Q

In this study, operational strategies are mentioned which are essential for GM & Ford to gain market share from Toyota

Home, - INTRODUCTION TO BUSINESS OPERATIONS AND SERVICES

Introduction
Business operations are the main key to manage the inner workings and development of the business that can efficiently run the administration of a company. Whether it comes to making products, selling the manufactured products, or provision of service, every business needs to look at the management and designing of the work behind the curtains. The study sheds light on the ways and strategies that are implemented by Ford and GM in order to take market share from Toyota. However, Toyota identified few important strategies that can be applied by the company so that it can regain the position within a short term that it had lost. The strategies discussed are Just in Time, Kaizen, and Total Quality Management that helps a business to develop the operations.

Explain how you would introduce a companywide operations improvement strategy.
Operations management is the most crucial part of the business development and it is concerned with the efficiency and conversion of materials into good services. This helps in maximizing the profit of the organization. In order to introduce companywide development strategies, Toyota can use the following strategies to improve their development.

Just In Time:

Just in Time is an inventory system that helps the management of the development of an organization. This strategy aligns the raw material orders from the suppliers and the production (De Stefano, 2015). The alignment is direct. The Just in Time strategy increases the efficiency of the production and helps the production to be in time. This strategy helps to reduce the waste in production and receives the goods as per the need of the production. They do not take excess of products in order and this is a minimalist strategy to decrease the waste. The fewer products help in reducing the inventory costs. The method of Just in Time requires producers to mainly forecast on the meeting of demands accurately. The JIT inventory system contrasts with Just in Case strategies. In this case, producers hold sufficient inventories in order to absorb enough amount of market demand.

Thus apply this strategy the Toyota Company can mitigate the loss within a short term. In fact, Just in Time is known as Toyota production System as this was first adopted by the Toyota Company in the year 1970 (Yin et al. 2016). Thus it is proved that they use this system in order to avoid overcapacity of work in progress and to make a steady production, with high quality workmanship. The system also involves low machine breakdowns and provides reliable suppliers. Toyota will get benefitted as this reduces the production cost and less money is spent on raw materials. Thus the company can get the chance to revamp its quality and increase the profit making margins.

Supply Chain:

Supply Chain is the management strategy that helps the flow of the goods and services in a positive manner (Hugos, 2018). The process includes the transformation of raw materials into the final products. There is involvement of the active streamlining of the supply side of the business. This helps in maximizing the value of customers and gains a competitive advantage over other companies.
Toyota is a company that lost its previous grandeur and profit making capability due to upcoming market of Ford and GM. This has forced Toyota to apply the supply chain management so that they can increase their profit that has been lowered in the recent quarters as the Ford and GM has taken the market over Toyota. In order to gain the competitive advantage over the other companies, they have adopted the supply chain management.

As opined by Fahimnia et al. (2015), this management strategy represents an effort to develop and implement the supply chain that will be efficient and economically feasible. This strategy covers everything that covers production and product development. Toyota needs to adopt this system so that this can help to control the production, shipment and distribution of the product. The supply chain helps to manage the companies' excess cost cut and helps in making the products get consumed fast. This strategy is based on the market results from the efforts of different organization that would help in implementing the management of inventories. The supply chain coordinates with the logistics of the company in all aspects that includes planning, sourcing of raw materials, and manufacturing with efficiency, delivery and finally the return system. Thus improvements have real and long lasting impact on the operational development.

Product Design:

Product Design in operations management is one of the most important and crucial stage in the product development. This is very important to increase the consciousness and the effort to design a new service. This helps in the earnings of the company. The product design has two important steps:

Functional design- the product is designed to be functional. Companies like Toyota make decisions based on the dimensions, materials that are to be used, and the type of final products that are in need. In this stage, the designer is concerned with the product and the quality itself and the methods that have been used by the production house. The main area of concern is functional considerations, customer appeal and the cost and ease of production.

Production Design: In this stage, the designer considers the introduction of the modifications that are needed for the development of the company. The concept includes few stages like standardization, modular design, simplification.

Total Quality Management:

This is a continual process in order to detect and reduce the errors in streamlining, manufacturing and production (Obeidat et al. 2016). This process helps in improving the customer experience and ensures that all employees are up to the mark in training and production process. The TQM tries to hold the parties that are involved in the production. This process is most commonly used by Toyota Company in order to increase the sell and ensure that quality of the products is maintained. This helps the company to get back the name and fame that it used to enjoy and the share price of the company is also expected to increase.
This also focuses on ensuring the internal guidelines of the process that helps to reduce the errors.

Operations Objectives:

Operational objective is the most important term in business. These objectives help to gain the short term goals and their main target is to bring the organization close to long term goals. There are many operational objectives that are discussed below:

Quality: Quality is the most important part of operations and it is consistent indicator in meeting the expectations of the customers. Quality helps to maintain the consistency in producing goods and services and provides customer satisfaction (Di Somma et al. 2016). This makes life easier inside the company and the operations are done with accuracy. This objective helps the company to reduce the cost of improvement and corrections. There are fewer mistakes and less time is consumed in producing the products. This helps to understand that quality must be one of the most important objectives in meeting the operational development factors.

Speed: Speed is the most important criteria that need to be satisfied in meeting the objectives of the production and operations. Speed is the elapsed time between the customers' request for a product till they receive the service (Gazijahani et al.2016). The main advantage of the operation's external customers is that they help in understanding the speed of the delivery. The faster the products and services can be delivered the faster the company can gain its reputation. Toyota's main objective is now to deliver the products as fast as they can. This will help to win over the competitive advantage and take itself before Ford and GM.

