Operations Management

I would like to discuss Apple Inc today. I am sure we all know about Apple and familiar with the products and services it offers. We can do a PESTAL analysis of Apple. P for Political – Current trade war between the USA and China made Apple vulnerable to tariffs. Apple is a California, USA based company that does business all over the world, and it’s partner Foxconn, which is a Taiwanese company manufactures parts in China. In the current geopolitical situation when nations are imposing or considering the idea to impose the tariff on each other made Apple vulnerable with it’s globally exposed supply chain. Apple needs a politically stable environment to continue their operation without any major disruption. E for Economic – While the US economy is doing pretty well with low employment, but the Chinese economy and the European economy is slowing down. A low growth environment is not very good for Apple as it produces really expensive phones, which are not really essential goods for p

DeBeers is the leader in selling diamonds. Natural diamonds are mined from countries like South Africa, Congo, Sierra Leone, Canada, Australia, India, etc.   While we saw Kendall Lee wanted to propose his girlfriend with a diamond ring, he was not entirely convinced a natural diamond is the best choice. In the 1990s a civil war broke out in western and central parts of Africa. The Rebel groups in Angola, Congo, and Sierra Leone were mining rough diamond and selling those directly to merchants or smuggling those to neighboring countries and mixing them up with legitimately mined rough diamonds. This way the rebel groups were funding the war against the government. In 1990s global share of blood diamond was 15%, it fell to 1% by 2010 (Curley, n.d.). Lee was aware of blood diamond, and he was in a dilemma whether he should buy a diamond from DeBeers and help these exploitations. We are going to Perform a PESTEL analysis on DeBeers. While natural diamonds have its charm, the younges

The first idea is to have a vision for the organization which would be futuristic and shared by everyone in the organization. Any organization should know what they are working towards, the employees, customers, stakeholders should know where the organization wants to be. Vision statement works as motivation and might not reflect the present for the firm and guide the firm to where it needs to be. For example, Steve Ells the co-founder of Chipotle Mexican Grill restaurant chain had a vision “that food served fast doesn’t have to be low quality and that delicious food doesn’t have to be expensive”, and Chipotle is based on that foundation (Chipotle,n.d.). it is futuristic, not bound by any timeline and as stakeholders, we get the idea what the restaurant chain is trying to do. When a company is global, it is especially important that their vision is known to people, so that when they go to foreign markets people get an idea about them. Second, this is the mission statement for the f

The organization I have chosen is Chipotle Mexican Grill. I am sure some of my classmates from the USA are aware of this restaurant chain. Being health conscious myself I love Chipotle, so I chose to discuss them. Steve Ells the co-founder of this restaurant chain is “ that food served fast doesn’t have to be low quality and that delicious food doesn’t have to be expensive”, and Chipotle is based on that foundation (Chipotle,n.d.). We all are aware of the reputation the American fast Casual restaurants have, where the food is affordable but questionable. Steve Ells had this vision that they will be able to serve healthy food in a fast-casual format which will not break the bank. Chipotle’s mission statement is to deliver “food with integrity” (The motley fool, 2018). Chipotle sources the ingredients from a specific set of farmer or farms who raise animals and vegetables the way they were supposed to. And customers are served those ingredients. When we think about their visio

Strategic management is a constant part of the capital market, where businesses are competing against each other. We are witnessing different strategic management every day. Amazon started Amazon Prime, and they deliver mostly what we buy in 1 day now. Walmart had to adopt a strategy to counter Amazon, so companies like Walmart, Best Buy is using their stores as warehouses and trying to deliver stuff to the customer faster. We can discuss the five “P’s of strategic planning for these companies. Planning – Jeff Bezos started selling books on the internet and then expanded Amazon as a platform on the internet. Keeping the customer at the center, now Amazon is not just an online retailer but media company, IT infrastructure company, and many things. The plan Jeff Bezos came up with, that was to sell books then CDs gradually evolved into Amazon we have today. Ploy – I think starting Amazon Prime was a great ploy by Amazon. When it started, it was cheaper than Netflix membership, i

Clear Title Good title is a must, as the moderator should be able to understand what the bug report is about from the title alone. One bug per report Report one bug in a single report, no more, no less. If you put in too many bugs, some of them may be overlooked. Actual results: This section should expand on the title by explaining when/where/why/how the issue occurs. Expected results The Expected Results section should focus on how the app behaves in normal conditions. Ex: The authorisation phase completes successfully, the user is logged into the newly created account and redirected to the home page of the app. Steps to reproduce: The Steps to Reproduce section should focus on providing accurate and specific information so that the issue could be replicated. Severity of the bug Bugs can be classified by how severe the issue is. We use 5 categories to identify the severity of the bug. Critical -  the bugs we need to fix immediately. These are the bugs that wil

Private Debt financing  –             Private debt and corporate bonds are different in a way that the private debt is usually held by intuitional investors, funds, insurance companies (Reicherter, n.d.). And these private debts are not as liquid as corporate bonds. The company needs to find a fund or company to get the private debt. This debt is similar otherwise. There is no change in ownership due to private debt. The company will have to make the interest payment and at the end of the loan term, they will have return the full amount due to the lender. In any case, the business does not do well or has to file for bankruptcy, they will have to liquidate the assets to pay back the lender.                       This company has a current Debt t Equity ratio of 0.6, so based on a rating on rating agency, it will have to pay the interest on the debt. And the payment of interest on debts will go out from earnings. Most probably the company will have to pay a higher interest rate, a