Suitability of push and pull management philosophies in relation to the case study and the boundaries between different stages of its supply chain
Several approaches are always made for the purposes of ensuring perfect mobilization of resources towards achievement of certain goals. The approaches may vary in details but at the end of it all share common ground of improving businesses like Sandwich Company. Push management could be designed to position resources at suitable places where there is anticipated need.
The model results into equipped line of services based on standardized processes which could assist in delivering resources and products to right venues at anticipated times. The technology employed should specify activities that need to be administered together with the resources in order to meet anticipated demands. The push models tend to work with people passively, where the decisions affecting consumers could only be solved through central decision making (Hagel and Brown, 2005).
Focus on pull management assists in the creation of foundation where people are helped in the processes of appropriate mobilization of right resources. The pull models are created as a result of increasing uncertainty within companies like the Sandwich Company. They help in improving the level of creativity applied by local participants who seeks satisfaction of immediate needs.
The pull models help employees within the company to come together with innovative ideas which would help in solving the rising demand of sandwich products, this may include resources such as installation of refrigerators for the sake of perishable products.
Pull models seeks no dictate on the nature of tools and resources required to accomplish tasks and address arising opportunities like supplying goods to the supermarket. Pull models tend to treat consumers as creative entities that could be used to solve problems and create opportunities. It is applied to reinforce capability building by all consumers and employees hence assisting them towards innovation that could help them solve their needs (Hagel and Brown, 2005).
With the maturity of supply chain within Sandwich Company, the demand chain is as well gaining importance and requires the organization’s appropriate responses. Sandwich products alongside services that goes with production, needs to be appealing to the consumers as well as the company’s stakeholders.
The pull model could be rightfully applied in this area so as to ensure that both customers and the firm are placed into consideration for viable outcome in production. The firm need not only to focus on the drivers within the demand change but also on their efficient management. This is what leads to the firms’ ultimate value chain (Hagel and Brown, 2005).
The efficiency of the supply chain within Sandwich Company cannot be realised until the level of demand for the products is understood. First of all the demand chain objectives requires address in line with the company’s business strategies. This will make it easier for the employees to extensively resume the relevance of the strategies for the purposes of exploring available opportunities.
Holistic approach to market opportunity analysis needs to be considered whereby; cost optimization is given priority on the side of customer expectations as well as those of stakeholders. However, the cost does not matter so much within the market since consumers are more concerned about convenience and speed. The marketers should be more involved in the process of product characteristics.
The pull approach when adopted provides flexible approach towards the management of the resources being used in the production process since the ingredients used seem to be perishable. This assists in mobilising assets and other resource capabilities like distributions outside the confines of the company. The pull system when applied in this business will ensure effective extension of services beyond production processes (Hagel and Brown, 2005).
Sandwich Company needs to pay much attention towards services and satisfaction of consumers on their products; they need to consider issues such as complain from customers and product follow up avenues. These processes help in enhancing the Company’s image amongst consumers because of their high performance level.
The Company emphasizes so much on product delivery as one of the important quality drivers. As part of pull model, Sandwich Company needs also to focus on offering good training to its employees which ultimately ensures that they are acquainted with the right knowledge enabling them to handle current consumer issues.
Sandwich Company requires market surveys to establish on efficiency of their services to consumers. Monitoring of delivery services should be done through some systems of evaluation such as on-time and same-day deliveries. Sandwich Company uses the final assembly time as the basis of making charges to its customers (Hagel and Brown, 2005).
Sandwich Company should make crucial improvement on some customer metrics such as transportation of products and timing of delivery services, this is since these metrics contributes tremendously towards customer satisfaction. The improved performance of Sandwich Company could be attributed to positive responses received from potential consumers.
The company needs to place lots of emphasis on customer views and comments towards their services. This can be done efficiently through conducting of customer surveys that makes it easier to analyze consumer tastes, preferences and expectations (Godsell et al, 2006).
Customer perspective means of evaluation is very crucial towards contributing to the Company’s improvement in performance. Customer service aspect of the BSC should be utilized by Sandwich Company through the use of important measures which include; lead times, on-time delivery services, customer index and the level of consumer satisfaction. The Company determines customer satisfaction through surveys that are conducted by random selection of customers on a monthly basis and making them fill few questionnaires.
