TABLE OF CONTENT

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 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

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 INTRODUCTION

Coles is one of the most high profile supermarket in Australia. It is one of the largest
supermarket chains in Australia. It is the daily shopping point for very large number of
customers living in the country. In Gold coast, most of the residents do their everyday
shopping from Coles. This retail supermarket branch has been one of the top five in the
country and is known for their quality products and service. It has great variety of the
products which starts from the most economical option to the most expensive as well. In
short, it has something for everyone.

Recently, it is found that the quality of the service in the retail branch is diminishing. This
brings up the challenge of conducting various operational analysis to re-establish the status of
the branch. The major areas in the present case to evaluate will be the area of logistics
management, the improvement in the delivery system, the human resource system: which
includes HR innovation, motivation in the employees, job satisfaction, recruitment and
selection system, layout, job design and customer service. There will be further evaluation of
design of goods and services, managing quality, supply chain management, the concept of six
sigma process primarily known as DMAIC, maintenance of the system that is, maintaining
and thinking of the ways to cut costs but not the value, just in time strategy and quality
function deployment, customer service and satisfaction, and at last the layout of the
supermarket. In general, these are the major discussion areas which are required by every
operations manager (Heize and Render 2008). Therefore, in the present scenario, these areas
of discussion and the strategies related to them will help in making the branch operations
effective, efficient, productive and excel in customer service.

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The supermarket comprises of all the basic needs for living. Coles has done a remarkable
work in building a very high standard of service for their customer as a supermarket.
Therefore, it is now one of the top supermarket in Australia. But it is a great concern that the
branch of such a big supermarket has observed decline in its sale. Hence, based on various
researches, it is found that the company needs to work on several issues that will be discussed
as follows. Firstly, Coles need to focus on the supply-chain management system. The supply
chain management refers to the development and application of a methodology which ensures
the needs of final customer with the most efficient and the effective way (Sacaluga and Prado
2002). According to Cooper and Ellram (in Larsen 1999), the supply chain management may
possess characters like channel-wide management of inventories, cost efficiency in the total
supply chain. Long if not indefinite time horizon, coordination among the channels, shared
visions and compatible corporate cultures and fair sharing of risks and rewards. The supply
chain management is a very important part of managing a business because it can vey
effectively help in maintain and even removing extra costs in the processes like storage of
raw materials, work in progress inventory and finished goods from the very starting point of
origin to the point of the final customer or consumption. The objectives of supply chain
management is to lower the total amount of resources required to provide the necessary level
of customer service and building competitive advantage for the supply chain and value
(Cooper, Lambert and Pagh 1997). It seems that Coles need to take some serious steps in the
supply chain management because the final point of consumption is done by the customers
itself which the matter of concern as it is noticed that the sales revenue is declining as the
customers are decreasing in number. Therefore, it is suggested that Coles should develop the
Shewahart cycle, better known as the Deming wheel or cycle or PDCA cycle (Sacaluga and
Prado 2002). The PDCA stands for Plan Do Check Act. ‘Plan’ means to establish the
objectives and processes necessary to deliver results in accordance with the expected output.
It differs from the other techniques in that the completeness accuracy of the specification as it
makes expected output the focus. ‘Do’ implements the new process, ‘Check’ means to
measure the new processes and compare the results against the expected results to ascertain
any differences. And ‘Act’ means to analyse the differences to determine their cause, each
will be part of either one or more of the rest of the above mentioned P-C-D-A and determine
where to apply changes that will include improvement (Sacaluga and Prado 2002). This
program is also studied in the concept of six sigma, where this is called “define, measure,
analyse, improve and control” (DMAIC). Another important aspect of supply chain
management and the operational analysis is the logistics management. The logistics
management is the part of supply chain management. The term logistics is a French word
which means art of transport, supply and quartering of troops. Broader meaning is the art of
managing the flow of materials and products from source to user (Magee et al 1985). The
logistic system includes the total flow of materials, from the acquisition of raw materials to
delivery of finished products to the ultimate users, and the related counter flows of
information that both control and record material movement. Which means the basic
difference between logistics management and supply chain management is logistics is
generally concerned with the strategy and coordination of flows between marketing and
production , that is transportation and distribution, where as supply chain deals with the
product’s very starting point of origin to the reach of end final customer or consumer. Coles

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readily needs to pay attention on the logistics management, needs to recheck the transport and
supply of the goods with a standardized method to evaluate and assure the quality of the
products supplied with least possibility of wear and tear, and should be delivered quicker to
the store as most of the products are perishable.

The sales of the branch started to show diminishing behaviour due to another important issue
of the company as the lack of interest in the employees of the company. It is found that the
employees of the company have taken their performances for granted and they are not finding
any requirement in the improvement of their work. The solution to this problem is the
company needs to redesign the recruitment system and the HR innovation. They need to
redefine the job design of the employees of the company and they can also look for changes
in HRIS, which stands for Human Resource Information System. HRIS should deal with the
information technology of keeping the information updated about the staff of the company
and other important aspects of the company’s profile, they can also use the information for
redefining of the job design, it can also help in staff retention and it also removes the
existence of red-tapeism (Beulen 2009). Apart from these, there is another important factor
which is found to be absent in the staff of Coles currently is lack of motivation in them.
Therefore, it is highly recommended to motivate the staff members of the company. It is
found that the services are offered by various staffs of different organisations, but the
motivation level present in them is the key to establishment and further development of
quality service (Rowley 1996). There are few strategies that can be applied on bringing the
motivation such as employee involvement, which means to that each individual employee
must take some initiative and not rely on someone else, this brings positive psychological
awareness in the employees making them consider that the company appreciates presence of
each staff member (Rowley 1996). The lack of motivation may also occur due to the job
dissatisfaction. The factors which judge job satisfaction are proper job design for the staff,
and other peer to peer factors like salary, relationships among the employees, working
conditions, social factors, status and job security (Tietjen and Myers 1998). Hence,
satisfaction in the jobs can be brought back if necessary steps taken for above mentioned
factors.

