Operations and Business Systems Management Research Paper

Operations and Business Systems Management - Research Paper Example Cadbury’s have been a renowned English manufacturer of chocolate products for more than 100 years. Today, as Cadbury – Schweppes, the firm is a major food products conglomerate, but one with very deep roots. Indeed, the current mission statement of the company echoes the philosophy of John Cadbury, the committed Quaker who founded the company in 1794. Cadbury’s mission stresses on many objectives. It also explicitly sets out a commitment to encourage the personal fulfillment of employees and a major thrust is given to customer satisfaction. How the company manages its different processes as such – manufacturing, distribution, etc and its various operations and sub-operations would be detailed here. There have been a large number of strategic decisions and a operational research and development involved in making the products a huge success throughout the world. The emphasis was laid not only on the major operations of manufacturing, marketing and distributing but also on a large number of sub-operations which are essential in very process. Cadbury is now market leader in UK chocolate confectionery, with worldwide exports and volume is continuing to increase by about ten percent per year. Volume in general refers to the number of times an operation has to deliver a service or product. The usual descriptors for the volume dimension are high volume, medium volume and low volume. The distinction between these three categories is usually drawn on a subjective basis. The firm deals with high volume operations.... The firm deals with high volume operations supplying repetitive or standardized products and services. This allows for repeatability, specialization and systemization usually resulting in relatively low unit costs. Higher volume operations can gain efficiency by breaking down the tasks into small units so staff specializes in only a small part of the total work. It is a known fact that volume is the inverse of variety. A low variety market is by definition high volume. Operations can be set up to produce a single product or service, or a range of very similar products, very efficiently. There is no need to allow for variation in material, specification or process. Indeed Cadbury's deal with similar products mostly chocolate based - cocoa, drinking chocolate, chocolate bars and so on, thus the operations could be set up to produce them more effectively and efficiently. The major challenge here would be global deployment of a set of volume products. This could also be overcome if correct measures are taken and right strategies are being followed. Similarly, the greater the variety of product or services produced, the more flexible the operation has to be. Flexibility can be seen as a response to two types of stimuli - variety and uncertainty. Variety indicates the necessity of the processes to adopt a range of operating conditions. For example, to cope with the existing range of service parts, components or products, to adapt products or services to varying customer requirements, to be able to adjust output levels to cope with seasonality, or to be able to expedite orders to different levels of priority. Initially, Cadbury Ltd sold only tea, coffee, cocoa and drinking