Provide an overview of the company in which you work and describe the strategy of the overall organization using Porter’s Generic Competitive Strategies; if you belong to a public sector organization, explain your mission or mandate.
Guinness Nigeria Plc is a public limited company tracing its long history to 1950 when it was incorporated as a trading company importing Guinness Stout from Dublin (Hughes, 2006). Since then, the company has expanded its activities, transforming it into a manufacturing operation. Our principle activities being brewing, packaging, selling, and marketing the Guinness drinks.We also have manufacturing, production, and distribution rights to other brands such as Johnny Walker and Smirnoff (Hughes, 2006). The exciting portfolio of drinks and brands by Guinness Nigeria Plc allows the business to experience the capacity to cater for the needs of all its consumer segments.
Porter’s generic strategies framework describes how a company can pursue a competitive advantage in the market by utilizing the proper strategies (Tanwar, 2013). There are three main strategies to be applied; differentiation, cost leadership, and focus strategy. At Guinness Nigeria Plc, intensified competition in the industry has made it challenging for us to maintain market leadership. Therefore, to handle the competitive pressure, we apply a mixture of all three strategies to the company (Amis, 2003).
Our primary objective is cost leadership, as this allows us to focus on the accessibility and affordability of our products to expand our customer base and build brand recognition. Application of differentiation as a secondary objective has enabled Guinness Nigeria Plc to look at customer interests and differentiate our products from the competition, such as the introduction of the FES brand to differentiate from our competitors (Maduagwu, 2016). Lastly, our focus strategy allows us to focus on the target market (middle-class market) for our product and design it to suit their specific needs. A focus on the market allowed us to create a fan base of clients willing to partake in the new brand. (Amis, 2003).
Describe your part of the organization; what department or process in the organization are you responsible for? Please do not explain your role; instead, you will describe your part as inputs, processes, and outputs (be precise!)
Our role at the IT department was split into two parts; managing the company’s information technology infrastructure and adapting new and existing IT systems to the already existing information technology infrastructure. Therefore, we were generally responsible for the company’s hardware, software, and computer networking (Slack, 2010). The input for our part of the organization is the needs and requests of the organization’s internal staff. Input processing was done through the IT infrastructure and system applications. The output was channeled into the IT-enabled projectsas changes in the business systems, or the IT systems (Jacobs, 2004).
Who are the customers of your part of the organization? Please note that customers are those who use the output of the process, for which you are responsible. Your “customer” does not have to be the final end-user of your product or service of your overall organization. Your customer might be an external user if your part of the organization is the final step in the process or if you are in the customer-facing part of the organization. Alternatively, your customer might be internal if you provide a service or product inside your organization.
The targeted customers in our IT department are the internal members of staff who required our expertise. For IT-enabled projects to efficiently run in the organization, the output from us is depended upon to be efficient, timely, accurate, and up to date with current systems within the business world.
What do the customers of your part of the organization value? Describe your customer values as the five performance objectives.
Looking at the five performance objectives, the IT department observes that our internal staff value high dependability and reliability. Dependability means that customers can rely on our organization to receive their goods and/or services as and when promised. Our dependability has allowed for higher productivity in the organization.
Speed is the turnaround time between customers ordering a product or service and the point at which they receive it. Therefore, our internal staff emphasizes speed and efficiency to ensure that no processes within the plant are delayed. Moreover, the quality of the systems is value and is accomplished through the use of current information technology software and infrastructure within the plant (Slack, 2010).
Using the Four Perspective Model, discuss your organization’s current operations strategy (and the operations strategy for your selected if it is different from the overall organization strategy).
The current operations strategy employed by us at the operations team is focused on a market requirements perspective (Rudberg, 2003).As such, there is a great focus on the financial aspects to bring about higher profit turnovers. As Guinness Nigeria Plc, we look at the brand design to achieve maximum quality with the same low costs (Rich, 2004). This strategy will allow us to generate revenue and realize a high profit and rapid volume growth in sales within the next few years. So, the top-down logic here is that everything about the operation – its processes, staff, systems, and procedures – must, in the short term, do nothing to inhibit and, in the long run, actively develop the company’s strategy for growth.
A strategy applied by us at the operations team is an operation resource perspective. Such operations strategies focus on building capabilities of the Guinness Nigeria team. Our approach to human resource and job design features fast-paced jobs and promotion opportunities for employees. As such, it decreases turnover and motivates the employees. Many of our team leaders are therefore developed from the company’s current employees. Further human resource strategies have seen the operations team focus on internal collaboration, thus building and sustaining a culture that puts the employee satisfaction and well-being at its core (Osemeke, 2012).