Cost: Competing over price is the most important objective and reducing the price helps the customers to afford the products of the certain company. The lower the cost of producing the goods, the lower will be charged from customers. This will help customers to come to the company to buy the goods. This is an important factor to win the competitive advantage. The low cost is compatible along with quality, speed, dependability and flexibility. The reduction of cost through the internal effectiveness is very important in making improvements of the operational objectives.

Flexibility: This is another important objective of the operations within a company. This helps to introduce the product and modify the necessary changes in the product. The operation's ability to change the level of output and produce a mix of products is an important capability of flexibility. The operation also changes the timing of the delivery and production of services and goods.

Dependability: managers and workers spend time on depending each other in meeting the needs of production. This helps to mitigate any disruption in production that is caused by lack of inter dependency and connection. Thus objectives help to understand the need of operation development.

Marketing strategies

In modern world, it has been examined that marketing strategies are essential to raise the effectiveness and productivity on a large scale. As per the views of Haider et al. (2019), marketing strategies are used in order to gain more profit and it helps to satisfy the needs of customers. It has been used by Toyota and other car manufacturing industries in order to fix a quality price and it helps to coordinate with the other employees. It helps to achieve the objectives of market which is accomplished by selecting a target market and collecting the marketing mix.

Low cost

It has been examined that GM is facing huge challenges due to increasing cost price of steel and this threat is affecting to other automotive industries. Cost leadership is another strategy which can minimize the cost of steel supplies and it will increase the productivity on a large scale. It is of utmost importance to lower the cost prices of steel supplies which will increase the price of products and services.

Brand identity

The main motive of brand identity is to depict the quality picture and image of the brand in front of the consumers. It is used by Toyota Company in order to gain the attention of consumers and with the help of quality brand designing and modification of the models can help the company to aim more productivity. In order to gain competitive advantage in global market it is essential to minimize the supply and manufacturing price of steel and other parts of used by the general motors and other automotive industry (Braun et al. 2018).

Acquisitions strategic alliance

Acquisitions strategic alliances is one of the important marketing strategy and it will help the business to grow on a large scale. Alliance is used in order to embrace effective opportunities to increase the growth of manufacturing industry. As stated by Han and Kang (2018), in this process one company used to buy other companies to eliminate the consequences of the competition.

Customer innovation

Customer's innovation is another marketing strategy which is used in order to gain deliver quality products and services to the target market. The mission of Toyota is to innovative new products and to expand its products globally on a large scale. It has been observed that customer innovations have helped the company to gain more new partnerships. Innovations in customer help to increase the value of customers and it help to explore new process.

Advise on the operational strategies that Ford and GM can implement to gain market share from Toyota.
The main motive of operational strategies is to achieve the target and reach the operational objectives established by the company. The main objectives of the operations are to increase the flexibility and speed and to minimize the cost of steel supplies. It has been examined that by developing the operational strategy Toyota can easily produce effective products and services with the help resources and other model.

Corporate strategy and interaction process

Corporate strategy is used in order to establish a relationship with the other sections of management and it was observed that each and every part of the company is interrelated with each other. It is the responsibility of company to interact with their target is to engage and attract them. Cross functional communication process can increase the growth of the company on a large scale (Anees-ur-Rehman et al., 2018). It is essential for the Toyota Company to adopt this strategy for overcoming future challenges; and it will help Ford and General Motors' (GM) to gain market share from Toyota.

Customer-driven strategies

Customers driven processes and techniques are essential in order to fulfill the needs and requirements of the target market. As per the views of As per the views of Zervina and Stukalina (2018), it is the responsibility of the company to adopt the techniques according to strengthen the positive points and minimize the negative points. It is essential to adopt this technique for monitoring the recent marketing trends and it help to eliminate the threats affecting the growth of the company. The customers driven strategies will be beneficial for the Ford and General motors' (GM) to gain market share from Toyota.

Introduction to competitive priority

The main motive to introduce competitive priority is to establish a strategy based on the principles of the needs of customers. It has been observed that to gain share market from Toyota it is important for GM and Ford to determine their operational costs and too examine the quality of products. The main significance of this strategy is to deliver quality goods and services at reasonable cost price to satisfy the needs of the customers.

Development of products and services

Innovative design and value of products helps to determine the strategies through which a company can innovate new products and services.

It has been observed that Toyota is using kaizen philosophy in order to improve the quality of services and products on global scale. In kaizen process it was illustrated that everyone are focused towards improvement of operations and it helps to strength the team build process (Chiarini et al. 2018). Gemba is another process which is used by the auto motive companies in order to keep a sharp eye on the process used by Toyota.

Conclusion
It can be concluded that, the improvement strategy can be enhanced with the help of JIT system and implementing of training and development programs based on total quality management for the staff members. In the second question, it can be stated that the main objectives of the company can be fulfilled by using quality marketing strategies namely low cost price and innovation. There are some operational strategy mentioned above which are crucial for the GM and Ford to buy the market share from Toyota. In this section Kaizen philosophy has been used in order to improve the quality of products continuously.

Recommendations
· It can be recommended that, operational strategies such as customer-driven and corporate strategies are beneficial for improving the performance of customers.

· It can be suggested that, JIT system-plant is crucial for improving the quality of services and products.

 

Leave a comment


Captcha

Related :-