Production Line and Inventory Management at Bluebird Foods
Discuss about the Knowledge Management and Quality Practices.
The current study is based on understanding the definition of the capacity management in perspective of the machines, materials and labour. The study takes into the consideration the maximum as well as the optimum management as how the Bluebird foods produces the products and how the employees are employed in the production procedure of manufacturing snacks. The report would provide the diagrammatic layout of the plant in the organizations.
The report further describes that there is a need for continuous improvement in total quality management with further recommendations in the waste reductions. The study explains the functions of inventory in terms of the raw materials and finished in terms of sustaining the productions and customer demand.
Capacity management can be defined as the procedure that is used to make sure that the capacity of the Information Technology is capable of meeting the present and future business needs in the cost effective manner (Dale, 2015). The capacity management states that planning and applications consists of management areas that are proactive and reactive in nature. The capacity management refers to the management of the limits of a company’s resources namely the labour forces, manufacturing and office spaces, technology and equipment, raw materials and inventory. Capacity management is associated with the capacity of the organization’s procedure such as development of new product or marketing.
Bluebird foods production process comprises of controlled quantities of raw materials and process liquids that are premixed and it is dosed with the objective of feeding the extrusion platform constantly (Ross, 2017). The production process of Bluebird foods is automated at higher capacity processing with faster automated changeovers. The production process of Bluebird Corporation comprises of the use of the wide range of ingredients and process flexibility to provide the facilities of product features.
The working shift are conducted in three eight hour shift under the variety of operational conditions to generate snacks exact grains and densities. A wide variety of size, shapes and fillings together with the operational kits are undertaken during the production procedure (Sallis, 2014). The cost effective intensified transformation procedure helps the Bluebird foods to generate raw materials, water and energy with easy maintenance and compact designs together with the lower requirements of space. The snacks production capacity ranges from 200 kg/h to 2000 kg/h.
For optimum production management of the Bluebird foods snacks the company has set up the optimum production line which is stated below;
- Shorter times of set-up: In terms of the nature all the setting procedure leads to waste. Bluebird foods ties up the labour and equipment without adding any value (Goetsch & Davis, 2014). Bluebird foods imparts training to improve the efficiency and provide workers with the accountability for setting up production and attaining optimum production line.
- Empowering the employees: Bluebird foods divides the workforce in smaller teams and provides them with the accountability of numerous tasks to improve the efficiency of the production line.
- Pull Production: In the bid to reduce the inventory Bluebird foods holds the costs and the lead times in production (Oakland, 2014). Bluebird foods has pioneered the system where the quantity of materials, labour and energy increased at every level of production procedure that is entirely reliant on the demand for the snacks from the next stage of production.
Total Quality Management Principles at Bluebird Foods
Selected organisation has utilised the following tow principles of the plant layout (Chauhan et al., 2015):
- Principle of space utilisation
- Principle of overall integrity
Details regarding the above mentioned principles of the plant layout are as follows:
As per this principle of the plant layout, it is essential for the firm to utilise the available space in such a way that both horizontal and vertical space of the firm can be used. In addition to this, layout of the firm need to be flexible enough to adopt required changes in case of future changes (Wu et al., 2016). It this will provide essential flexibility and ability to develop the operation of the firm in future.
This principle of the overall integrity of the firm is used to provide services and facilities and it need to be located in such a place which is close proximity to the essential resources as well as aids the firm to minimise the product travel time. It would help firm to reduce the cost of operation (Xin et al., 2016).
In order to have continuous growth of the business organisation it is essential to provide focus on the quality because it is one of the essential parameters that aids the firms to outshine their competitors and improve their growth path under the fierce market competition. When it comes to the Bluebird foods, then there are many firm that operates in New Zealand in the snacks industry in the state that makes the market competitive in nature. In addition to this, growth of the industry during the last one decade with the shift in the demand of the consumers from the fast food to the healthy snacks has attracted many new firms towards the snacks market (Dale, 2015). Under this situation, in order to deal with the performance benchmark as well as evolve through the daily endeavours total quality management has become essential for the firm. Under the total quality management framework there are four broad categories, which are sub divided in four subsections. As per the framework, following are the four groups of the total quality management that can provide the Bluebird foods continuous development (Ross, 2017):
- Foundation
- Building Bricks
- Binding Mortar
- Roof
Details regarding the following subdivision of the total quality management is as follows:
Foundation of the total quality management is made of three sections, which are ethics, trust and integrity. Total process of the total quality management is dependable upon the strong foundation of the organisation, ethical binding of the firm, integrity within the operational framework of the organisation and trust among the employees of the business. Irrespective of the level of working and designation, it is crucial for all the employees to maintain organisational ethics, trust and integrity that provides good flow of the business (Sallis, 2014).
Kaizen Process for Waste Management
Ethics: ethics within the firm is the understanding of the employees regarding the good and bad. A tiny line of difference is present within the good and bad and the firm need to establish of the same that aid the workers to enjoy an unbiased working environment within the framework of the firm.
Integrity: it is one of the essential element for the smooth operation of the firm that provides honesty, values and sincerity of the individual towards the work. As per the total quality management framework of the firm, for the smooth operation of firm, it is essential to introduce proper training regarding the understanding of the integrity and how it can influence the working of the business. In addition to this, it aids to make better decision that aids the management of the firm to flow transformation within the firm without any escalation from the employees (Goetsch & Davis, 2014).
Trust: without trust no business can evolve into a big sized business and thus it is first and foremost importance towards the firm’s management to create a trustworthy environment in the workplace so that the workers can work within a trustful environment. With trust issues among the workers, firms wouldn’t have elaborated its business and thus Bluebird foods need to encourage their employees to trust each other so that the operation of the firm can operate smoothly.
