IBT ASSIGNMENT

IBT assignment

IBT assignment

THE COMPANY - IN BRIEF

The company was founded by Samuel Smith in London in 1851 as a clock and watch business. At the start of the 20th century, the age of the early automobiles, the Company produced the first British odometer ("mileometer") and speedometer. In the 1930s Smiths agreed a trading deal with Lucas whereby the two would not compete in certain areas and Lucas took on part of Smiths non-instrumentation assets. Smiths became the dominant supplier of instruments to British motorcar and motorcycle firms. From 1915 Smiths had a factory at Cricklewood, north London and later moved their Headquarters there.

Separate Smiths Aviation and Smiths Marine divisions were setup in 1958. In 1960, an Industrial division was formed whose main operations were industrial instrumentation. With increasing diversification and international operations the name Smiths Industries Ltd. was adopted in 1965. Clocks, watches, and automotive instruments eventually ceased to be significant markets for Smiths, and by the 1980s, the automotive instrument division had been sold, first to Lucas, and eventually to the factory employees. The new company, Caerbont Automotive Instruments, continues to produce classic Smiths-branded instruments with the blessing of Smiths Group plc.

On 4 December 2000 Smiths completed a merger with TI Group. TI had major interests in aerospace, industrial seals and automotive parts.

The company's name was changed to Smiths Group plc on 30 November 2000.

Operations Management as a function

To evaluate how operations management in Smiths Group contributes to the overall organizational strategy, we actually need to take several departments into consideration. Often, these departments perform tasks in specific areas and therefore are considered as functions of the organization. Some of these "functions" are for instance Operations, Procurement, Engineering, Controlling, Accounting and Sales. In the following we will focus on Procurement, and its nested sub-function regarding the advantages and disadvantages of nested processes.

The procurement sub-function, forwards the request to the commodity buyer, who analyzes the drawing and prepares a request-for-quotation which is then sent to several suppliers for an offer. As soon as the offer is made by the supplier, the information is sent back to the procurement sub-function personnel who sends the information to controlling to calculate the bus price.

It is essential to understand that several functions and sub-functions make decisions with "nested processes". But none of them are allowed to decide solely on their own limited perspective. However, the issue of sub-functions is a specific and controversial one.

On the one hand, "some parts of the process may be standardized for all customers, making high volume operations possible. Other parts of the process may be customized; requiring processes best suited to flexible, low volume operations" [Kre01]. On the other hand we experience frequently that we jeopardize the cross functional coordination through "sub-functions" and "sub-sub-functions". In the final analysis it can be stated that the sub-functions decide with no overall organizational perspectives. Some decisions such as "minimum order quantity" are for instance taken by the "Procurement Sub-Function KSW" affecting stocks for which logistics are ...