More handpicked essays just for you.
Operational management three concepts
Operational management three concepts
Relationship between operations and supply chain
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
In the following part, we will try to analysis and assess the operation of Zara by using the appropriate concepts and technique learnt in the lesson. In addition, we will decide how well the operation is decided and managed.
Supply Chain
Zara is renowned for its vertical integration compared with other fast- fashion companies. This vertically integrated supply chain involved design, manufacturing, distribution and retailing. It is believed to help them react quickly and flexibly to the customer demand while keeping the stock in minimum.
The efficiency of Zara is high because of its small scare in operation which includes small scale in order quantity, production lot size and bulk transport. It is because Zara has one-shop production which can help Zara control the production process. In this situation, Zara can create numerous new designs (probably 12000) with small quantity each year to satisfy successively changing wants of
…show more content…
It has great economic performance in this few years, keeping increasing the profit. Therefore, in the following part, we will discuss the sustainability of Zara. It will be divided into three part – social performance, environmental performance and economic performance.
For the social performance, there is a human concern happened before. In 2011, Zara was found that providing a poor working condition in Brazil and forced the labour work for a long time. In addition, it is found that the labour right violation in the Zara’s supply chain in 2015. These may affect the reputation of Zara in the public. However, its owner Inditex has donated €10million to Africa and Latin America for education every year and its environment policy may also give the public the confidence. Therefore, the main question is that whether Zara can bear its own social responsibility. If it can bear its social responsibility, there should be sustainable
However, Zara are usually compared to premium brands for instance Armani, Hugo Boss and others because of this Zara have some stores which are premium and others which are affordable. Zara mostly have a premium pricing strategy the pricing is made by optimising development and training costs (Hitesh Bhasin, Marketing mix of Zara) looking at pricing as portion strategy Zara are looking into high quality and high price. Zara pricing approach in my opinion is value-based for example a detail in a product and the quality of the product will mean the cost will be higher for instance a well designed detailed leather jacket will cost more compared to a basic design leather jacket because the difference of producing the detailed jacket which takes time to designing and material being used compared to the basic quick to make
21). Corporate social responsibility (CSR) directly corresponds to one’s organizational culture and the voluntary implementation of these beliefs, expectations and values. It goes hand in hand with their organizational reputability, especially if society benefits from them operating in an economic, social and environmentally sustainable manner (Global Affairs Canada, 2016). Two companies that demonstrate this initiative mindset are Tentree and Nike, yet they execute in completely different manners. On the organizational spectrum Tentree falls under the Social Venture category, meaning they are for-profit but also on focus on issues regarding social equity and environmental sustainability. Their social responsibility initiative is to plant ten trees for every item purchased by individuals on their website, or from retail vendors (Tentree, n.d., para. 1). Nike is categorized under being a Social Purpose Business because it achieves its desired social impact as well as continuous profit (Jones, George, & Haddad, 2016, p. 4). Nike’s social responsibility initiative is to transform production development and manufacturing to overall minimize the company 's environmental footprint (Nike,
Social responsibility can be defined as “the continuing commitment by business to behave ethically and contribute to economic development while improving the quality of life of the workforce and their families as well as of the local community and society at large” (Mallen Baker, 2004). In addition, social responsibility has been defined differently by various corporate leaders that provide guidelines which impacts how one manages the core business. Social responsibility is an essential part of a business. If managed correctly should strengthen the competitive spirit of the company and provide prosperity to society.
The famous scandals facing the corporate world that is Enron and WorldCom brought a lot of disruptions to their operations. This brought about strict government regulations, as a result. This also marked as the reminder for NGOs to begin criticizing MNCs. This brought about ranking that necessitated firms to submit their non-financial performance records alongside their financial performance ones. The media has also become a close checker on companies. This has brought the need for firms to embrace social responsibility in their operations to curb battling with restrictors. Firms have also established good relations with their suppliers both as a prerequisite for effective business and as a social responsibility. (Cetinkaya, 2010)
So before we go in greater detail on the different perspectives related to social responsibility, one might question the meaning of social responsibility. It is generally agreed that social responsibility is defined as the business obligation to make decisions that benefit societ...
2) How specifically do the distinctive features of Zara’s business model affect its operating economics? Specifically, compare Zara with an average retailer with similar posted prices. In convenient to assume that on average, retail selling prices are about twice as high as manufacturers’ selling prices.
