edf40wrjww2CF_PaperMaster:Desc
Introduction
“Operations management is the process an organization uses to obtain the materials or ideas for the product it provides, the process of transforming them into the product, and the process of providing the final product to a user (Gomez-Mejia & Balkin, 2002). Successful operations management is the joint force of carefully managing the acquisition of input; controlling of the conversion process; and delivery of output. The overall activities of operations management include product creation, development, production and distribution, and related activities involve managing purchases, inventory control, quality control, storage, logistics and evaluations. The main focus is on efficiency and effectiveness of these processes; therefore, operations management often also includes extensive measurement of these processes. This paper, through using Kudler Fine Foods (KFF)’s recent plans to contracting local growers for organic produce as an example, identifies KFF’s business process, explains how this decision affects its supply chain, and describes the quality control tools and performance standards that KFF needs to incorporate to ensure the effectiveness of its operations.
Business Processes at Kudler Fine Foods
At Kudler Fine Foods, customer satisfaction is the company’s number one goal, and thus, the company’s business process evolves around this goal. The company’s business process is multiple-stage process with sufficient buffering. Multiple-stage process contains “multiple groups of activities that are linked through flows” (Chase, Jacobs, & Aquilano, 2005), and buffering “refers to a storage area between stages where the output of a stage is placed prior ...