Bricks are the pillars of the organisation foundation of any business that provides essential amount of support towards the growth of the business. It is sub divided into the three essential parts which are training, teamwork and leadership.
Training: this essential component of the total quality management is aimed to educate and make the workers potential to perform different job within the operational framework of the firm. Training is essential for the firm to provide technical know-how, educate the workers regarding the decision making skills and aid them learning regarding the problem solving skills and many more.
Teamwork: a business is not a solo game and thus without the teamwork a firm cannot become larger and survive under the fierce competition of present date. Thus Bluebird foods need to bring in teamwork within their operational framework (Oakland, 2014).
Leadership: It is crucial for the firm’s growth because in absence of the proper leadership, it will not be possible for the firm to take the market with crucial strategies.
Made of three essential communication framework, binding mortars of the firm influence the communication flow within the business. Binding mortar is built with the three type of communication within the firm, which are (Obeidat et al., 2016):
Importance of Effective Communication and Employee Engagement
Downward communication: it flows information from the higher level of management to the employees
Upward communication: it flows the information from the employees to the top level of management
Sideways communication: it takes place among the different departments of the firm and flow the information to the employees of different departments.
It is the catalyst and incentive towards the employees to work for the growth and development of the firm. As per the framework of the total quality management, within proper rewards and recognition, a firm can influence its workers to work and work more in order to fulfil the organisational goal while fulfilling the personal goal.
Apart from the total quality management, it is essential for the firm to follow the Kaizen process of waste management, that helps the firm to work as per the corporate social responsibility and aids the firm to fetch lower level of inspection from the regulatory authority. With smooth implementation feature, Kaizen process argues in favour of elimination of the overproduction and improvement of the quality in order to control the waste production. In addition to this, Kaizen process depicts that, with enhancing the production efficiency and reducing unnecessary activities within the firm, by the means of developing money saving method of profit making can aid the firm in their waste management (Voehl et al., 2016). With the main focus on the systemic development of the firm’s working environment and development of the low waste generation procedure of production, Kaizen process reduces waste. It aids the firm to produce low waste and help to operate as per the regulated waste production margin.
Depending upon the production circle Bluebird foods prioritizes the wide areas of resources namely the production, design of the product, value recovery and supply circle management.
Bluebird foods have made a tremendous amount of gains by applying the programs of improving the labour and production capacity. These efforts can enhance the production resources if they are undertaken to encompass the criterion for lowering the consumptions of energy and raw materials (Aquilani et al., 2017). The company adds the methodology of lean value-add recognition to map down the energy conservation at each step of their operational procedure. This enable the company to thermodynamically compute the requirement of the minimum energy. Moving further than the pitch analysis Bluebird foods extends the lean program to enhance the energy efficiency by optimizing the energy integration in the process of heating and cooling operations.
By introducing the energy and parameters of materials in the snacks product design approaches, Bluebird foods could reduce the use of the materials that are non-renewable and hazardous materials (Khanam et al., 2016). Furthermore, the company has undertaken the changes in the design of the product and reusing the components following the end of the product life cycle. The designers help in prioritizing the incorporation of the sustainable features in the products to lower the effect of the products that have on the environment.
Bluebird foods satisfies the needs of resources by recycling and reusing the materials to historically eliminate the waste. Greater amount of technological advancement helps in attaining the recycling and organics of processing and waste to energy conversion (Fu et al., 2015). Waste-Collection operators and recyclers of Bluebird foods focuses on the building new building models by working with the manufactures to recognize and develop the opportunities for recovery of value. This usually consists of assisting the manufacturers of Bluebird foods to design products and process of productions to facilitate the use of materials.
Majority of the activities that creates an impact on the resources of the productivity and sustainability of the Bluebird foods includes the acquisition and transporting of raw materials, assembling the parts that is used in the process of manufacturing and using the disposal of final products. Bluebird foods arranges the productions shifts to create the better understanding of the footprint of supply (Mohammad, 2014). This usually consists of not only the materials that are used but also comprises of the total amount of volume and the extent to which the energy is used to manufacture the product.
The demand procedure of Bluebird foods is associated with creating the balance among the requirement of the customers through its supply chain capabilities. This comprises of the demand forecasting and synchronizing with the same with the production, procurement and distributions capacities (Kiran, 2016). A better demand management procedure enables the Bluebird foods to be highly proactive in anticipating demand.
An important component of the Bluebird foods demand management is discovering the process through which the company reduces the variability of demands and enhancing the operational flexibility. Bluebird foods brings forward an argument that lowering the demand variability helps in constant planning and lowering the costs which ultimately increases the flexibility of responding quickly to the internal and external events.
Majority of the customer driven variability for the Bluebird foods is regarded as unavoidable however the ultimate goal of the company is demand management to reduce the practice of management in increasing the variability of introducing the policies that substitute the smooth patter of demands. Another important portion of the Bluebird foods demand management is creating and executing contingency plans when there is an interruption in the operational plans (Khanam et al., 2016). The goal of the Bluebird foods in the demand management is to meet the demands of the customers in a highly effective and efficient way. The components of the Bluebird foods customer demand management procedure can create the noteworthy impact on the profitability of the organizations, its customers and the suppliers.
The supplier relationship management assist the Bluebird foods in structuring the relationship with the suppliers. Bluebird foods develops the close relationships with the small subset of the suppliers on the basis of the value that is provided to the organizations.
Conclusion:
From the above discussion it can be seen that the firm need to operate under the firm need to operate as per the total quality management and in addition to this the firm need to operate under waste management so that it can produce as per the demand of the market.
Reference:
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