John Lewis Partnership Business Report On Logistic And Operation Mana

Question: Critically evaluate methods of planning and organising efficient operations and networking.Analyse the problems of controlling component activities and of controlling quality.Critically discuss methods of project evaluation and of scheduling resources. Answer: Introduction The report is critically based on evaluating the logistics and operations management in John Lewis partnership. It is the most popular brand name in UK, which is dominating the retail market of UK. The report states four of the processes of the operations strategy such as formulation, implementation, monitoring and control of operations strategy. Various competitive strategies of the selected organization are analyzed using those operations strategies. Operations management contributions are detailed to improve in organizations strategies. Finally, recommendations are provided to make improvement in the four operation strategies used in the selected organization. Analysis the business operations and market position of John Lewis Partnership in the business area Background of the company John Lewis Partnership (JLP) is a UK based company, which is operating John Lewis departmental stores, banking, services of finance, Waitrose supermarkets and retail services. JLP group is the third largest UK based private company. The products of JLP are clothing, cosmetics, watches, jewelers, house wares, audio visual, furniture, direct services, computing and financial services (Johnlewispartnership.co.uk, 2015). The first John Lewis store was opened in the year 1864 in Oxford Street, London. Figure 1: John Lewis Partnership (Source: Johnlewispartnership.co.uk, 2015) Business Situation John Lewis Partnership has 91,500 partnerships own the leading retail business in UK. The business has annual gross sales of over 11bn. After beating Marks Spencer in the year 2010, JLP has a distinction of being one of the best high street website in UK. John Lewis focuses to improve its operational strategies towards their all varieties of buyers, introduction of value range to John Lewis and expansion of business services (Johnlewispartnership.co.uk, 2014). The JLP supplies Ocado web supermarket with the Waitrose own band foods as well as John Lewis own brand non-food items. History of John Lewis Partnership In the year 1864, John Lewis opened a drapery shop, John Lewis Department in Oxford Street, London. The son of John Lewis, John Spedan Lewis has acquired a quarter shares holding in the John Lewis departmental store. John Lewis hands control over the Peter Jones in the year 1905. However, in the year 1928, due to death of John Lewis, his son became the owner of the stores (johnlewispartnership.co.uk, 2015). The current position of this JLP is that it is one of the ten UK retailers with 46 John Lewis shops, over 300 Waitrose supermarkets and online businesses. Market Position of John Lewis Partnership Market Share JLP achieves a sales growth as well as market share gains in their fashion, electrical and home technology. The companys online sales growth is 17%. The following table shows JLP market share as below: Factors Values Average Volume 100.00 Dollar Shares Outstanding 612.00k Free Float 499.4k Market Cap 734.40k Annual Div 6.48% Table 1: Market Share of John Lewis Partnership (Source: johnlewispartnership.co.uk, 2015) Core Competencies Capabilities: The Employee Ownership policy is the core capability of John Lewis. The organization provides the employees the right to highlight their issues to the higher authority of the organization without any restriction. This aspect makes their employee more satisfied and increase the productivity of the organization. Core Competencies: Waitrose and Mark Spencer are the core competitors of John Lewis. John Lewis gain more competitive advantage for on time delivery and also for providing a huge range of products to their customers (Johnlewispartnership.co.uk, 2014). Products: The products offered by John Lewis are skin care and all types of health care products, other essential goods needed in daily life. Graph 1: Market Share of John Lewis Partnership and Its Competitors (Source: Johnlewispartnership.co.uk, 2014) Application of four operations processes of operational strategies of John Lewis Partnership Operation Strategy Formulation JLP should analyze their competitive position in the retail market, formulate their strategies and acquires resources to implement the chosen operations strategies (Dekker, Bloemhof and Mallidis, 2012). In the year 1929, the founder of this selected organization gave the ownership of the company to the employees to balance the happiness of their employees. John Lewis has a determined vision of co-ownership by assembly the employees fixed to the business profit. This strategy has left a remarkable business-related history and they live today over 80 years. Most of the workers of public sector are considering utilizing the employee of John Lewis