The Service Operation Management

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

OPERATION MANAGEMENT: - "Concerns the activities, decisions and responsibilities of those managers in the organisation who have particular responsibility for managing some or all of the resources and processes, which comprise the operations function." (N Slack, S Chambers and R Johnston operation management, 6th Ed)

OPERATIONS FUNCTION: - "of the organisation concerns with the process of transforming input resources into useful outputs and thereby adding value to some entity; this constitutes the primary and central function of virtually every organisation." (N Slack, S Chambers and R Johnston operation management, 6th Ed)

MANAGEMENT FUNCTIONS: - is the process of reaching organisational goals by working with and through people and other organisational resources. The most basic management functions that make up the management process are Planning, Organising, Leading, Motivating, Staffing and Controlling.

INTRODUCTION:

Operation management is a process that includes all the operations managed within the organisation i.e. inventory control, quality control, storage and logistics and managing purchases. Hence Zara is an example of successful operations management in fashion retail sector. The gentleman behind the every success of Zara fashion retail sector is the world’s third richest person Amancio Ortega; he is a Spanish business tycoon and the entrepreneur who is responsible for every success behind the flagship chain store of the Inditex Groups, the parent company of Zara. Zara was founded in 1975 and is the world’s most fast successful growing fashion retail sector.

The first Zara shop was opened at La Coruna, Galicia Spain in 1975 and now Zara is operated in almost 73 countries and has 1,751 stores at number of location worldwide, as Zara is a world’s successful cloth retailing company.

Among the other brands in Inditex Groups, Zara brings the 80% of the group’s revenue which has given the taste of fashion to the people around the world. Mr Ortega reveals the secret to retail success is to "have five fingers touching the factory and five touching the customer".

Zara utilises the most magnificent, dynamic, latest technology and the group of designer’s for latest trends of fashion as it is claimed that Zara needs just two weeks to develop a new product and get it to stores, hence compared to the six month industry average, and launches around 10,000 new design every year. The world fashion industry is dominated by major name such as Zara almost 50% of the Zara products are manufactured and sold in Spain, 26% in the rest of Europe, and 24% in Asian and African countries and rest of the world. All-over the world the main competitors of Zara mainly focus on maximum production at minimum cost, whereas Zara has its own benchmark Zara mainly focuses more on delivering fashion faster to its customer. Fashion giant Zara acts like perishable commodity which gets defected very soon when it is kept in a stock, in fact the company intended its clothes to have fairly short life spans, so Zara concentrates on three winning formulas: offering fashionable variety with limited supply at affordable price with the quick feedback. Hence Zara spends little on ads and heavily on stores as it spreads industry-wide trend towards transferring fast fashion production to low-cost countries. Zara sales has rapidly increased in all the coming years by 25% and to maintain the decorum of sales, it mainly focus on four vs. to implement and adapt the quality performance to gain maximum satisfaction for an organisation as well as for customers i.e. volume, variety, variation and visibility. Hence it works within these boundaries to achieve the organisational objectives.

MAIN BODY:

SERVICE OPERATION MANAGEMENT: Zara is the flagship brand of the Spanish retail group, i.e. a successful brand under Inditex Group which has the ability to handle their worldwide consumers in a satisfactory manner and has introduce a unique method of interaction between a manufacturer and a consumer or consumer’s facilities, in order to solve and satisfy the consumer needs and demand. It mainly focus on a quick delivery of their fashionable cloth, whereas Zara has its own benchmark Zara mainly focuses more on delivering fashion faster to its customer. Zara sales has rapidly increased in all the coming years by 25% and maintains the decorum of sales, Zara utilises the most magnificent, dynamic, latest technology and the group of designer’s for latest trends of fashion as it is claimed that Zara needs just two weeks to develop a new product and get it to stores, hence compared to the six month industry average, and launches around 10,000 new design every year, Zara is operated in almost 73 countries and has 1,751 stores at number of location to reach the customer worldwide. It uses the most significant method for channel of distribution like manufacturer, retail store and ultimate consumer as Zara is the world’s successful cloth retailing company and provides proper interaction to reach the expectation of their customer worldwide.

PERFORMANCE AND STRATEGIES: Zara involves those activities in which efficient performance i.e. quality, speed, dependability, flexibility and cost can be measured and effectiveness of strategies i.e. expand market internationally, target market selection, location of stores and branding can be implemented. Zara stores have been popping up all over the world and crossing many boundaries for the global expansion of their brands. Today Zara is an international brand with the aim offering latest fashionable clothes at an affordable price. Zara is mainly concerned with fashionable and unique quality of cloths offering to their customer at regular interval with speed, as it is one of the most fast growing organisation also promise to provide stock to their stores across the worldwide on time with latest and new pattern and produces 10,000 different stock in a year at a very reliable and affordable cost to attract the consumer and the consumer can enjoy the various pattern of clothes. And also changes the taste and fashion for their customer across the world as Zara believes in rapid change of fashion, taste and preference. Hence with time Zara has developed their product life style as it aims at introducing new product after every two weeks. Zara performance has increased after every year and various strategies to expand their boundaries across the nation have been remarkable. In the entire coming year target market selection of every gender and age group with perfect location to fetch the customer to the store. Using the modes of communicating channel and branding has played a vital role to expand their market globally.

