can find a way to make your company productive and meet the overall goal of your company. A clear understanding of what your company’s goal is and to be able to use this goal to understand what being productive means in terms of your company. Knowing the measurements that are needed to reach your goal. The ability to try new experiments and be able to brainstorm and talk together with a dedicated team of researchers that want to reach the goal and wont stop experimenting different processes until the end goal is met.
Happy Chips, Inc. is faced with a serious problem, with only having one mass merchandise customer called “Buy 4 Less” being unhappy with the company’s operating performance. Buy 4 Less had several problems cited including frequent stock outs, poor customer service responsiveness, and high prices for the products being supplied. Buy 4 Less came up with solutions they think seem fit to fix the problems they found with Happy Chips, Inc. and if Happy Chips, Inc. wishes to remain a supplier to their company they will have to incorporate these changes. The problem however with this scenario, is that employees of Happy Chip, Inc. are not happy with the demands Buy 4 Less has bestowed upon them which include providing direct store delivery four times a week instead of three, installing an automated order inquiry system to increase customer service responsiveness, and decreasing product prices by 5%. Even though the easiest thing for Happy Chips, Inc. to do is to agree to the changes Buy 4 Less wants them to do, Wendell Worthmann, the manager of logistics cost analysis doesn’t agree to the changes right away. The main problem with this case is that Buy 4 Less is Happy Chips, Inc. one and only mass merchandise customer that accounts for 400,000 annual unit sales and 12% of annual revenue. With the mass merchandise segment having such a high profit potential, Happy Chips, Inc.
Target Corporation needs to increase product availability based on the customer needs using a forecasting and supply chain
Jim Collins and his research team have done a wonderful job identifying what it takes for a company to go from good to great. I found this book to be extremely interesting and would like to share several of my thoughts.
The global supply chain variability is causing customer delivery delayed by around 40% and also experiencing quality problems that is introduced by the humidity difference between the locations of Chinese manufacturing plants. Moreover, it is taking much longer to deliver products, and the spare parts preventing any timely customer services. The goal is to come up with a faster product delivery and product cycle employing strategic and tactical changes that might improve supply chain problem and address the quality and increase customer
Luckily, the damage was not as bad on the machine as initially thought, and after everyone at the plant worked overtime, the order was shipped very late into the evening. Working overtime is against current division policy, but was necessary to meet Bill's demand about shipping the product today. Afterwards, Alex knows he cannot dedicate the entire plant to just one order and begins to consider why the plant is underperforming when he has good people, good technology, and a good plant. Alex concludes the competition is killing him, specifically the Japanese competition, which is still beating them on price and delivery although Alex's plant has closed the gap in quality and product design. Alex has already cut costs by as much as he can but his prices are still above the competition. Also, Alex's plant has piles of inventory lying around and despite materials being released on schedule, nothing is completed and shipped out on time.
The United Parcel Service has taken steps to restructure itself from an operations-oriented company into a market driven industry. Recent findings suggested the need to achieve better external customer satisfaction. The steps taken were to improve the overall of all customers that utilize the services at UPS. Other key areas that need improvement are volume logistics and customer logistics. The main priority at UPS is to deliver the package on time. They provide a much-anticipated alternative to the monopoly of the United States Postal Service. This competitor has been unreliable on multiple occasions. The average customer is feed up with the inconsistencies of the United States Postal Service. Unlike this company, the United Parcel Service helped define the word efficiency. Even from the earliest days, when Jim Casey and Claude Ryan, two Seattle teens, gave life to the now world-known UPS delivery company. ”Management is the...
Lean manufacturing and just-in-time processing are great business strategies that can severely stress a supply chain. The supply chain and supply chain management is a critical operations management element for any major company to succeed and remain competitive in the global market. The supply chain is one of many pieces critical to maximizing value to the end customer and requires close management to minimize external impacts. If a company is relying on another company to supply the raw materials needed for their production line, then impacts to this other company could impact their supply chain. Careful risk management is needed to optimize performance. As a company expands into global markets and global suppliers, this risk and management challenge is multiplied. The global nature of the company could impact important activities such as transportation, funds transfers, suppliers, distributors, accounting and information sharing. Disruption to the supply chain can significantly reduce revenue, cut market share, inflate costs and threaten production. A major disruption would have obvious impacts to profit, but could have additional intangible impacts to the credibility of the company if products are not delivered on time.
The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement is a very popular and bestseller book in management section. Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox wrote the book in 1984. It comes in 390 pages. It published by The North River Press. In 20 years, over than three million copies were sold, translated into 21 languages and taught in over 200 collages. The way the book is written was like telling a story although the contents are science. That is because the author thinks it is the best way for education.
This is the activity carried out by organizations that own production sites, and their performance has a major impact on product cost, quality, speed of delivery and delivery reliability, and flexibility [8]. As it is quite an important part of the supply chain, production needs to be measured and continuously improved. Suitable metrics for the production level are as follows. Order lead-time, the total order cycle time, called order to delivery cycle time, refers to the time elapsed in between the receipt of customer order until the delivery of finished goods to the customer. The reduction in order cycle time leads to reduction in supply chain response time, and as such is an important performance measure and source of competitive advantage [9]. It directly interacts with customer service in determining competitiveness. Range of product and services: According to [8] a plant that manufactures a broad product range is likely to introduce new products more slowly than plants with a narrow product range. Plants that can manufacture a wide range of products are likely to perform less well in the areas of value added per employee, speed and delivery reliability. This clearly suggests that product range affects supply chain performance. Effectiveness of scheduling techniques is another important measure of supply chain effectiveness. Scheduling refers to the time or date on or by which