OPERATIONS

Operations Management in WHSmith

Introduction1

Discussion2

Operations Management and Its Importance2

Important Elements of OM2

Need of Producing Goods and Services3

Operation Management and Strategic Objectives3

System and Subsystem Diagram of WHSmith5

Efficiency, Economy and Effectiveness in WHSmith5

Cost Minimization and Quality Maximization6

Performance Objectives of Performance8

Quality8

Speed8

Dependability9

Flexibility9

Cost10

Operational Planning and Control11

Linear Programming and Example of WHSmith12

Ways to Define and Maintaining Quality14

Conclusion15

References16

Operations Management in WHSmith

Introduction

The first agent of news under the family name of Smith started in 1972 while the company was established in 1828 and its website was launched in 1999. It has more than six hundred high street stores and more than six hundred stores at the motorway services, hospitals, train stations and airports. WHSmith is regarded as one of the leaders in the retail industry of the United Kingdom. In its focus to become globalized, the company is continuing to open different stores at the shopping malls, hospitals, railway stations and airports across Middle East, India, South East Asia and Australia. It is commonly known for the stationery, newspaper and books. Through its partners who are chosen carefully, the company is able to offer a broad range of goods through the website and the stores which range from the personalized books for the children to magazine subscriptions and personalized forms of greeting cards (www.whsmith.co.uk).

The company is very focused on ensuring that its inline services are as good as the services which one gets in the store due to which it delivers freely to the its stores that are high street, orders exceeding the limit of fifteen pounds are also delivered to the address. It also delivers the products while they are in stock instead of waiting for the entire order to become ready and it has tried to make the sales easy by allowing the customers to bring them to any store which is high street (www.whsmith.co.uk).

The company also has the goal of being highly responsible in which the company is doing things is various areas which include encouraging the responsibility of the customers, packaging, waste, transport and emissions and energy (www.whsmith.co.uk).

This assignment is focused on understanding the operations management in the company.

Discussion

Operations Management and Its Importance

OM is defined as the set of activities in the designing, using and improving of systems of operations which produce and delivers the products to the consumers so that their needs can be satisfied (Sampson & Singh, 2008).

It is regarded as the comprehensive activity and philosophy in the processes of management for converting the resources into finished products and delivering the manufactured product to the consumers. Hence, it focuses on transforming the resources (Nedyalkov, 2010).

The main object present in the OM is the process of transformation, its facility and time management, supply of resources and the motions which are present in the production process stages along with the shipping of products from the supplier to the consumer. Therefore, the operation function refers to the activities which results in the produced goods and services. Furthermore, the operations are the regarded as being the single transformation process (Nedyalkov, ...