PRODUCT AND SERVICE DESIGN: are those method in which idea is generated by the management or the employees, mostly by the group of designer innovating any new product on a regular interval to meet the requirement of customer and satisfying through shaping or configuration of the resources and activity which compose a product or a services or the transformation process that produces the product at any interval of time to meet the needs and demand of a product by the ultimate user. Zara is a fashion giant and is known for producing large variety of product in small span of time. Zara is specialised in innovating the product at any interval of time and utilises the systematic method where an idea is generated which goes through screening and then the preliminary design is generated, so that evaluation and improvement for any particular or any group of item can be made to put an impact on the customer and lastly prototyping and final design is forecasted or is processed to challenge the market with new variety and specific features of product can be identified by the consumers. Zara is one of those companies in world which are highly specialised in designing of their product and service. As Zara is spreading and popping worldwide with latest technology and generating new concept of product in a very small span of time. Hence this ideology has helped them to retain in market for more than two decades. In fact is one of the best brands known for their designing of product and services all over the world?

PLANNING AND CONTROL: is an important tool for any organisation, without any plan and control over the plan any organisation cannot perform in systematic manner. Planning is generally forecasting future, Hence it is done to overcome of the circumstances or to meet all the requirements in future. Control is a systematic method which restricts the planning within the boundaries and controls overflow of resources and budget of an organisation. Zara has various strategies to perform and handles effectively day to day planning, monitoring and control; it has long term objectives as well as short term objectives in order to achieve all the factor of operations to maintain the profit. Zara as a giant brand has achieved many height it just because of the proper planning and control over the planned factor and the action required to facilitate control. Zara plays an essential part in decision making process to push the organisation in right direction and becomes future oriented, so that futuristic goals can be achieved. Zara has immense capacity of utilising resources, manpower, distribution channel and latest technology to bridge the gap between manufacturer and consumer worldwide. Hence has the ability to handle the obstacles in future. Zara has the proper modes of channel to compete with other organisation and also dominates the fashion world very efficiently. Planning and control is an important part of any organisation which indicates future goals. Hence Zara requires corrective action to measure the performance of an organisation.

INVENTORY AND MATERIAL MANAGEMENT: Is the stock of raw material, resources or any valuable goods used in an organisation for the transformation process to convert into semi-finished or finished goods and work in process. In other word it balances the equation of input process into output process to meet both internal and external demand commitments. The world fashion industry is dominated by major name such as Zara almost 50% of the Zara products are manufactured and sold in Spain, 26% in the rest of Europe, and 24% in Asian and African countries and rest of the world. All-over the world the main competitors of Zara mainly focus on maximum production at minimum cost, whereas Zara has its own benchmark Zara mainly focuses more on delivering fashion faster to its customer. Zara is specialised in both inventory and material handling as it is popping worldwide as a fast growing fashionable retail sector, hence to maintain the brand name and quality assurance and to meet all the internal and external demand made all over the world. Zara operates under the flagship of Inditex Groups and performs under the policies and controls that monitor levels of inventory to be used in an organisation. Today Zara is an international brand with the aim offering latest fashionable clothes at an affordable price. Zara is mainly concerned with fashionable and unique quality of cloths offering to their customer at regular interval with speed and prefers to hit on time.

SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT: is basically the distribution channel

QUALITY MANAGEMENT:

PROJECT MANAGEMENT:

CONCLUSION:

On critically analysing the above concepts we are hereby to comment that the company has grown to its maximum in the last two decades. The performance of Zara has been remarkable as the company has grown to its maturity level and the management level is outstanding in recent years as it has grown as a fast fashionable profitable retail sector, although it has gained the most profitable organisation logo in fashionable retail sector world. Zara utilises the most magnificent, dynamic, latest technology and the group of designer’s for latest trends of fashion as it is claimed that Zara needs just two weeks to develop a new product and get it to stores. Zara has its own benchmark, and to achieve those benchmarks Zara has consistently performed to achieve those organisational objectives. Zara has an immense potential to reach the heights. Among the other brands in Inditex Groups, Zara brings the 80% of the group’s revenue which has given the taste of fashion to the people around the world. Zara sales has rapidly increased in all the coming years by 25% and to maintain the decorum of sales, Zara has established those activities in which efficient performance i.e. quality, speed, dependability, flexibility and cost can be measured and effectiveness of strategies i.e. expand market internationally, target market selection, location of stores and branding can be implemented. Planning and control is an important part of any organisation which indicates future goals.

Looking at the facts that Zara faces certain challenges in market of United States and certain parts of Asia, Zara should now go for a decentralised structure in their distribution channel and therefore it is recommended that Zara should go for decentralisation as a means of controlling its operations. Hence Zara should built controlling units of distribution and production in every geographic region where it has its operation. In this way it would help Zara to concentrate on each and every region rather than controlling the entire business from their headquarters in La Coruna. We already know that today’s challenging world is mostly dominated by the technology, media, internet and various other modes of communicating channels, thus Zara invest heavily on their stores rather on ads. But Zara should be aware of the facts that there are still many other regions where the brand Zara name has not reached and to build that image brand, we strongly support the proper modes of communication. Hence we have already noticed that Zara is very superior and popular brand in European market but it has not gained the same popularity in United States and many other regions. In fact Zara fashionable trends have not impressed the United States. Hence it clarifies that the European trends does not have great impact on U.S stylish and fashionable trend and to create those impact we need a thorough study about the cultural differences, fashion, taste and the preferences in order to target the mass informative audience’s . In fact Zara market should not bring about any change in the overall supply chain view which it now follows.