An informatory mid-semester report on the detailed

work plan of ‘FedEx Operations’

Prepared in partial fulfilment of MBA G541, Operations Strategy

course, undertaken by Dr. Rajesh Matai
at

BITS PILANI, Pilani Campus

during
Semester II, January-May 2021

Submitted by:-
Aakash gupta- 2018A4PS0937P
Kshitiz kashyap- 2018A2PS0141P
Avi chaturvedi- 2018ABPS0627P
Kamaljit kaur-2020H1490854P
 Planned Index of the Project1

1. Introduction

2. FedEx History and Overview

3. Business model and performance analysis

4. FedEx divisions

5. Three levels of Operations Strategy

6. Supply Chain Analysis

7. Inventory Management

8. Logistics and Transportation

9. SWOT Analysis

10. Recent changes in Operations and Supply Chain

11. What holds in future for FedEx?

1
Subject to change according to resources available

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Introduction

‘Operations’ is the part of the organisation that creates and/or delivers its products and services.
An operations strategy is the structure upon which an organization determines how it arranges
and uses its resources in order to maintain a competitive advantage. Every organisation, whether
a hotel, hospital consultancy, supermarket, games developer, government department, in fact any
type of organisation, has an operations function, even if it is not called that.1 This is because
every organisation tries to add value by producing some mix of products and services for
external or internal customers. It does so by transforming inputs into outputs that satisfy some
customer need.
Operations strategy is the plan that specifies the design and use of resources to support the
business strategy. This includes the location, size and type of facilities available as well as
worker skills and talents required, use of technology, special processes needed, special
equipment and quality control methods. The operations strategy must be aligned with the
company’s business strategy and enable the company to achieve its long-term plan. For example,
the business strategy of FedEx, the world’s largest provider of expedited delivery services is to
compete on time and dependability of deliveries. The operations strategy of FedEx developed a
plan for resources to support its business strategy. To provide speed of delivery, FedEx acquired
its own fleet of airplanes. To provide dependability of deliveries, FedEx invested in a
sophisticated bar-code technology to track all packages.

FedEx

FedEx Express is the world’s leading express delivery company. Founded in 1971 as Federal
Express, the company has experienced outsized returns and growth since its inception, with a
quarterly dividend and a 63% increase in share price in the last five years alone. This success is
directly attributable to the highly effective alignment between FedEx’s strategy and customer
promise of rapid delivery and its highly automated and synchronized operating model,
specifically within its major subsidiary, FedEx Express. FedEx serves as an excellent example of
how executing a successful operating model is crucial to creating and capturing value.

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Mode of operation for the project

● Moving ahead we will be judging their operation performance at a societal level, strategic
level as well as operational level. What are the targets and focus of operations for FedEx
and how are they working on their strategy to achieve their goals

● In our project ahead we will be analysing the capacity strategy of FedEx in which we will
be focusing on their overall level of operations capacity and their no. of sites, their
location and size.

● In the next part, we will be focusing on their purchasing and supply strategy and finding
out factors which affect their decision of doing it by themselves and buying. Also, to gain
further insight of contractors, suppliers their relationship will be analysed along with
dynamics and risks of supply chain.

● An Analysis of process technologies has to be done in order to assess the variety of the
operations FedEx can incur and the flexibility of the said operations. This is done by the
help of process-product matrix and exhibits the brilliant use of information technology
(IT) systems used by FedEx and how it made them to gain a competitive and strategic
advantage among its competitors.

● To gain further insights on the process technologies, we can evaluate the process
technologies of FedEx on the five market criterions as- Quality, Speed, Dependability,
Flexibility, Cost.

● The next step is to evaluate the way forward for the company, Do a Swot Analysis for the
same keeping in mind different kinds of disruptions taking place round the world whether
it is linked to recent threat to globalisation due to increased tariffs or client company’s
changing policy about sourcing.

● The next step in the same direction is to study how FedEx is reinventing itself to keep up
into the pace, how they are using available technologies and other operational capabilities
to most of their benefit. We will also evaluate the 4 step model suggested by robert p.
Pasiano to suggest further steps for the company.

● In order to understand the general process and service development scenario of FedEx,
we dig deeper into the early days of the company, their motivation to evolve at times and
challenges they faced.

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 ● We need to dig deeper into the company's balance sheet, in order to evaluate the
capability of the company to undertake new technologies.

● The commitment of the company to implement such changes also comes as a major part
of study which shall be included in this project.

● With the company as the size of FedEx the challenge of monitoring and control is very
crucial. A flow chart is to be constructed in order to understand the information flow
within the company and how FedEx does things to keep them in order.

● Lastly, a look at FedEx's competitors ‘s operation strategy and gaining inferences from it,
will be a great value addition to the project.

Deadline Topic Deliverables

11th April Present operational capabilities, strategic and Understanding of

competitive edge of the company company and the whole
industry

13th april Financial outlook of the company, it’s competitors, Financial report and
analysis

15th april Make recommendations based on the results The future roadmap of the
obtained company

18th April Final report and presentation

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References to be studied

1. FedEx: The world’s largest continuous flow process - Technology and Operations
Management (hbs.edu)
2. http://investors.fedex.com/investor-home/default.aspx
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FedEx#Advertising
4. http://about.van.fedex.com/our-story/company-structure/express-fact-sheet
5. https://people.hofstra.edu/GEOTRANS/eng/gallery/Map_Air_Freight_Integrators.pdfhttp
://www.cnet.com/news/at-fedex-sorting-packages-1-5-million-at-a-time/