Coles also need to work on the quality management of their products they provide. In order to
do that, they need to focus on the total quality management. Another method to do that is to
apply Quality Function Deployment (QFD). The QFD is the method to convert user demands
into design quality (Mehrjerdi 2010). QFD provides a means of translating customer
requirements into appropriate technical requirement for all stages of product development
and production (Sullivan 1986 in Mehrjerdi 2010). The most important factors of QFD is that
this type of decision making tool helps in analysing various essential observations like
understanding customer requirements, systematic thinking about quality, adding value
through quality maximization and customer satisfaction, designing a comprehensive quality
system for customer satisfaction and developing strategies that can put a company ahead of

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its competition (Mehrjerdi 2010). Coles can effectively use quality function deployment in
their operation which may definitely assists in shaping up reducing time and cost of the
services they provide. A lot many gigantic companies use this technique to achieve their
targets. For instance, car manufacturing giants Toyota, credits the use of this technique for
reducing the time and cost of designing their cars (Davis et al 2007 in Sweet et al 2010).

Another important strategy which is prominently used in the organisations is just in time
strategy. Humpreys and Yeung, 1998 states that Just in time strategy has the objective “to
produce and deliver goods just in time to be sold, subassemblies just in time to be assembled
into finished goods, fabricated parts just in time to go into the subassemblies and purchased
materials just in time to be transformed into fabricated parts”.It is found that most of the
organisations in their operational analysis prioritize two strategies which are just in time and
total quality management (Montagno et al 1996). Just in tiem strategy helps dramatically in
reducing costs, improving quality and enhancing responsiveness (Humphreys et al 1998). The
objective of just in time strategy is to produce and deliver goods just in time to be sold, sub
assembling them just in time to be assembled into finished goods, fabricating parts just in
time to go into the subassemblies and purchased materials just in time to be transformed into
fabricated parts. The acquiring of parts and materials plays a key role in the successful
implementation of just in time strategy because it has a direct impact on increased
productivity, reduced costs and improved quality.

One of the most important aspects for Coles supermarket or any other business is to have
good customer service. The customer service is the only solution to retain or maintain
customers. Reichheld and Sassar,1990 Sheth and Parvitiyar in Bove and Johnson 2000
(reference format not correct) believes that the customer retention is economically more
advantageous than constantly seeking new customers. Hence, we can say that the customer
service is very important concern for a business operation. It is very important to evaluate the
important elements of the customer service, the elements can be assessed in basically many
ways like providing the customers the maximum available knowledge about their products,
advice the best possible option to the customer perhaps try to understand the customer’s
perception and having a solid information about their products they are selling. In short, the
customer must realize that by purchasing the product they have achieved fair value. The
customers evaluate perceived price and perceived benefit to determine whether they have
received fair value or not. Since it is found that Coles has being losing customers, this could
be a very prior reason that the customer might not be satisfied by the customer service
provided by the branch or may be the other competitors of the supermarket may have
provided a better service for the customers. And as we know, customers can be only retained
if they know that the company is being loyal to them. Loyalty of the customers is a very
important asset to any firm. And if the true loyalty is lost, it is very difficult to get it back.
Coles are going to have struggle on the getting the loyalty that they have lost. The solution is
providing better customer relationships and the best possible services.

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The last and probably one of the most important area of the operational analysis needed to be
talked about, is designing of the product and its layout. The layouts of supermarkets are
found to be one of the best example of the efficiency of their organisation standard (Heize
and Render 2008). If one notice, he will observe that the customers actually more often shop
more of the products than they came up to buy. This is due to the well organised layout of the
products in the store. Which is why, one can find the format of the layout almost the same in
most of the supermarkets. For instance, the soft drinks are normally found at the end of the
aisles, the candies can be found at the checkout. Similarly, the meat section of the store is
most noticeable section, it is placed at the back of the supermarket, so that the customer can
see the meat section every time he/she visits the aisles. The milk is located at the end of the
supermarket too, and it is a bought by everyone very often. But it is placed in such a way so
that everyone goes through visiting all the items located on the shelves. Therefore, Coles
need to redefine the layout of the their store of the particular in order to increase their sales.

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 CONCLUSION

Coles has been known for their great service and their quality of their products, therefore,
after suffering from decline in the sales and lack of willingness in the efforts of the staff, they
have found it to be a great matter of concern. The supermarket has been named in the top five
in the overall supermarkets of Australia. Therefore, this shows that the retail has witnessed
customers losing their customers, which is possibly due to many severe causes. Hence, as the
manager of that branch, there are many operational theories which are required to be applied
on the current situation. The most threatening concern is the problem of losing the customers.
It is found that the customers are losing their faith and its getting really hard to retain the
customers.

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 REFERENCES

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