OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT

Business Operations and Systems at Royal Mail Service

Business Operations and Systems at Royal Mail Service

Introduction

The paper aims at evaluating the business operations management at Royal Mail Service. Starting with a brief business overview, the paper identifies and explains essential components for effective business operations management. In addition to this, the paper applies appropriate system methodology to examine Royal Mail's parcel conundrum. In the light of operations analysis, the paper provides solution and process plan in order to respond to the conundrum. Moreover, the paper discusses ways to evaluate effectiveness of the new process and business performance measurement after implementation. Finally, the paper provides conclusion on the Royal Mail Service and its operations management.

Overview of Royal Mail

Royal Mail is a key component of the social and economic infrastructure of the UK (Royal Mail, 2011, p. 6). The firm provides post, mail and parcel services to different businesses, communities and customers. Operations segment of the business is composed of functions such as General Logistics Systems (GLS), Post Office Ltd. (POL), UK Letters & Parcels and International (UKLPI) and other small scale services including Romec Limited (Royal Mail, 2011, p. 4). During the FY 2011, the firm posted operating profit of amount £ 141m. According to annual report, approximately 59m items are delivered to about 29m customers (business and home) on daily basis (Royal Mail, 2011, p. 6).

Part 1 - Business Operation Management at Royal Mail UK

According to Hill and Hill (2011, p. 3), operations management is a crucial business function that deals with and consumers major human capital of an organization. It is an organizational facet that actually implements and executes the business plan. In service business like Royal Mail UK, business operations are primarily task centric. Being the largest mail service provider of the UK, Royal Mail has developed a comprehensive and carefully planned strategy to manage and oversee business operations. It is true that high customer satisfaction and lower labor cost is difficult to be managed; however, the Royal Mail Service has gained relative success in this domain (Hawks et. al., 2011, p. n.d.).

Essential Components of Business Operations Management

Analysis of the Royal Mail UK mail service system shows that a clear and well defined procedure is followed by business operations until the completion of intended service (Royal Mail, 2011, p. 6). Over the past few years, the company has been incurring cost on modernizing business operations and to improve the delivery speed in order to meet the growing expectations of customers. During FY 2011, the firm incurred £ 39m as a modernization cost (Royal Mail, 2011, p. 4). Analysis of the annual report shows that the firm is determined to improve its business operations in an attempt to cope up with the declining nail volume and to reflect sudden changes in the mail mix (Royal Mail, 2011, p. 18). In the light of operations analysis, following are the four essential components for effective operations management at Mail Service UK:

Supply

For Royal Mail Service, supply of input and other related factors of ...