Analysts from outside the Company are used to visit consumers on behalf of the firm and produces report on the consumer reactions and valid expectations they desire from the Company. Customer survey questions are constructed based on basic consumer concerns touching crucial areas such as quality, satisfaction on delivery time and concern on pricing methods used on the Company’s products and services (Godsell et al, 2006).
The company focused on the quality, cost, performance and issues on prices at which goods and services are offered to customers. They also focused on the level of supply of goods to consumers at different locations. These companies analyze customers in relation to their potential and pay much attention to the processes through which products and services are administered to the specific customer groups.
The company’s effort to evaluate the performance from the customer point of view contributed largely to the performance of the company. The processes through which they developed products are defined by quality measures, cost of production and time which contribute a lot towards customer satisfaction (Godsell et al, 2006).
Response management will be required on the process of evaluating range of alternatives. This is done through first of all reviewing the amount of resources available and linking them to market outcomes and possible limitations. Apart from the production process, delivery of services is equally an important factor for success to be realised.
Corporate BSC was established so as to help in organizing operations within the Company. This helped in establishing customer perspective as the key contributor towards effective performance and achievement. The company puts much emphasis on the product cycle that involves transportation and kind of services delivered as some of the important metrics used within Sandwich Company.
The Company focuses on supplying quality citrus products at affordable prices while still maximizing on its profit. The actions and measures taken by Sandwich Company’s are all customer-centric. The success of the Company is attributed to their market strategies on ways to deal with customers. However, the Company need to diversify its production to include other related fruit products (Godsell et al, 2006).
Cycle view of supply chain operations
The customer order cycle comprises of customer arrival followed by the entry of Customer’s order then Customer Order fulfillment and finally customer receiving the order. The replenishment cycle which is the category of retail order, comprises retail order trigger followed by retail order entry then fulfilling the order request and finally receiving the products.
This is preceded by the manufacturing cycle which comprises the order arrival going through the production scheduling then manufacturing and shipping process then reception of the final products. Before the manufacturing process, there is the procurement cycle which involves making order of materials based on the manufacturer’s production schedule, suppliers’ precisions and also considering the various components of manufacturing before the materials are received by the manufacturer.
The use of business score card could be of prime use in this Company. Score card could be used in this Company as a management tool to motivate employees towards increasing the value of the organization giving it the ability to appeal to shareholders and rewarding of all employees with high performance level.
Corporate BSC should be established so as to help in organizing operations within the Company. This could help in establishing customer perspective as the key contributor towards effective performance and achievement. The company should strive to place much emphasis on the product cycle which involves transportation and kind of services delivered as some of the important metrics used (Godsell et al, 2006).
The processing time depends not only on the set up time and compatibility of other ingredients but also on the rate of flow of the raw materials. This therefore calls for implementation of faster means of transport to cater for the need. The sequence of sandwiches at the end of processing unit should be geared towards minimizing total completion time and maximum earliness. Finished products with due dates should not be supplied since this may bring about confusion on the utilization of the available resources.
Conclusion
In reality the customer perspective actions and measures taken by Sandwich Company are customer-centric since all the strategies were geared towards maximizing profit per potential customer within the market. Sandwich Company ensures that customers receive their products in good shape, quality and at the right time.
This could be ensured through the reduction of assembly time that also contributes to lowering of prices. The manufacturing efficiency of Sandwich Company should be improved through the use of BSC which helps in creating crucial changes within the process and human resource management. The overall efficiency of the processes should be improved by more than 10%.
Apart from focusing on quality expectations from customers, the company should expand their concern to encompass cost of production and the nature of delivering goods. Increased income and improvement in sales are some of the indications of the level of customer satisfaction. This is since customers tend to buy more of a product when satisfied with its quality and prices.
References
Godsell, J. Harrison, A. Emberson, C. & Storey, J. (2006). Customer responsive Supply chain strategy: An unnatural act? International Journal of Logistics, (9).
Hagel, J. & Brown, J. (2005). From Push to Pull Emerging models for Mobilizing Resources. Working paper, (10), 2-48.