Amazon.com Operational strategy Essay

A gesture 2 What argon Amazon.coms free-enterprise(a) priorities and what should its operation strategy decoct on?Competitive priorities Keep the state of affairs of marketplace leader. economize the fast absorb a bun in the oveny. Low price focus User friendly website. functional(a) strategyPromote the website, especially in this time of the year, during the holidays. People go out be reminded of the website, and maybe visit the website because of the promotion. When the visitors argon on amazon.com, they must figure a nice shopping-environment. This pot be d nonp areil by eer improving the websites user friend nisusss, this can be done by improving the search engine for example. Or whateverthing as easy as changing some colors to match the season. challenge 4 FedEx strengthened its business on quick, dependable delivery of items being shipped by stress from one business to another. Its early advantages included global tracking of shipments development Web technolog y. The advancement of Internet technology enabled competitors to be amaze much more than sophisticated in order tracking. In addition, the advent of Web-based businesses put closet on increased ground transportation deliveries. Explain how this switch in the environment has affected FedExs operations strategy, especially relative to UPS, which has a strong hold on the business-to-consumer ground delivery business.Because FedEx lost their initial competitive advantage (UPS became a threat as they were able to deliver large volume of shipments because of the in advance(p) Internet technology as well), they had to come up with newoperations strategies to remain competitive FedEx Ground FedEx family controversyFedEx presently focuses on offset- salute operations and dependable delivery, to gain a new competitive advantage. foreland 6 Although all nine of the competitive priorities discussed in this chapter are relevant to a keep comp anys conquest in the marketplace, explain w hy a company should not inescapably try to excel in all of them. What determines the choice of the competitive priorities that a company should emphasize for its key wreakes?It really depends on the specific market you are operating in as a company. The company should focus on the most marketable assets by implementing demographics and forecasting future opportunities. blanket quality may influence the development speed and starting time cost operations could conflict with your volume flexibleness.BChads Creative Concepts started as a small company producing system make wooden furniture. Business was close, and Chad doubting Thomas decided to expand his business. Now, Chad added a ideal line of furniture to his business. The antecedency is still on the utilisation made furniture, therefore the standard line is put on the second place, leading to unfinished point of intersections and a immense inventory.Question 1 What types of decisions must Chad Thomas make daily for his companys operations to unknot effectively? Over the long run?Chad has to make operational decisions. In the long run, these decisions are Strategic decisions.Question 2 How did sales and marketing affect operations when they began to sell standard pieces to retail outlet?By changing to selling standard pieces in retail outlets next to the custom pieces, Chad has start promoting his business, because now there are serious competitors, which are easily reached by the customer. The whole production process changed, because now standard pieces are produced in the factory as well.Question 3 How has the move to producing standard furniture affected the companys financial structure?The sales of the standard line are increase steadily, provided still the most dollars of the sales come from the custom made pieces. However, the financial situation is not optimal, because lots of dollars are spend on inventory.Question 4 What might Chad Thomas have done otherwise to avoid some of the line of works he now faces?Thomas could make a second factory, focused on only producing standard pieces. By doing this, he can terminate the problem of priorities. So, by doing this, he can go down the inventory.Extra questionsQuestion 1 Explain the competitive priorities for both product lines (customized furniture and standard furniture) The priority of the company is the department of the customized furniture. But with both departments, there are different priorities. For customized furniture, the priority is to create a productive design, with the highest quality possible. For the standard furniture, the priority is deliver on time and a good price-quality ratio.Question 2 Identify the OPP (Order Penetration Point) of each productlines The OPP for the custom made pieces of furniture is the moment Chads staff start working on a project. The whole project is specifically made for one customer from the beginning. The OPP for the Standard pieces is the momentthat a customer buys the (already fully assembled) product. At that moment in time, the pieces are for that specific customer.Question 3 Which coalesce strategy would be the most effective for each of the product lines? For the custom made pieces flexible is the best strategy. This focuses on individual pieces. For the standard pieces, the line strategy is the best strategy. This strategy focuses on the whole line, not on individual pieces.Question 4 What would you advice Chads to do to solve the true problems? We would advise Chad to start a second factory. The current factory should be used for only the custom pieces. The new factory can be used for the standard pieces. With the two production processes separated, you can eliminate the problem of priority.Discussion questions1Its a job process, a process with the flexibility needed to produce a wide variety of products in evidential quantities. With considerable complexity and divergence in the steps performed. We think its easy to have high customer c ontact with inhering customers, because internal customers are closer to the company.2This sign implicates that the employees do not have any word in the company. Some customers could think that the employees are not good in performing their job, without any responsibility. Next to this, the employees could feel like they are not important to the company. So this sign works in a bad way.Furthermore, the sign implicates that the employees are very limited in their actions, and furthermore, this leads to busted customer contact.This sign is exactly the opposite of how the employees at Ritz Carlton work. Employees at this hotel have all the resources and responsibilities a man can have. Stories go round that hotel managers cut down in products from othercountries, just for customer satisfaction. In this case, with the sign, the employees hands are tied, and by this, customer satisfaction is not at its maximum.CQuestion 3 How do the process strategies of eBay and McDonalds differ and how do their choices relate to customer-introduced variability?eBay (mass customization)McDonalds (repetitive focus)eBay customers are less involved regarding the variability. They offer legion(predicate) different products for more different interests, and the customer basically buys whatever he or she exigencys low involvement. McDonalds on the other hand wants to know more specifically, what their customers want as they have less products to offer and are able to change their product line more often during the year. Lately, McDonalds organised a contest where the customer could compose their ideal hamburger. The winning hamburger is now being sold for a set time period.Question 4 Medical technology can outfit a patient with an imitation heart, or cure vision defects with the touch of a laser. However, hospitals still exertion with their back-office processes, such as getting X-ray files from radiology on the 4th floor to the first-floor view boxes in the emergency room wi thout having to send a runner. More than 30 percent of the estimated 30 billion health minutes each year are conducted by phone, fax or mail. To what extent, and how, can information technology improve productivity and quality for such processes? hatch that some doctors are not ready to give up their pads and pencils, and many hospitals have strong lines drawn around its departments, such as pharmacy, cardiology, radiology ad paediatrics.Basically, information technology cannot only improve productivity and quality, solely thinking more practically, it could save lives as all medical systems in a hospital work through faster and more advanced technologies. Understandably, it has to be 100 percent reliable and feasible and thats probably the current reason for some doctors, mentioned in the question, to keep working in an old-fashioned way that is for them safer and more reliable, but probably not as fast as up to date advanced information technologies available.Question 5 Consid er the range of processes in the financial services industry. What position on the customer-contact matrix would the process of selling financial services to municipalities (1) take in? The process of preparing periodic fund balance reports (2)? Explain why they would differ.1. former/Hybrid office2. Back officeThe first process requires some interaction to high interaction with the customer (municipality). It lies somewhere in the middle, as youre not working with individual clients (which require high interaction) but a client (municipality) that needs regular updates and interaction on the process. Preparing monthly fund balance reports is a continued routine process that requires low to none interaction and is the same with all customers.