Operations and supply chain strategies for Pumpkin Patch company

Operations and supply chain strategies for Pumpkin Patch company

Introduction

Pumpkin patch is a children fashion and clothing company in New Zealand that was doing very well at a worth of $830m in 2007 with a lot of branches across the world but went to being worthless nine years later due to a number of operational reasons. This store was established in 1990; its first big peak was in 2002 and in two years it was doing very well. When the founder, Ms. Synnott, left the board to the directors to find new people with new skills to run the company and move it to having many other branches of retail shops, by 2015 most of these shops were closing down. This shows that the label’s international expansion greatly contributed to the closing down of the company. According to Clare and Lloyd (1994), some of the reasons commentators gave that were likely to have caused the demise of the company included the fact that they expanded the businesses too fast and over relayed on debts, the fashion market was too tough, their designs did not change as time went by as expected by the buyers so their tastes were still in the nineties and when the director came to realize that the company was collapsing and decided to start making changes; the remaining branches were too little to lift the entire business and it was actually too late to do the lifting. With this said, we will be discussing the possible operational and supply chain strategies for this company while applying systems thinking approach.

Operational and supply chain strategies

The first strategy is that while planning and running the business each and every day, it is important to do that in relation to the real time demand perceptions. The company should be able to adjust their pricing and promotion depending on how high or low the demand of the commodity is while adjusting the margins of the highly or lowly demanded commodity in such a way that if the commodity is highly demanded now, the prices go high and vice versa. It is also important to oversee the forthcoming opportunities and challenging events so as to make sure that your business succeeds without having to survive only (Jüttner et al., 2010). It is also important for the business to be transparent in a way that they are able to see where all their inventory is for there are now very well-established supply chain technologies that allow the management to analyze the movement of all their commodities from the shelve to the manufacturer.

The other strategy is that it is important to establish an adjustable and supple supply chain that allows fast arrangements and implementation that is combined. It is important for the company directors to employ modern supply chains that will help adapt to the changing market events and opportunities. This comes after they have properly understood the demand curves and risks. They have to have plans on how to adapt to the changing demand by exercising continued change in their plans with respect to the changing market environment. The latest supply chain model allows for rapid changes in the continuously changing market which helps in doing away with or reducing the surprises that come with the changing market environment and better, reliable and predictable sources of the services required throughout the entire processes of the company work like production, manufacturing, warehousing and distribution while it also helps the management in proper decision making and proper analysis of events. Again, with this updated supply chain, it is easier to know and react to the customer feedback with the right people and technology (Chopra et al., 2013).

The other strategy is to improve the product designs and the organization of products used for manufacturing, supplying and sustaining the business to keep it making profits. Being original and unique keeps you a step ahead from competition. To keep up with the competition, it is important to manufacture or buy products in the right place, time and at the right cost while any decisions that need to be made should and must be made in the early stages of the processes of the organization (Leung et al., 2014). The products should be unique and their prices correctly analyzed and set giving a competitive advantage to the same. To achieve robust results and lead in the market, the company should be able to manage the people, information, processes and decisions about a particular product throughout its entire process in the company.

Moreover, it is important to make sure that the supply chain and business goals are similar by combining the sales and operations arrangements with that of the entire business plan. This is the other strategy that could be applied for the success of any other company. Even though sales and operations planning processes offer coordination of sales, manufacturing and distribution, many companies and organizations still have slits in their approach, finance and operations. One of the ways we can connect these slits is by combining business arrangement that involves people, processes and essentials of technology in the business. This ensures that the financial goals and budgets developed at the start of the business process are met and that the company is running as it is expected to while ensuring that the organization ensures the right balance between the demand and supply of commodities with respect to the laid strategic business goals and provides active visibility to all the important aspects of success like demand, supply, risks, product and business performance (Ambe, 2012).

The other strategy is to make sure that the supply chain operations are properly set in. These are the people, profits and the planet which when well fought for, they help in achieving a great competitive environment. Very important chances to enable sustainability of the supply chain operations include that the company leaders should be able to get the workers stick to the basic strategies (Dey et al., 2012). Again, experts should at first focus on the fundamentals required to get fast wins through real time perceptibility and analysis to strength and resource usage and resource or material movement. Moreover, the business can keep going while keeping track of the speed by ensuring non-stop systematic measurement, audit and knowledge management.

The sixth and final strategy is to ensure that the company has a reliable and overseen supply. If a company has an unreliable source of supply, they can be so inconveniencing especially to the customers where by when they need a particular product and it is not available and the management orders the product twice or more times without being supplied, these customers could get tired and end up using other stores in future or even influencing other people into not shopping. This also applies to the case where the commodity ordered is not the same as the one delivered. This could break all the trust built with each one of them and drain all the efforts that could have been done to protect and promoting its brand. It is important to note that one of the most important things when it comes to businesses especially the clothing industry is branding and production of quality goodies. To have this kind of positive output, it is important to have a reliable and predictable source of supply (Ivanov, 2010).

Conclusion

In conclusion, with the help of the right processes, practices and tools, a business can maneuver despite of all other situations and challenges. With the right operations and supply chain strategies to run the business, it will be so difficult for it to collapse or be worthless like Pumpkin Patch did (Ivanov, 2010). It is therefore important for every company and organization to have a set of operational and supply chain strategies that every member of that particular company has to follow without fail. It is also important to make sure that the future is always secured to the point that even during low season of fashion, the company is running and not only surviving but being successful.

References

Clare Crawford-Mason and Lloyd Dobyns, p. 40, 1994. purposeful systems (1972). “Thinking about Quality: Progress, Wisdom, and the Deming Philosophy”.

Chopra, S., Meindl, P., & Kalra, D. V. (2013). Supply chain management: strategy, planning, and operation (Vol. 232). Boston, MA: Pearson.

Jüttner, U., Christopher, M., & Godsell, J. (2010). A strategic framework for integrating marketing and supply chain strategies. The International Journal of Logistics Management.

Leung, J., Cheung, W., & Chu, S. C. (2014). Aligning RFID applications with supply chain strategies. Information & Management, 51(2), 260-269.

Ambe, I. M. (2012). Determining an optimal supply chain strategy. Journal of transport and supply chain management, 6(1), 126-147.

Dey, B., Bairagi, B., Sarkar, B., & Sanyal, S. (2012). A MOORA based fuzzy multi-criteria decision making approach for supply chain strategy selection. International Journal of Industrial Engineering Computations, 3(4), 649-662.

Ivanov, D. (2010). An adaptive framework for aligning (re) planning decisions on supply chain strategy, design, tactics, and operations. International journal of production research, 48(13), 3999-4017.