Operations Management: Technology and Operations Essay

utile operations curbment is peerless of the just about all important(p) factors relating to the sucess or in round fortunes failures of an organisation or company because markets ar volatile and demand uncertain, it is imperative that organisations bring into being more(prenominal) than responsive (Christopher, M 2005142 ) Because of this organistaions argon neat heavily reliant on engineering to perform duties that simply, because of the scale of operations, atomic number 18 not efficient to do by pay . In inn to preserve competitive, organisations use up to respond to the five main(prenominal) objectives of Operations which ar Speed, Flexibility, Dependability, quality and cost. The typeface of market is the decider of which of these objectives take priority.The aim of this assignment, development several contrary sources, is to provide an abridgment of the engine room avail sufficient in different beas of operations and to provide a comment on how they argon acheiving the goals companies are employing them for.In the retail sector, technology is at the cutting edge of a smooth and successful operation. Customers allow always see their time as a commodity consequently it is important that their experience at the store is as seamless as smoke be. In this consumerist age that we live in, guests are demanding a lot more from retailers. For example customers pay that if they give their details once, they allow for be recorded on the trunk which eliminates the need for them to produce them again. whiz of the methods used to caution this is the Electronic Point Of barter organisation of rules. initially introduced to automatically tally the total of goods purchased, epos systems demand evolved to be multifuntional and serve many purposes. Fashion jewellery retailer Swarovski are one of the many companys that use such a system. Initially, the design used by Swarovski was a DOS based one called retail Pro.By definition of RetailPro.Com (2011) Retail Pro provides retail software for bakshish of sale and retail management that helps retailers almost the world operate more effectively, with a greater return on their technology investment. This system however was not able-bodied to cope with their expansion as a company and according to a share of staff in the I.T. Department it was becoming Increasingly difficult to manage and was requiring more human intervention than was justifiable for the expense. (Stewart Pender. 2011).In May 2011, Swarovski swithched to a more advanced EPOS system that was able to efficiently manage their Point Of Sale (POS), Merchandising, Store operations and inventory guard with a higher level talent and dependability at a visit cost. Micros was the new software introduced to Swarovski to improve energy and aid smo other(a) operations. This new system likewise meant that their inventory hold up was at present fully machine-driven and linked right away to the EPO S. Micros designed their Micros X-Store to be able to monitor stock levels.in one case an breaker point is scanned on the EPOS sytem, unbeknownst to the customer the system interacts with the SAP (a global computer system to which Swarovski have access) to communicate that the item has been interchange, therefore stock levels are now raven by one. This occurs in Swarovski e trulytime an item is sold up until the cut off time, which is mon daylight afternoon. Once the afternoon comes, the Mircos X-Store system culminates all the data it has gathered over the week and whole kit out the ideal quantity of each(prenominal) individual item to re rate of battle against current inventory levels.Once this has been done, the sytems sends the order to head office where it can accordingly be forwarded to the warehouse for crack uping and delivery. The automated re ordering improves lead times and overall speed of stock switch times. Aside from the merchandising aspect, the Micros X- Store is capable of treatment human resource functions. It can manage employee reproductivity reports, employee borrow function (temporarily assigning collegues to other stores) and organise and manage customer learning. working(a) from a fully automated warehouse the SCP Sytem receives the orders and begins to work on store ad hoc order fufilment . Firstly, the order goes through what is called the Schaefer contract Pattern Generator (SPPG) which based on many complex alogarithyms, determines the optimum saddle and height for the finished pallate depending on the weighting and amzingly stackability of the individual items in the order. By doing this, the SPPG can reduce the amount of pallates needing therefeore havign a reign positive impact on exaltation and transport costs.As well as all of this, the SPPG generates a pallate building end. This plan enables the next system to pick the items in the most logical age in relation to time and allows the items to be placed on the pallate in a store friendly sequence. By organising items into a store friendly sequence, the person unloading the items at the store does not need to spend time locomote buttocks and forth as the items would have been palatised in respect to the store.Already a seemingly small software big money has had an incredible impact on the speciality , faculty and cost by to the full utilising maximum height and weight permittance by achieveing optimium packaging density Forecasting item positioning as to reduce vilify to goods Positioning goods correctly for optimum stableness during transport. After the SPPG has done its job, another programme Schaefer Case Picking (SCP) sytem comes in. The SCP is an automated pick out system that actualises the work of the SPPG. Once it has have teh orders from the SPPG, the SCP goes about selecting the goods in order.As aforementioned, the goods are selected in the most time effeicent was as to once again improve efficiency and reduce manual labour costs. As the sytems uses an optical identification known as the vision system, there is no need for RFID Identification tags that are very common and popular in the industry, simply can be rather expensive. As the goods are selected, they are placed into a buffer area until all the goods for that order have been selected. When selection is complete the items are then placed onto the pallet in the store friendly order as calculated by the SPPG. Once complete, the pallets are then stretch wrapped which makes them optimised in terms of goods vs density and secure for transit.The flexibleness they have means that the customers best interests are always unploughed at heart and they can avoid any disruption to service by having a multitude of messengers to choose from. One of the couriers that ASOS use is CitySprint. Based in the UK, CitySprint destine in same and next day delivery. When an order is placed with ASOS, it is packaged by hand in the warehouse and interpreted to the collection point. Despite increasing automation, heap are still essential in most operating systems. (Wild, R. 2005 243) From the minute it is picked up by the courier the customer has the woof to track it from warehouse to their front door. By scanning the bar code of the parcel, the courier is accepting the job and it is ready for despatch.As soon as the order has been despatched, the customer is e-mailed a unique tracking I.D., Which will allow them to follow the journey of their item(s). CourierLocator, which is CitySprints own technology, is what allows all of this to be possible. all(prenominal) courier carries a small hand held GPS enabled device called a CityTrackker. Small and powerful, the CityTrackkers using CitySprint bespoke technology and a network of anywhere up to 24 satellites wirelessly transmits live real-time information on the couriers place (including latitude and longitude) back to the FleetMapper (A system that depicts the location of all on call co uriers).On request, the client (in this case ASOS) can request information on several different couriers anywhere in the UK at the click of a mouse. This tolerant of technology also puts the customer at the forefront of operations. By logging onto both their ASOS account, or the CitySprint website directly, the customer is able to also see the exact real-time location of the courier delivering their parcel. With such methods, ASOS using CitySprints technology, is giving the customer more tractability and a heightened sense of dependability by putting them in what seems to be control of the delivery process.