Operations Management

I have been working in IT services industry for last 12 years. We work in teams where everyone has specific roles and responsibilities. I have had some experience long time back, where I had project manager, supervisor, team lead. And the problem for team member happened when these people give different directions in a crisis.   In my experience, for our project we did not really have proper plan to execute a project and client was providing directions. While we were junior analysts, the leads were interpreting the clients asks differently. And they were giving us directions as per their understandings which were not same. It caused us lot of rework and end of the day we got a dissatisfied client as their requirements were not being met and they felt misunderstood/ un heard, I would imagine that must had been frustrating. I was not a team lead but just an analyst, being a team member, I had to do what I was being told. So, the quality of work or deliverable was not good and as

Majority of the successful businesses follow mainly four generic strategies. Cost leadership is mainly companies serving price-conscious customers. A good example in the USA would be McDonald's, Walmart, Dollar Tree. When you think about McDonald's, you can think about their drive-throughs, or the questionable meats, either way there one can find a quick bit for a $1. The same thing with Dollar Store, everything is $1 and that is a great attraction for price-sensitive customers. Differentiation is another strategy that works. Think about Zappos, which does not offer many discounts, but due to their quality and service they can charge a premium to their customers. Likewise, when we think about Whole Foods Market, this grocery chain attracts a health-conscious crowd who mainly follow some sort of diet. Whole Foods Market has all organic foods and diet-specific grocery. Because of that, people following those special diets are often regular to the Whole Foods Market, despite

Challenges of the organization – Restoration Affiliates is a collection of remodeling and restoration individuals and businesses.   To beat the national competitions, dozens of restoration businesses came together to provide an alternative. To serve a large client, the resources required could be supplied by big businesses. So, RA was formed to serve such large clients where any numbers of resources and equipment would be required. But such an attempt had failed in the past due to over promise and under deliver. And due to lack of trust among stakeholders. RA does not know how to establish a protocol to make sure that each member is contributing equally. If in one location multiple service providers are providing restoration services, how to split works between them so no one feels deprived. How to incentivize referral? And the final question was how big they got to be to compete against the big restoration businesses.    RA has rudimentary technology. In their line of work, r

SWOT stands for Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities and threat analysis. I have completed my Bachelors of Technology in the year 2007 and I have been working in IT services sector ever since. My experience is my strength, along with my “can do” attitude and optimistic outlook. I have always worked in customer-facing projects as a part of a team. So, understanding customer needs, communication and team playing are important qualities one need to succeed. Stating during the recession I learned early in my life the importance of being lean and agile, clients appreciate what saves them time and money, identifying those areas is a great skillset to have any time. Lately, my weakness is not being able to allocate enough time for my work and for my studies. I was managing my work and studies just fine. But, 2 weeks back I came to India to visit my parents. Ever since because of the change of situation, I am noticing that I am finding it difficult to concentrate and finish my tasks. But, I h

 What is a strategic resource? A strategic resource is an asset that is valuable, rare, difficult to imitate, and nonsubstitutable(Barney, 1991). Valuable resources help an organization to capitalize on opportunities and defend against threats. For example, South West Airlines is profitable almost every year because of the staff and the culture they have that puts employees first. So, the employees give their best and as a result of the airlines profitable. While in recent past during 2001 and 2008 the airlines' industry hit an air pocket in the USA. Gary Kelly the CEO or South West Said: “How can you say you care about your employees if you allow your company to become unprofitable?” In South West’s culture strikes, layoffs are rare as a result employee morale is up and that reflects in customer service. Job satisfaction plays a critical role. Kelly’s other formula is “Take care of employees, employees will take care of customers, customers will take care of the company and its

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