Oak Hills' Supply Chain Management Essay.

The Lean system and its influence on the Oak Hills

Discuss about the Supply Chain Managementn Of Oak Hills.

The purpose of the topic is to state how the Oak Hills organization implement it supply chain management skills in order to carry out smooth transaction between the supplier chain and the buyers. The entire management is not being carried out in a much more proficient manner (Myerson, 2012). In this perspective, it is significant to discuss the importance of the lean system and how it would influence the working of the organization more effectively. The job satisfaction is necessary to take into account in this sphere and the employees must be happy with the job that they are intended to do (Myerson, 2012). Accordingly, the services are needed to be updated and to work on the communication problems between the buyers and suppliers. Therefore, the Oak Hills industry by keeping these problems in mind, it needs to be further elaborated and the problems are needed to be addressed accordingly. The recommendations are indeed important to take into account the problems that the organization is facing.

The environment of the work organization is transformed in the last few decades with the implementation of a new production system of the management in the service and industrial sectors. The practices of the work organization as a bundle also have effects of deleterious on the health and attitude of the employees. The lean system not only integrates the working of the technologies and machines, but also at the same time incorporates the other aspects of the organization (Myerson, 2012).

Lean is considered to be as a significant method which is experiencing the increase of competition among the companies. This resulted into a search for a better and new practice for enhancing the involvement of the employee. Over here the topic would further discuss about the nature of relationship between employee satisfaction and lean management and how it is influencing the lean management as a whole (Hasle eta al., 2012). Lean management focuses on the higher quality, low cost and the make the employees look for the improvements in their own sphere of Jobs. The workers must seek better communication with the managers and vice versa. The lean system would focus on the building the morale of the employee and also building momentum for the organizational success (Hasle eta al., 2012)

Lean system also focuses on a group work, where it has its demand about a multifunctional team having a leadership, where in a group someone is a facilitator, others are supervisors, line workers and engineers. Accordingly, the team would be focusing on identifying the problem, analyze it, developing a solution and implementing a solution. They can even work on the rotational basis to bring a proper solution to the organizational work through the implementation of value stream mapping. It is a smoother process to document the processes of Value Added and the process of Non- Value Added (Hasle eta al., 2012).

Improvements in the supply chain management

In order to achieve a satisfactory result, the organization needs to give sole training to the employees in terms of education. Proper education should be given to the employees in terms of to make them understand about the work in their individual sphere. Accordingly to make it smoother, proper process of communication should be established among the workers of the organization (Hasle eta al., 2012). The flow of the communication should be smooth enough to carry out a proper interaction with the higher authority and also to inform them about the workings of their organization. The implementation of the proper lean system must be incorporated properly to make the flow of education and working smooth, or else, the process of carrying forward a poor means of communication would spoil the quality of work and led to the failing of an organized work (Bhasin, 2012).

Organizations must be careful enough to handle the lean system on the employees. The Oak Hill company must maintain a process of smooth communication and also provide employees with benefits so that they can be satisfied with the workings of the organization.

For the Oak Hills, the most important is the functioning of the lean in order to decrease the inventories and bring improvement to the services of the customers.

The plant of Oak Hills suffers problems in the sphere of manufacturing process. The plant carries a very few information about the impending projects of E&E which required the instruments which are being supplied by the facility (Statdler, 2012; Fawcett et al., 2013).  Another important problem is that the E&E customers were accustomed to give orders in rush. Therefore, the plan is obliged to make raw materials of higher level. It means the costs holding are seemed to be quite high. Which in turn estimate of the inventory to turn annually five times. This increases the cost of delivery and the costs which are associated with the expending others (Statdler, 2012). To top it, the morale of the employee suffers and also the level service of the customers is also not maintained properly. To add to this, there is also a lack of communication between the employers while carrying out the work inside the plant. The lids which are produced by the organization are not suitable enough. If the construction of the lid is made too think, it tends to break. While the testing is being conducted, the work team members either sitting idle or involved in setting up the packing area in the organization.

Connection between Demand Management and Supply chain

Therefore, in order to combat this problem, the Oak hills must take steps to address these problems so that in future such problems would not occur (Christopher, 2016).

1. i) The organization must educate all the departments who are working in the supply chain to carry out a definite task inside the organization so that they can able to understand the demand of the customers.
2. ii) The company must use the information from the company’s benchmark and must assess the efforts to determine the particular targets for bringing improvements in the management of the supply chain (Christopher, 2016).
3. iii) Communication: Communication is an important aspect of the supply chain management. Communication needs to be effective to understand and the employees must interact properly about the basic problems (Christopher, 2016; Winser, Tan & Leong, 2014). Communication link must be established with the suppliers in order to carry out the functions properly. The adoption of the supply chain management integration would enable to carry out the task.

1. iv) At the level of each chain of supply, the proper skills are needed to be identified and this requires a lot of effort. The clarity about the basics responsibility and roles has to be culturally compatible.
2. v) There has to be a role of variables which are contextual in nature such as the relationship based on coordination between the buyers and suppliers (Christopher, 2016).
3. vi) A detailed study needs to be done in order to explain the capabilities of developing the service of supplier

vii) Application of the new technologies to identify the errors in production and quality of the items and the innovation needs a proper learning based on requirements (Christopher, 2016; Winser, Tan & Leong, 2014; Dekker et al., 2013).

Demand management is not a good idea in identifying the demand for the sale of year and this resulted to the growth of issues in the management of the supply chain. This further causes the workers to go fast and to fill up the trucks of delivery to get hold of the products to the customers in the next day of the delivery. For any organization, the management of demand is linked to its supply chain management. The organizations plan their operations accordingly which are dependent on the forecasts of demands The management of the supply chain gives support to achieve the real result from the production and efficiency which has to be operational in nature (Priem & Swink, 2012).

