OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT AND LEAN MANAGEMENT

Operations Management and Lean Management

[Name of Student]

]

[Module Name]

[Module Number]

[Module's Tutor Name]

Word Count: 2583

Operations Management and Lean Management

Introduction

This report aims to detail out the concept of lean management as applied to the organisation of Tesco PLC. The report entails a description about the organisation and its customers. It then identifies a persisting problem which is facing Tesco currently. The report evaluates the impact of the identified problem on Tesco. It then discusses and accounts the literature about the notion of lean management. It considers the potential benefits of implementing lean approach in Tesco. The report concludes with a project plan for Tesco for implementing lean management to resolve the problem it is facing.

Introduction to organisation

Tesco PLC is one of the renowned retailers around the world and more specifically in the United Kingdom. Tesco PLC is operating in 12 countries around the world. It has total number of stores of around 6700 and a large number of employees are working in the Tesco PLC's stores which exceed 500,000. It serves a huge base of customers every week nearly millions of customers around the world. Among all the businesses of Tesco operating around the world, the United Kingdom business is the most significant one as it contributes 60percent of all the business of Tesco (www.tesco.com).

As Tesco is a retail store, the number of products and services offered by Tesco are wide ranging. It includes products from the categories of groceries, technology, electrical goods, gifts, jewellery, sports goods, clothing, home and garden furniture and entertainment related products. The services include mortgages, credit cards, insurances, loans, savings, online banking and travel related services (www.tesco.com).

Tesco essentially focuses on price, quality, range and innovation (www.tescoplc.com). Accordingly the customers of Tesco include widespread population. The customers of Tesco are those people who want a huge range of products under one roof. These are the people who want quality products at a reasonable price. On the whole, Tesco target market comprises all the customers that can be catered and served on the basis of high quality and huge range and innovation with reasonable prices.

The order qualifiers for the company are the quality and reliability of the products and services. Since in a retail store, the customers expects the product or service to be good in quality. Without this the customer will not even consider the store for making its purchases. The order winners for Tesco are the reasonable prices with a number of services and promotional features. A significant order winner characteristic of retail store is its customer service which has a huge impact on the sales (Khanna, 2007, pp.17).

A Problem in the organisation

As put forward by Garvin (1987, pp.104-107), the quality of products or services provided by an organisation can be evaluated on the basis of eight dimensions. The eight dimensions are performance, features, conformance, reliability, durability, serviceability, aesthetics and perceived quality. The nature of business executed by the company determines the dimensions on which a company's products and services should score ...