Operations Management

China’s Aviation sector witnessed rapid growth with its middle class. The civil aviation authority in China expects the air passenger to go by 15% through 2020. The Chinese airline industry is regulated, and they cannot reduce price as much as they want, but to win over customers, the Airlines adopted strategies like discounted tour packages. Lucky Air has near monopoly in Yunnan province where passengers are projected to grow from 21 million to 24 million. In a regulated environment, Lucky Air had paid its fuel bill upfront and the fuel charge was higher in the Yunnan region. And there was no way to hedge fuel price, hence the airlines were vulnerable to a fuel price hike. In China, most cities have only one airport. Wherever they have 2, the landing fee is the same in both the places. In the case of Airplane leasing, the capacity expansion is capped at 35% per year. And the airlines have to go through one central body, smaller airlines have less priority to get new aircraft, someti

  I have been working in the IT services industry for the last 12 years. We work in teams where everyone has specific roles and responsibilities. I have had some experience a long time back, where I had a project manager, supervisor, team lead. And the problem for team members happened when these people give different directions in a crisis.   In my experience, for our project, we did not really have a proper plan to execute a project, and the 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 the same. It caused us a lot of rework and the end of the day we got a dissatisfied client as their requirements were not being met and they felt misunderstood/ unheard, I would imagine that must have 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

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 such 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

SWOT stands for Strengths, 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 the team. So, understanding customer needs, communication, and team playing are important qualities one needs 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 skill set 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.

Resource the based theory is important because it provides an organization with a competitive advantage. In any industry that has many competitors, it is important for each organization to have certain advantages over the other organization to stick around. A strategic resource is an asset that is valuable, rare, difficult to imitate, and nonsubstitutable(Barney, 1991). Valuable resources help organizations to capitalize on opportunities and defend against threats. For example, South West Airlines are 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 the airlines in profitable. While in recent past during 2001 and 2008 the airline 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 mora

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 a 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 people. So in a slow economy, Apple might see a decline in sales. And in a growing economy, Apple sales might soar. S fo

              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 diamonds 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 diamonds, and he was in a dilemma whether he should buy diamonds from DeBeers and help these exploitations.   We are going to Perform a PESTEL analysis on DeBeers. While natural diamonds