OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT- COURSEWORK Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT- COURSEWORK - Essay Example The chief success story of Zara lies in strategies undertaken by the company. The corporate strategies had helped the company to grow faster with creative, flexible and innovative business model. The business model has differentiated the company from rest of the companies in the same industry. It has provided Zara with the best competitive advantage, both at international and local level (Berfield and Baigorri, 2013). Zara had regarded its target market as a â€Å"young educated one that likes fashion and is sensitive of fashion† (Wiggin, 2013). The company emphasizes on achieving competitive advantage over their rivals by integrating the manufacturing, production, logistics and customer handling staffs. The main activities, that escalate the speed of manufacturing and the supply chain, is the time taken to deliver Zara’s clothing from the manufacturing site (Hansen, 2012) 1) They regard customers as the centre of every clothing design strategy. Customers are questioned about their preferred clothing designs. The sales team of Zara makes use of the hand-held PDA devices for capturing the daily and even hourly feedback from customers, which enables them to ideate new clothing designs. The device daily transfers design to the Research and Development section, which is known as Cube (Valerio, 2013). The Cube team makes new clothing pieces in just two weeks and those match the exact needs of customers. The business strategy of Zara is clear; if a company has to succeed in the long run in a competitive market, then it has to be customer-centric. The needs and desires of customers are taken into account, so that the company can cater to their needs in the exact manner that they look for (Ferdows, Lewis and Machuca, 2003). 2) The company concentrates on technology for managing and tracking inventory and also, controlling cost. The sales associates send daily reports to the management, regarding