Strategic Operation Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Strategic Operation Management - Essay ExampleZara has three major return lines, for men, women and children. It has a creative team consisting of sourcing specialist, designers and personnel for product development. The creative team of the company work on products for the current season and they are to a fault engaged in selecting product mix and fabric for the products. deuce basic assemblages are prepared by Zara every year that are the winter/fall collection and the summer/spring collection. The designers of Zara showcase their designs in renowned fashion programs and shows too (Zhelyazkov, n. d.). There is enormous work load of 1000 new design and fashion every month, which is managed by development and design team of two hundred employees in Zara. All these employees work from their headquarters that is Spain. This signifies that every individual produces 60 different styles per year, which means near 2 styles in every week. This speed is maintained at every stage of prod uct development, which catalyses the sell sales by 200,000 300,000 in a year. Though this process followed by the company is certainly not cost-efficient, but it is compensated through the high margin on the product (Dutta, 2003). The unique sell overture (USP) of Zara is that it can tamp down its designs from drawing board to the retail stores around the world in a pass over of just two weeks. The designs are initially sketched and dedicated through the Computer-aided (CAD) system, with the help of which samples are made by the skilled workers who are working within the design facility (Ferdows, 2003). All the sewing operations take place in the factories owned by the company. The product development structure stated in course 1 below is helpful in understanding the product designing and development or product process (Zhelyazkov, n. d.). Figure 1 Product Development Source (Slack and Lewis, 2002, p. 247) Product development process involves scuttlebutt of operations resou rce, which includes developing capabilities and rapid change in technology. Moreover, considering the market requirements also play significant procedure in this process, this is what Zara actively does (Slack and Lewis, 2002). The product development phase beings with market research. This is combined with visiting universities campus and former(a) venues such(prenominal) as discos for observing the fashion trend of the young leaders, sales describes and daily feedbacks (Dutta, 2002). Apart from this, significant investment funds in data technology and different communication infrastructure has been availed by the company for gathering information on customer demand. The sales managers and associates have customised handheld computers for informing the headquarters regarding daily sales report on real-time basis. The garment styling starts as soon as the designing team receive calls from stores regarding the inevitably and the team forecast the future demands with the help of t hese calls. The commercial manager sits with the designers to forecast design demand, fabric, cost and selling price (Dutta, 2002). Resource and Process implications In this section the sources and the processes would be discussed. The fabrics required in the company and other inputs are purchased from external suppliers. There are purchasing offices of Zara in Hong Kong and Barcelona. Apart from this, there are also sourcing personals in Spain, but Europe has been always the top