Office Depot : Operations Management

Operations management is essential for the survival and success of any organization. According to Heizer & Render (2011), operations management (OM) is the set of activities that creates value in the form of goods and services by transforming inputs into outputs. Operations managers today contend with competition, globalization, inflation, consumer demand, and consistent change in technology. Managers must focus on the efficiency and effectiveness of processes such as cost, dependability, distribution, flexibility, and speed. The intent of this paper is to discuss the processes and operations management of the Kroger Company.

Chase, R. B., Jacobs, F. R., Aquilano, N.J. Operations management for competitive advantage (11th ed). New York: McGraw Hill/Irwin.

Per Satterlee, chapter eight of Organization Management and Leadership, is about operations management, which is how products or services are provided in the most efficient and effective way. “Operations management is the implementation of all the functions of management,” (Satterlee, p. 224). This includes where infrastructure may be built, where supplies and materials are obtained, production is scheduled, inventory is managed, and equipment is maintained.

Office Depot uses multiple inventory strategies to order products. 90% to 95% of goods are ordered through automatic replenishment, manual replenishment, pull replenishment, and global sourcing are also used depending on channel, volume, velocity and cost. (Office Depot, 2015). The accuracy of the inventory from both a DC and store perspective is critical to the organizations success. Heizer and Render (2014) state that record accuracy is a prerequisite to inventory management, production scheduling, and sales. Accuracy is maintained by either periodic or perpetual systems (p.479). In Office Depot, the stores are required to cycle-count technology items such as laptops, desktops computers, and tablets five days a week. Discrepancies are entered in the system and bounced off the local DC’s on-hand inventory discrepancies. Office Depot is a “blind receive” organization meaning the stores receive pallets of products and simply unwrap and put them away. The only way a store knows if a product is missing is through the cycle-count program. This system was put into place to speed up the receiving process and eliminate unnecessary steps once the product was received at the store level. Office Depot conducts a full physical inventory once a year through a third party and trues up the inventory shrink at this time.

It provides a structure to capture the linkage of organizational activities that create value for the customer and profit for the organisation. It is particularly useful to get across the notion that operations and the other activities must work cross functionally for optimal organization performance(Chase et al. 2007).

In reference to this assignment, I selected the first topic which is; Use the 5 objectives of operations management (quality, speed, dependability, flexibility, & cost) to describe the operations strategies, how they are implemented & how they support the organization’s competitive or effectiveness priorities. Indicate the

Operations Management in an organisation is repsonsible for managing and in making decisions concerning the activities that convert inputs into outputs , that is goods and services. This covers both short term actvities as well as longer term activities to meet strategic goals. Inputs can be the raw materaials need to manufacture goods such as furniture or the computers needed to create a service like online shopping site. Operation management’s role is to make decisions to improve how operation activities function, for example, to improve the final quality of the output or to change production methods to be more efficient in terms of cost and in time.

Operations Management explores the way organizations produce and distribute goods and services. Everything you wear, eat, sit on, use or read comes to you courtesy of the

The success of the economic agents depends on a multitude of forces, such as the managerial ability to combine and exploit the resources in an efficient manner, the ability to manage the labor force or the ability to develop positive relationships with the external stakeholder, such as the customers, the business partners, the public and so on. Still, while all these factors are crucial, they are merely adjacent to the core operational function which builds towards organizational success, namely the organizational operations.

Bizrate.com gives Office Depot a general satisfaction rating of 8.9/10 with a 93% positive rating throughout late months.

3.1 For each hotel, what is the role of technology and the role of operations

Operations management is concerned with all operations inside the company related to activities, which include overseeing buys, stock control, quality control, stockpiling and logistics. A great deal of center is on proficiency and effectiveness of such procedures. A case of successful operations management in retail segment is evident in Zara’s business model (Tanuwe)

Operations management focuses on managing the processes of producing and distributing products and services. Operations activities often include product creation, development, production and distribution. It deals with all operations within the organization. Related activities include managing purchases, inventory control, quality control, storage, logistics and evaluations. The nature of how operations management is carried out in an organization depends very much on the nature of products or services in the organization, for example, retail, manufacturing, wholesale, etc.

As I seek to enter the workforce/company, one of the first things that I wish to remember is the importance the company has placed on their strategic planning and goals. How decisions made by this team will directly affect the operations, finance, accounting, purchasing and administrative departments. The things that help to make any organization successful, are the value the organization places on their strategic, and operational goals. Therefore, before taking a position with a company I hope to learn as much as I can about the various functions of the company, and how each department works with the next in order to achieve these goals. Thus, I hope to use the knowledge I have gained in this class in operations management to access the company’s operational strategies. This should be reflective in their mission and vision statements as well as their financial reports. I would also look for the value they place on ethics, corporate responsibility and giving back to the community. I feel a company’s success will be directly tied to how effective they are in meeting the daily challenges of processes/production/service, operations, and sales. The value placed on these specific areas will be evident by their success and reflective in both their short and long term goals, in their financial statements.

Low-cost, time-efficient manufacturing of goods is a key feature of a successful production company in today’s competitive global economy. Operations management, often abbreviated in the business world as OM, is defined as “...the set of activities that creates value in the form of goods and services by transforming inputs into outputs (Heizer and Render, p. 4).” Every day, factories take in raw materials and use the labor hours and skills of their employees to transform those same materials into a variety of consumer products,