Nature of customer demand within a company
Part One
A)
The general nature of the funeral business is to some degree incredibly uncertain. There is no guaranteed way of forecasting future work as there is no guarantee that death rates in the area will remain the same year on year due to various factors e.g. general health in the area, local disasters, poverty rates etc. For the purpose of this report the focus will not be on the funeral business as a whole but on one area of sales – monumental masonry.
The nature of customer demand – volume, variety and uncertainty
Month on month the monumental masonry side of the business will complete, on average, 40 monumental orders – 75% of this work will be new work that has come from funerals that the business has recently completed and 25% of the work will be in the form of ongoing maintenance of past monumental work, such as cleaning (see appendix 1). In terms of volume of sales the majority of the work is dependent on the number of funerals completed each month, however it does make up the majority of sales month on month.
Variety of sales can be divided, basically, into three sections:
New monumental work – new headstones, vases and plaques
Additional inscriptions – lettering added to an existing monumental
Ongoing maintenance – cleaning monument’s, re-fixing, fixing general damage.
Due to monumental sales coming mainly from funerals completed by the company there is a degree of uncertainty in the number of orders that will be made each month which makes it difficult to forecast for the future. However there is a yearly trend whereby December has always been a notoriously busy month as it appears that many people wish decide to have monumental work undertaken and generally completed in time for Christmas (see appendix 2).
WORD COUNT: 302
B)
Management approaches to anticipate demand, make capacity plans and control supply
As outlined above, due to a degree of uncertainty that is the nature of the business, the only way in
A)
The general nature of the funeral business is to some degree incredibly uncertain. There is no guaranteed way of forecasting future work as there is no guarantee that death rates in the area will remain the same year on year due to various factors e.g. general health in the area, local disasters, poverty rates etc. For the purpose of this report the focus will not be on the funeral business as a whole but on one area of sales – monumental masonry.
The nature of customer demand – volume, variety and uncertainty
Month on month the monumental masonry side of the business will complete, on average, 40 monumental orders – 75% of this work will be new work that has come from funerals that the business has recently completed and 25% of the work will be in the form of ongoing maintenance of past monumental work, such as cleaning (see appendix 1). In terms of volume of sales the majority of the work is dependent on the number of funerals completed each month, however it does make up the majority of sales month on month.
Variety of sales can be divided, basically, into three sections:
New monumental work – new headstones, vases and plaques
Additional inscriptions – lettering added to an existing monumental
Ongoing maintenance – cleaning monument’s, re-fixing, fixing general damage.
Due to monumental sales coming mainly from funerals completed by the company there is a degree of uncertainty in the number of orders that will be made each month which makes it difficult to forecast for the future. However there is a yearly trend whereby December has always been a notoriously busy month as it appears that many people wish decide to have monumental work undertaken and generally completed in time for Christmas (see appendix 2).
WORD COUNT: 302
B)
Management approaches to anticipate demand, make capacity plans and control supply
As outlined above, due to a degree of uncertainty that is the nature of the business, the only way in