Analysis & Recommendation: Zara’s main strategy is the ability to respond very quickly to the demands of target customers which called for identifying trends of the customer in advance. The company has been able to identify the trends and meet the demand with the help of its autonomously organized structure and its effective value chain systems. The present system followed by Zara has been very effective and very easy to maintain, which as a result has persuaded the company to continue without any change in the present system so far. The problem that Zara faces right now is that the system that they use, P-O-S (Point of Sale terminals), runs on DOS which Microsoft does not support anymore and any hardware change in the POS terminal will not be compatible with the current POS software. Although the sense of urgency for the change may not be that high, investing in IT infrastructure is a must as MS Dos is an obsolete technology and there is no contract or guarantee from their POS terminal vendor that they will continue supplying the same terminal with out much changes in the hardware for any specific period of time, therefore change is unavoidable. The other main issue that Zara faces is that the stores don’t share inventory information electronically and hence inventory management becomes highly difficult and manual. The decision making process is based on the judgment of employees throughout the company instead of relying on a small set of decision makers; the majority of the decisions were made by store managers and as a result they placed orders for the items rather than simply accepting and displaying what headquarters decided to send them.
Furthermore Explaining the ZARA strategies of vertical and horizontal integration through their innovative ideas and as through their these integrations the competitive advantageous they are
Segmentation: Some of the important bases for segmenting consumer markets are Demographic, Geographic, benefits, Psychographic and Usage rate segmentation. Geographic segmentation is the priority of Zara. It is a global brand and its supply chain management is very much perfect. It helps Zara in getting the latest trends into stores in three weeks’ time based on consumer preferences. It’s a Spanish brand, so it would a better option for Zara to open more store in European countries. Consumers would be more interested in making their decision towards preferring Zara. It has dived its segment on the basis of gender where more preference is for women and less preference for men. It can be seen that in any Zara store there are two floor for women and 1 floor or a part of a floor for men products. For example, the store in Leeds. It focuses on women age group up to 35 years who is more concerned about having a fashionable life style. As per the psychographic segmentation, Zara consumers are more ambitious and are attracted towards fancy and trendy products. It makes products that give...
For the past several decades, globalization has been a hot topic and it also anticipates every aspect of the world to connect each other. Likewise, globalization also allows consumers to have more access to catch up with updated fashion. The advantages of globalization bring a new philosophy called fast fashion, which holds quick response time and enhanced design in fashion apparel industry. In this paper, I will deliver By exploring all the aspects of each system, I will conclude the reason why fast fashion becomes the mainstream of the fashion apparel industry, and use one particular brand, Zara, as an example to discover the impact on consumer behavior in detail. Finally I will make some comments on the future of fast fashion and what luxury brands will react to this circumstance……..
In order for a retail company, like Zara to produce good sales results it is dependent on the level of stock on hand. If Zara has too much inventory in a given store it can slow the stores cash flow as well as reduce profit due to markdowns. Therefore, excellent inventory control is of high importance to Zara in order to realize sales targets. Studying the open-to-buy has allowed me to realize it’s tremendous importance as well as usefulness for a buyer. As one of the two major tools of merchandise planning, the open-to-buy plan is used by many retailers today as an inventory management tool, in order to determine the quantity of inventory that needs to be bought. This is generally done on a monthly basis in order to reach revenue projections.
In the case, Marks & Spencer and Zara, it discusses two business process designs that each company took. You first had Marks & Spencer, who had a more traditional approach. Their chain started of with the buying team, design, developers, merchandisers, technologist, suppliers, logistics, and lastly the store. Zara, however, comes up with a new innovative design. With this new design in effect the delivery of new collections only has a lead-time of 5 days. They were able to cut down this time due to the fact that products where mainly produced on Galicia.
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a very familiar term in today’s world. Most of the successful companies try to be ethical and socially responsible toward their stakeholders. Because becoming ethical and socially responsible gains a lot in terms of profit or capturing more market share (Aras and Crowther,2009). This socially responsible approach is paved by the CSR activities of the companies which has a great contribution to their corporate strategy of winning the customers’ mind. In this assignment, the pros and corn of CSR activities of a particular organization a...
Corporate Social Responsibility is an organisation’s obligation to serve the company’s own interest and the one’s of the society. Moreover, Corporate Social Responsibility has a definition of a concept where the companies integrate social and the environmental concerns into their own business operation and also on a basis of voluntary with their interactions they have with the stakeholders. Corporate Social Resp...
Facilitating functions are those which make the process easier for both, the manufacturer and consumers. Zara is a proud owner of 90 percent of its stores in brick and mortar, located mostly in popular and dense traffic locations, which is meant to be an efficient advertisement technique.