Wace Burgess Case Study

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Operations Management in Context Assignment 1

Wace Burgess Case Study

Wace burgess is a business that produces cards for other organisations. These are mainly cards for special occasions, which include Christmas cards, everyday cards and special day cards, which are Valentine’s day, Mother’s day, Father’s day and Easter cards. Wace Burgess is not a big company but quite successful, their main customers include creative Publishers and retailers. Wace Burgess was not the leading competitor in the market but they certainly wanted to be. They were in talks of producing cards for M&S; this was one of ways Wace Burgess could get ahead in the market. The question was will they be able to cope with such a big order?

Q1. What are the external performance objectives for the M&S business, and how do these differ from those of existing customers?

The external performance objectives for the M&S business are they need high volume but low variety; this would be of mass production. They only need a few designs but they are requiring 600,000. This is highly unusual for the company because they only usually get orders for about 8,000 at a time on average. This meant they were on a low volume basis, usually done in batches. For the M&S business the mass processes mean that the company will need hardly any change over because they require a high volume of the same type of card design, whereas before there were many change over because there were fewer cards to make.  The main objectives for the M&S business are quality, speed, dependability, flexibility and cost. In terms of quality M&S are looking for high quality to meet its existing customer’s requirements, they are known for high quality products so need to produce the cards with this in mind. They will need to have their staff to be very courteous, friendly and helpful. This will enable them to have an effective and efficient work force in order to meet the demand for the M&S order. Quality also reduces costs, they will be able to minimise the mistakes being made if quality was high this will mean more time spent on quality with less time being spent on fixing mistakes which will in turn cause less confusion and irritation to M&S. if Wace Burgess did have many mistakes this may require M&S to use valuable time to get a new supplier in order to meet the demands of there customer’s. if Wace burgess did send products of low quality to M&S this may prevent M&S supplying these to their customer’s therefore will have empty shelve, therefore quality increases dependability. If the quality is of high standard then M&S will receive high revenue and will thank Wace Burgess for this and then both will benefit from high quality cards. This dependability will enable Wace Burgess to be perceived as a good supplier which will result in getting more customers. Existing customers still do require a high quality product but they are not a very big company so will prefer to keep quality to a minimum in order to reduce their costs. Another performance objective will be the speed from M&S ordering the cards to Wace Burgess delivering them and M&S receiving the products on time. Speed will enhance all operations, offering M&S products fast, if Wace Burgess were sufficiently fast at making the orders and sending it them this will result in M&S making more orders with Wace Burgess as well as other retailers. Speed will result in M&S having immediate availability of goods because they will be received with speed, this will also reduce risks. If Wace burgess makes forecasts of how much they need to produce to meet demand they may get it wrong. This is same as existing customers because they also need to have speed in delivery but not as fast as M&S they will be happy to let Wace Burgess to take time in delivering their cards because that will in turn reduce costs. Dependability can help Wace Burgess improve of what customers think of them, it will be helpful for Wace Burgess to do things on time because M&S will judge them on this. If the first order is not on time then they will have the perception of undependability for Wace Burgess. Flexibility is also a performance objective; this will change what it is doing in order to reach requirements. M&S require innovative products to be produced from Wace Burgess, and they need to have the ability to change the timing or quantity of products. This slightly differs from existing customers because all existing customers still want there cards on time there are just more lenient if things are late. M&S do not require a low cost price for there product, this is because they are a massive retailer. All these objectives differ from those of existing customers because all existing customers require a low cost price because they are not well known and need a good priced product in order to make a profit.

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Q2. What are the risks and rewards of accepting the order from M&S?

The risks of receiving the accepting the order from M&S are that if everything goes wrong or mistakes happen during process then M&S will not want to re order with Wace Burgess because there mistakes would have cost them money as well as time, this is also the case with Wace Burgess. Wace Burgess will lose out on money as well as time, but also the pressure on them to fulfil the order of M&S will have an impact on the employees as wee. ...

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**** Most of the major points are raised in this essay. I would like the writer to have found out more about the business. Can their existing machinery cope with the increased order? What is their capacity? How much lead time would M&S give etc?