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Mark & Spencer Case Study. The aim of this essay is to discover and analyze the different sights of operations management, its evolutions and significant changes during the last decade and define what are the new objectives of OM through one sector: the

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Introduction

Summary INTRODUCTION 3 I. HISTORICAL CONTEXT 3 A. Presentation of Marks & Spencer 3 B. Marks & Spencer's strategy and its evolution 7 II. DISCUSSION 9 A. The evolutions in the area of operations management 9 B. The new goals of Operations Management 10 CONCLUSION 11 APPENDIX 12 INTRODUCTION Operations management includes the conception of a product; the planning of the material, financial and human resources, and the recording and the control of the production activities. It consists in finding the best approach to organize the supply, the production and the distribution of services and goods. The purpose is to optimize the processes of added value, by minimizing the costs (in the investments and in the operations) improving continually the flows from the supplier to the customer in order to satisfy them. The principle of Operation Management was created in 1776 by Adam Smith. It is used by companies since its creation; they followed its evolutions by adapting the new methods of OM within their business. The aim of this essay is to discover and analyze the different sights of operations management, its evolutions and significant changes during the last decade and define what are the new objectives of OM through one sector: the retail industry and more particularly across Marks & Spencer. ...read more.

Middle

The aim is to become the retailer knowing the best growth in the world. The plan A has for objective to respect five pillars: "Climate Change, Waste, Sustainable Raw Materials, Health and being a Fair Partner" This ecological plan is not only based on new initiatives but most of them have to be extended (cotton fair trade for example); the firm wants to cut the use of plastic packaging and plastic bags and replace them with degradable packaging. Composters made of food which has passed their use-by date will also be tested in stores because we can get biogas out of them. The motto of Mark & Spencer is that there is no plan B, it means that plan A can't fail, and it is the only option the firm wants to adopt. II. DISCUSSION A. The evolutions in the area of operations management There have been a lot of changes in the area of Operations Management in different fields: - Quality An important part of Operations Management is quality; it has a large effect on the production (the costs are reduced) : if the quality is low, it will cost money to find out what is the default of the product and the reputation of the firm will get tarnished. ...read more.

Conclusion

Operations management can change entirely a company and its results. The competition is more and more important nowadays and elements like quality, design are very important to build a company a strong image and gain the trust of the customers. Operations management is recent but has a promising future with the birth and fast expansion of the idea of sustainable development, indeed, the protection of the environment take a big place in the customers wants, and Mark & Spencer is right to take this direction for its strategy. Before this study, Operations Management where a little vague to me; I knew the elements that composed it but I couldn't connect them. Thanks to Wal-Mart study case and this one, I learned the interest of Operations Management for the functioning and the growth of a company, that it evolves all the time and adapt its tools with the progress of our society in order to bring about some changes in the situation. APPENDIX It wasn't possible to interview a person from Mark & Spencer because of the numerous demands they have, however, the firm has set up a special section on its website design for students with information easy to accede, which is updated regularly. The link is: http://corporate.marksandspencer. ...read more.

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