Supply Chain

Test 2 Supply Chain

1. 1. Discuss how your knowledge on the matrix of product-process mix can be helpful in deciding what kind of process to select for a service business that you are about to start. What are some of the challenges associated with service-based processes? Provide some critical success factor for a service process that manager should pay attention to in order to improve the service productivity. (20 points)

My answer: To be honest, I’m not really understanding the question, like what exactly are you looking for, but I’ll give it my best. The product-process matrix can be very helpful and used as a guideline through starting of a company. Let’s say that I am about to start a retail store. Some of the challenges that I can see coming would be the layout of the store, my degree of labor that I would have and their pay per category. Obviously as a retail store in today’s age providing service over the internet is a must as well. The retail business is not a manufacturing business but it is still a repetitive focus and product focus business. A manager in order to run the store successfully must time the customers to see how long they are in the store and what part of the store they are the most. A little marketing goes into this as well, for example display your hottest items and so forth. Checkout times can improve by having the proper technology. For example, the Apple store uses their Iphone to charge for a credit card. The customer gets the receipt via email. Now speaking from personal experience, I’m part of the “Production Control Management team” and we look out every chart possible to help our factory be more efficient, use less people but with the right technology have a higher output. The challenge for us is to have everything balanced. We want to maximize our output without having to go over our monthly budget for labor cost. We ask our employees to be flexible with their skills. We move employees around according to our production...