Special Topics in Logistics

In order for each and every company to be able to perform well in the competitive market, it needs to balance its demand and supply. This is majorly because, demand and supply are the main factors which determine the future of a company (Mahadevan, 2010). Demand and supply work hand in hand, thus both of them need to be planned in a very strategic way thus impacting the company positively. In order for my company to be able to balance demand and supply, I would use the following techniques:  

In controlling demand

Pricing

Increasing nonpeak demand

Developing balancing services

In controlling supply       

Using job-sharing employees

Maximizing effectiveness

Increasing customer participation

Sharing capacity

Seeking the best fit

 

CONTROLLING DEMAND

Pricing

Pricing is one of the basic techniques of shifting the demand of goods in non-peak periods. Reducing the prices of commodities in non-peak hours helps in boosting the demand of goods (Ross, 2015). This consequently leads to a balance in the demand of goods in both peak and non-peak periods.

Increasing Nonpeak Demand

This technique is basically used to attract customers to a given product particularly in areas where the given product is new or not affordable (Mahadevan, 2010). The company therefore offers either free delivery, or otherwise offers promotions to a certain type of people in a given area. In so doing, the company is able to attract a certain of people to its products hence increasing its sales.

Developing Balance Services

Developing complementary services helps in creating demand balance, and this is majorly achieved by providing different alternatives for the customers (Ross, 2015). The company may either provide bonuses on non-peak periods or either coming up with a different product which matches the one on demand.

 

CONTROLLING SUPPLY

Using job sharing Employees

The demand of products ranges from time to time, and in order for a company to be able to regulate the supply of goods, it is better to use part time employees. These employees can only be at work during peak hours and periods (Mahadevan, 2010). This helps the company to reduce costs and increase efficiency and profits.

Maximizing Effectiveness

Maximizing efficiency helps in meeting the demands of the employees through supplying the products within the required time limit. This is usually achieved mainly through cross training, whereby the employees are trained on how to handle different tasks thus being able to perform different tasks at ease.

Increasing Customer Participation

This is one way of making the consumers to feel appreciated by the company (Mahadevan, 2010). The social media may be used to get the views of the consumers, thus the company can be able to come up with the products that the majority of the consumers want. Hence increasing the supply of the product in the market (Babu et al, 2014).

Sharing Capacity

An increase in the demand of products may affect the company as it will be required to invest in the supply of its products. In order to balance this, the company may partner with a supply company thus reducing the cost of supplying its products, and thus increasing efficiency (Ross, 2015).

Seeking the best fit

Managing capacity and demand is one of the best of ways that a service manager can be able to regulate the flow of goods from the company to the consumers. This therefore requires the service manager to conduct a research on the marketing trends of the product and thus being able to control the supply of goods in the market (Mahadevan, 2010).

In order for the company to be able to come up with very effective techniques, it integrates its planning with functional areas which include marketing and the social media (Babu et al, 2014). Integrating planning with functional helps in coming up with actual figures and trends of the market. This consequently provides an opportunity for the company to be able to regulate and control the changes in the market from time to time (Ross, 2015). Moreover, the company is able to understand through the marketing trends, what the consumers actually need and thus coming up with the desired products. On the other hand, Total Quality Management (TQM) is achieved through dealing with actual customers and asking them whatever they are looking for in a given product and thus improving the product.

Through marketing, the company is able to know its actual competitors, and come up with the necessary strategies in order to beat its competitors in the market. Moreover, planning using functional areas allows the company to use very effective strategies since its planning is based on actual happenings (Mahadevan, 2010). The social media is also a good source of gathering information from the consumers, since most consumers raise their issues on the social media sites of the companies. The social media clearly shows the true picture of a company and what the consumers expect from a company. The company therefore looks at the problems that other companies are actually facing, and it tries to improve them hence attracting customers (Babu et al, 2014). Customers rely on different factors and thus carrying out an actually research when planning really helps in the attraction of customers to a product.

Developing a feasible plan is usually faced by different challenges, this is mainly caused by the difference in marketing trends. The following are the main challenges of developing a feasible plan.

Poor researching methods

Changing marketing trends

Oversupply of commodities in the market

Poor means of communication

Poor Researching Methods

When conducting a marketing research, one is supposed to carry out the research in different areas. In most cases, the research is usually conducted in high populated areas. This consequently provides poor results and may lead to the implementation of wrong strategies. Moreover, it is very costly to conduct this researches in different areas (Mahadevan, 2010).

Changing Marketing Trends

Different areas have different marketing in different seasons, this therefore makes it hard for the company to be able to come up with the best strategy to tackle such issues. In addition, some areas consume a lot over a given period of time while at the same time other areas consume less, thus making the marketing trends to be very complicated (Ross, 2015).

Oversupply of commodities in the market

Due to the changes in the marketing trends, some companies find themselves oversupplying commodities in the market, leading to falling of prices (Mahadevan, 2010). This consequently affects pricing strategies since it becomes hard to come up with a good pricing strategy. Companies therefore end up choosing poor marketing strategies which lead to losses.

Poor Means of Communication

Most consumers do not rate the performance of the company when it performs well, but they criticise it when it performs poorly. Most companies are therefore criticised by consumers simply because of making a simple mistake (Ross, 2015). This provides the researches with very false information as they end up thinking most companies do not offer the best results when they actually do. Moreover, some companies pay people to comment positively about their services hence getting false information which hinders proper planning (Babu et al, 2014).

The company enterprise resource planning in order control the sales, and the all the activities being carried out. This system has benefitted the company positively, since we can be able to keep track of the sales, manage inventory and finances (Mahadevan, 2010). Thus the work flow in the company is very systematic hence reducing the chances of experiencing losses due to poor planning and management of inventory. The supply of products has since been good since each and everything is carried out in a systematic manner.

The company faced different challenges while implementing ERP and this included the following:

Organizational changes

ERP Implementation Goals

Flexibility of ERP System

 

Organizational Changes

The implementation of ERP leads to changes in the organizations, thus requiring the restructuring of the whole organization. The organization therefore changes the duties and responsibilities of its employees before changing the strategies and approaches used by the company (Mahadevan, 2010).

ERP Implementation Goals

The main reasons for implementing ERP is mainly because the company lacks a proper goals. ERP implementation therefore comes with the need to implement very serious future goals failure to which ERP may not be implemented (Ross, 2015).

Suppleness of ERP System

An ERP system which is not flexible may lead to changes in the organization in order to fit in the ERP model (Mahadevan, 2010). This therefore requires significant changes in the steps required to complete the services that the company is supposed carry out.

Reference

Mahadevan, B. (2010). Operations management: Theory and practice. Upper Saddle River: Pearson.

Ross, D. F. (2015). Distribution planning and control: Managing in the era of supply chain management.

Babu, B. V., Nagar, A., Deep, K., Pant, M., Bansal, J. C., Ray, K., & Gupta, U. (2014). Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Soft Computing for Problem Solving (SocProS 2012), December 28-30, 2012. New Delhi: Imprint: Springer.