The main problem lies in the fact that Oak hills comes across the unpredictable demand. The product which is a matter of concern is the equipment testing which is used in the projects of E & E. the demands of these products highly unpredictable within the limit of production and the same results to the consequences of it (James, 2012). The main problem which is taking place within the group of clients is the lack of communication. The company carries a little knowledge about projects of E & E of its customers. Customers are used to place the last minute order as mentioned before. These are the factors which are integrated as the organization is unable to prepare a plan for the important demand and they are being forced with the rush jobs. In order to complete the orders in a stipulated period of time, the firm needs to keep stock of the higher inventory levels that translates into the cost which is of higher holding (James, 2012).

The unpredictable demand is also linked with the costs which are required to expeditate the orders (James, 2012). The costs of delivery and the extra time of the charges of manpower are also included in these types of expenses. The system of Lean is also useful in decreasing the waste but the organization needs to manage the variability by itself, as the manufacturers of the lean do not give any guarantee of volatility of zero (James, 2012).

As it is evident from the above mentioned details, the Oak Hills face serious fluctuations of demand. This unpredictability is the main cause of many different issues of the Oak hills and its suppliers (Estampe, Lamourie & Paris, 2013). The management of the supply chain can be utilized under such situation. The suppliers are needed to be estimated so that accordingly, they can prepare a plan for their production. Such culmination eliminates the issues which are related to delivery and further reduces the level on the level of inventory (Rushton, Croucher & Baker, 2014).

Such culmination would also going to spread through the customer as well. If the Firm is in the position to receive the details of the projects based on E & E of its clients, accordingly it can schedule the process of production for the unrealized fluctuation of the demand. This would further help in decreasing the inventory which would lower the costs and lead time Rushton, Croucher & Baker, 2014).

It is evident that the operations which are taking place in the Oak Hills firm required renovating for bringing efficiency in the administration of the firm. The manufacturers of the lean can solve most of the problems in related to the process of production of Oak Hills. However, the practicing of the implementation of the lean system might give birth to many problems which are illustrated below (Wieland & Marcus, 2012).

While implementing the process of lean system, people are the ones who are creating problems as the people are opposed to changes which are taking place mainly in the firm as they fear, they might lose the job or they cannot cop up with the new job (Morali & Seacry, 2013). The important stakeholders however, are needed to understand the importance of the lean system before the implementation of such system. Such knowledge about the lean system and the updates might help them to understand the importance of the lean system as it is considered to be important (Morali & Seacry, 2013). Other than this, the daily schedule needs to be fixed along with the production of the weekly schedule. The proper training is needed to be given to the employees on the statistical basis and they should be empowered to stop the process of production (Ashby, Leat & Hudson, 2012).

Welcoming the system of lean indicates providing proper education to the employees, adopting the latest techniques to make the workflow smoother and easier. These involve the expenses (Ashby, Leat & Hudson, 2012). However this implementation might cause problems because there are issues which are linked to cost while innovating the operations. The senior management needs to understand about the benefits of the manufacturing of lean or accepting the changes. This process would provide benefit to the entire situation and getting the picture done in a more proper ways.

Conclusion

Therefore, it can be concluded that the introduction of the lean system is necessary to embrace the changes to bring improvements in the Oak Hills organization. The communication is the main factor which is resulting to the poor implementation of the work. The handling of projects and some other problems relating to giving education to the employees are needed to be taken care of.

References

Ashby, A., Leat, M., & Hudson-Smith, M. (2012). Making connections: a review of supply chain management and sustainability literature. Supply Chain Management: An International Journal, 17(5), 497-516.

Christopher, M. (2016). Logistics & supply chain management. Pearson UK.

Dekker, R., Fleischmann, M., Inderfurth, K., & van Wassenhove, L. N. (Eds.). (2013). Reverse logistics: quantitative models for closed-loop supply chains. Springer Science & Business Media.

Estampe, D., Lamouri, S., Paris, J. L., & Brahim-Djelloul, S. (2013). A framework for analysing supply chain performance evaluation models. International Journal of Production Economics, 142(2), 247-258.

Fawcett, S. E., Ellram, L. M., & Ogden, J. A. (2013). Supply Chain Management: Pearson New International Edition: From Vision to Implementation. Pearson Higher Ed.

Hasle, P., Bojesen, A., Langaa Jensen, P., & Bramming, P. (2012). Lean and the working environment: a review of the literature. International Journal of Operations & Production Management, 32(7), 829-849.

Janvier-James, A. M. (2012). A new introduction to supply chains and supply chain management: Definitions and theories perspective. International Business Research, 5(1), 194.

Morali, O., & Searcy, C. (2013). A review of sustainable supply chain management practices in Canada. Journal of Business Ethics, 117(3), 635-658.

Myerson, P. (2012). Lean supply chain and logistics management. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Priem, R. L., & Swink, M. (2012). A demand?side perspective on supply chain management. Journal of Supply Chain Management, 48(2), 7-13.

Stadtler, H. (2015). Supply chain management: An overview. In Supply chain management and advanced planning (pp. 3-28). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

Wieland, A., & Marcus Wallenburg, C. (2012). Dealing with supply chain risks: Linking risk management practices and strategies to performance. International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, 42(10), 887-905.

Wisner, J. D., Tan, K. C., & Leong, G. K. (2014). Principles of supply chain management: A balanced approach. Cengage Learning.