Operations Management Assignment - Mba 502

Kudler Fine Foods started as a small store that grew into a chain. The chain continues to operate as though each store is its own entity trying to maintain a culture similar if not identical to one another. The focus on the advancement of the company is to maintain the culture of the company which originated the success of the first store to allow the growth into the chain status. With this in mind, there will be a need for change internally to allow for consistency. (Course Virtual Source) Currently, Kudler Fine Foods has three main departments with a department manager for each. This is structured so each store has its own department manager for each department and there is an attempt to correlate business decisions with the counterparts at the other stores. With a shift from this style of process to utilizing the contract of a local grower of organic produce, the vendors of the organic produce company would take over a level of responsibilities that the department managers currently hold. Instead of working the process, the department managers would now be able to manage the process which increases efficiency with a standardized procedural approach using the single stage process instead of the before used multiple stage process. (Course Virtual Source) Each department manager deals with multiple stage processes in regards to the inventory management which starts from taking inventory, ordering the products, receiving the products, storing the products, and placing the products on the sales floor. The use of a single stage process would be more convenience and consistent with the counterpart departments in the other stores. This would vary from a multiple stage process because there would only be inventory of the products as a single stage in comparison to the list of steps they currently go through with a multiple stage process. There would be an elimination of other issues in the single stage process such as the buffering or creating space and

References: Chase (2005). Operations management for competitive advantage (11th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. Virtual Organizations Portal; Kudler Fine Foods. Retrieved on 02/03/08 from : https://ecampus.phoenix.edu/secure/aapd//CIST/VOP/Business/Kudler/Internet/K udlerPort.htm