Using the models, you have learned in the course, discuss areas for improvement. Please articulate these areas in terms of the five performance objectives.
Although Guinness Nigeria is enjoying a moment of profitability, the corporation still suffers from specific weaknesses. One area of improvement noted is their increasing need for working capital. The long term needs for financing has been on the rise for the last few years. As such, the main reason for the deficiency has been its expansion program to the Aba Brewery (Abosede, 2014).As such, Guinness should create flexibility in its funding composition to reduce the need for financing.
Another weakness has been noted through increased growth in operations costs and the cost of sales, thereby declining profit before tax for the company. This may, therefore, result in low growth in the coming years for the company. Satisfying this weakness will allow the company to save on cost, one area of the performance objectives.
Draw the processes involved in transforming inputs into outputs and assess the critical relevant process variables, including takt time, throughput time, capacity, bottleneck…etc.
The transformation process, in general, transforms input to output (Sawhney, 2006). For us at the IT department, the process involves taking the input, which consists of data resources from the business units and automated processes in the plants within the organization. The input was processed through the IT infrastructure and system applications. As such, it was transformed into the output used by the internal staff. The output included changes in the business systems, automated processes in the plants, or the IT systems, thus ensuring they are up to date.
Several variables affect the operations. The most important one is the takt time. Takt time is a manufacturing term describing the required product assembly duration needed to match the demand. It is the average time interval between the start of production of one unit and the start of production of the next unit when items are produced sequentially (Linck & Cochran, 1999). If we at the IT department can consistently maintain our work rate, then the needs of the internal staff will be adequately met. To reduce our takt time, throughput time for the department must be reduced. Throughput time is the time difference between the production of one unit and the start of production of the next unit. Reducing throughput time in procession data resources will allow us to be more efficient (Duanmu, 2007).
Define specific areas for improvements.
Throughput time can mean the difference between satisfying our internal staff’s needs and creating delays that may result in overall organization losses (Duanmu, 2007). IT department throughput is affected by network congestions and IT infrastructure available. Guinness IT department has to reduce network congestion, as the more congested a network is, the throughput time for the process will be increased. IT infrastructure updates also need to be looked at (Terry, 2000). Technological advancements have provided the business industry with faster computer systems that will ensure lower throughput time for the department.
References
Hughes, D. (2006). ” A Bottle of Guinness Please”: The Colourful History of Guinness. Phimboy.
Tanwar, R. (2013). Porter’s generic competitive strategies. Journal of business and management, 15(1), 11-17.
Maduagwu, E. N. (2016). Managing Intellectual Capital for Competitive Advantage in Selected Brewing Firms in South East Nigeria (Doctoral dissertation).
Amis, J. (2003). “Good things come to those who wait”: The strategic management of image and reputation at guinness. European sport management quarterly, 3(3), 189-214.
Slack, N., Chambers, S., & Johnston, R. (2010). Operations management. Pearson education.
Sawhney, R. (2006). Interplay between uncertainty and flexibility across the value-chain: towards a transformation model of manufacturing flexibility. Journal of Operations Management, 24(5), 476-493.
Rich, H. (2004). Proving the practical power of design. Design Management Review, 15(4), 29-34.
Jacobs, F. R., Chase, R. B., & Aquilano, N. J. (2004). Operations management for competitive advantage. Boston: Mc-Graw Hill, 64, 70.
Linck, J., & Cochran, D. S. (1999). The importance of takt time in manufacturing system design (No. 1999-01-1635). SAE Technical Paper.
Duanmu, J., & Taaffe, K. (2007, December). Measuring manufacturing throughput using takt time analysis and simulation. In 2007 Winter Simulation Conference (pp. 1633-1640). IEEE.
Osemeke, M. (2012). The impact of human resource management practices on organizational performance: A study of Guinness Nigeria Plc. AFRREV IJAH: An International Journal of Arts and Humanities, 1(1), 79-94.
Abosede, S., & Luqman, O. (2014). A comparative analysis on working capital management of brewery companies in Nigeria. International Journal of Finance and Accounting, 3(6), 356-371.
Terry Anthony Byrd, D. E. T. (2000). Measuring the flexibility of information technology infrastructure: Exploratory analysis of a construct. Journal of management information systems, 17(1), 167-208.
Rudberg, M., & Olhager, J. (2003). Manufacturing networks and supply chains: an operations strategy perspective. Omega, 31(1), 29-39.