Operations Management

Running head: OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT

Operations Management

Dorota Perez

University of Phoenix

November 03, 2008

Operations Management

In order to grow and function, any existing business needs to look into the future possibilities of change and development. Sometimes those changes are driven by economy, customers’ diversity, or simply decline or increase of demand. The managerial task is to predict and control the possible changes and turn them into favorable opportunities of business development. That concept is known as operations management and “is the process an organization uses to obtain the materials or ideas for the product it provides, the process of transforming them into the product, and the process of providing the final product to user”.(Gomez-Mejia & Balkin, 2002, p. 3) One of the change opportunities is upon Kudler Fine Foods Store. The contracting with local growers of organic produce seems to be a smart operation idea for California operating produce store. Yet, the strategic questions need to be answered, which this paper will address. The author will examine current business and process and supply chain that will be affected by the change as well as investigates the quality control tools that will need to come in place to ensure the effectiveness and efficiency of the new opportunity. With every change good or bad the stakeholders of the organization will be affected.

Kudler’s customers are focused on “maintaining a healthy lifestyle” (Apollo, 2003) therefore the owner, Kathy Kudler, had developed the relationship with local distributors, who guarantee the delivered product to be fresh, organic and of the highest quality (Apollo, 2003). With that in mind, Kathy has no concern about quality check processes to be put in place as for the price of delivery she obtains both product and quality control of that product. If the decision is made to move from distribution to direct contract with local growers, the quality control department will...