employee owned business model after the staffs of Lewis who are partners hold a big bonus of 15%, which is almost twice the monthly salary of the employees (Johnlewispartnership.co.uk, 2015). The long term strategic aims of the organization is to provide personal satisfaction to their associates by becoming a member of co-owned venture, loyal b y value, honesty and hold customers. Generic Strategy Model Figure 2: Porters Generic Model of Jones Lewis Partnership (Source: Dekker, Bloemhof and Mallidis, 2012, pp-677) Operation Strategy Implementation The John Lewis Partnership utilizes the above mentioned Operation strategies. Now the implementations of these strategies are discussed below: Figure 3: Implementation of operation strategies (Source: Caunhye, Nie and Pokharel, 2012, pp-6) First of all the implementation process of the operation strategies utilized by John Lewis requires to identify the competitors and attractiveness of the market. This aspect will decide the total strategic structure of the implementation procedure. Second aspect, which must be evaluated, is the strategic opportunities of the market (Jacobs and Chase, 2013). This will ensure the area of growth for John Lewis. Opportunities always bring threats to the developmental aspect of any organization. Therefore, it is very crucial for John Lewis to analyze the strategic alternatives available in the market (Bichou, Bell and Evans, 2013). The arrangement of opportunities and alternatives for proper situation allows John Lewis to specify their Strategic Objectives according to the demands of their customers. The final stage of the implementation process of operation strategies of John Lewis introduces the mixing of various strategic options collected from their competitors to their own strategy, which increases the competency of their operation strategy. Operation Strategy Monitoring The operation strategies can be easily observed by following the analysis of several issues. This analysis is given in the table below: Issues Observation Measurement of Productivity John Lewis focuses on the measurement of the productivity (Bozarth and Handfield, 2016). The ratings of the productivity evaluated if the operation strategy is helpful or not. Analysis of the Technological Problems There may be much kind of problems in retail industry. John Lewis always has their RD team ready to handle the technological problems (Schonsleben, 2016). Analysis of Employee Behavior Employee behaviour is changed due to implementation of many operation strategies at a time (Caunhye, Nie and Pokharel, 2012). Therefore, John Lewis avoids this kind of situation to make their employee more productive. Decision Making John Lewis put more focus on the results of the implementation of operation strategy. This aspect helps the organization while making the decision. (Stadtler, 2015). Operation Strategy Control The controlling process of operation strategy includes several aspects: leadership, disciplinary actions of the management. Controlling operation strategy is also introduced by John Lewis to measure the change in the strategic management of operations as follows: Execution of controlling procedure of Operation Strategy Value of John Lewis: The success of the value chain of John Lewis can be determined by the superior providence of service to the customers (Dyckhoff, Lackes and Reese, 2013). The warehouse and workforce management system of John Lewis introduces more effective optimization of work culture of the organization (johnlewispartnership.co.uk 2014). As a result of this, the partnership gained 16% productivity, the labor cost was reduced by 8%, the stock availability was enhanced and the delivery time reduced by 25% (Christopher, 2016). This aspect shows the addition of values in the developmental perspective of the organization. Performance measurement: John Lewis Partnership should put more focus on their employee performance, which ultimately measures the performance of the organization in the competitive market. Standardization: John Lewis follows many specific standards for improving their employee behavior. The standards are such as Code of Conduct, Administrative behavior, interpersonal communication (Fitzsimmons and Fitzsimmons 2013). Rating of key factors: The key factors involved in rating procedure are: skills of HR, leadership qualities, core capabilities of the organization and specific objectives followed by the organization (Dekker, Bloemhof and Mallidis, 2012). Analyzing the competitive business strategies of John Lewis Partnership The following are the business competitive strategies for John Lewis Partnership to increase their competitive advantage in the retail marketplace as follows: Cost Leadership: JLP adopts the cost leadership business strategy in their retail business operations to become the lowest cost production company. Two of the options are adopted to improve their profitability such as increasing or decreasing the cost (Christopher, Magrill and Wills, 2013). JLP focuses to acquire products and services of highest quality with lowest cost. JLP makes a promise Never knowingly undersold that spots that their product is sold more cheaply, the retailer will match the cost. Product and Service Differentiation: JLP offers branded products to the customers from the leading suppliers as well as own brand merchandise. On all the electrical items, they are giving two years guarantee. The John Lewis membership card helps the customers to give rewards as well as surprise threats (Coyle et al. 2016). The partnership card credit permits the customers in order to obtain points when they spend with the clients to receive points that are changed into vouchers. Price Strategy: The lower the cost of products, it leads to increase in market share. The revenue of the retailers rose 1.9 % with sales rising of 3% for John Lewis as 17.1 % of an increase in online sales (Johnlewispartnership.co.uk, 2015). Using their companys slogan Never knowingly undersold, the company compels pricing strategies of lowering the price John Lewis could offer (the Guardian, 2015). It was one of mover retailer offers their customers the confidence that promised the customers cheapest price in the town. It also allows partnership to retain loyalty of customers as well as trust by giving them promise (Gilmour, 2013). The promise is that they will never purchase the similar product elsewhere that is undersold. In any case, if the products are similar, then the customer is guaranteed to get refund. Contribution of the operation management to improve organization strategy Caunhye, Nie and Pokharel (2012) stated that the improvement strategy consists of selection criteria to focus on significant improvement initiatives, deployment of the resources and change management to high impact opportunities. Dekker, Bloemhof and Mallidis (2012) argued that the improvement strategy not only achieves the goal to boost the bottom line of business, but also the reason of involvement of customers in process improvement of the business operations. There may be several options available for controlling the operation strategies of John Lewis. These are: Supply Chain Management: John Lewis should focus on supply chain managing system for getting more growth opportunities in the competitive market (Rushton, Croucher and Baker, 2014). JLP aligns the supply chain with the business objectives by connecting the transactions as well as processes planning. The company also optimizes product design for their supply chain management. Control of Quality: John Lewis recently adopts Quality measures for better service providence for meeting their customer demands properly. They are provided with attractive presentation of site and introduction of new options for better search (Fernie and Sparks, 2014). Improvisation in RD department: John Lewis has improvised their RD team for achieving better performance, which have incremented their sale by 20% (Johnlewispartnership.co.uk, 2015). Such as, they are utilizing high quality database system for handling the customer data in way that is more effective. Conclusion and Recommendations Conclusion It is concluded that John Lewis Partnership is the most popular retail company in UK, their mission to satisfy their customer by providing good quality of products and services. John Lewis provides happiness to all of their consumers with worthwhile products and satisfactory employment in a successful business. It also maintains an employee ownership strategy. The organization focuses on three of the competitive business strategies such as cost leadership, product differentiation and pricing strategies. It helps the organization to achieve a high market share as compared to their competitors. Recommendations Development and Training Program: John Lewis should develop more innovative training programs for the improvement of their employees so that they can knowledge about how to sell their products and clarify the queries of the customers. Incentives: Incentives will create more motivational aspect among the employees, which will increase the profit of John Lewis. Technological Development: John Lewis should use more technologically advanced procedures for achieving brand value in the market. The website of JLP is developed so that the customers can get more information about their service and products. References Bozarth, C.B. and Handfield, R.B. (2016).Introduction to operations and supply chain management.Pearson Higher Ed. Caunhye, A.M., Nie, X. and Pokharel, S. (2012). Optimization models in emergency logistics: A literature review.Socio-economic planning sciences,46(1), pp.4-13. Christopher, M. (2016).Logistics supply chain management. Pearson Higher Ed, pp- 100-700. Christopher, M., Magrill, L. and Wills, G. (2013).Educational development for marketing logistics.International Journal of Physical Distribution Logistics Management. Coyle, J.J., Langley, C.J., Novack, R.A. and Gibson, B. 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