ASSIGNMENT: - Analyzing Operation Management of 5 Leading

Companies to develop their offering Services/Products.

 UNILEVER
 2
 3
 4
 5

1. UNILEVER

Introduction

Unilever is among the largest consumer product manufacturers globally. Unilever specializes in the
manufacture, distribution, and sale of various trusted brands and specializes in the manufacture of
Beverages, Food, personal care and cleaning products. The company was established in 1930 and
is today spread across the globe. As of 2017 the company has a total of 169,000 employees and
has registered a net income of 5.5 Billion Pounds in 2016. The company has registered constant
growth over the years but automation and advances in technology have resulted in the number of
employees working for Unilever to reduce from 290,000 in the year 2000 to just 169,000 in 2017.
This has resulted in the current workforce needing to take up alternative responsibilities which has
added pressure on the Unilever operation managers and staff.

Unilever's Operation Management

Unilever has distributed its operations globally which has resulted in the head office needing to
coordinate and manage operations at a global scale. This has resulted in the need to distribute
responsibilities among operation managers who have been assigned specific roles that allow each
manager to monitor and report their assigned work stations performance. There are ten decision
areas that the operation managers have been assigned to manage namely:

1. Products/ Service Design,

2. Quality management,
3. Process and Capacity Design,
4. Location Strategy,
5. Layout Design and Strategy,
6. Human Resources and Job Design,
7. Supply Chain Management,
8. Inventory Management,
9. Resource scheduling and Management,
10. Maintenance
Each of these operations plays a critical role towards ensuring the brands smooth operations and
also ensures the brand remains competitive on the global market. To manage each of the
operational tasks effectively, operation managers have been assigned to monitor, manage and
report their operation progress following a hierarchy leadership platform. This eliminates the
requirement for highly ranked officials to manage operations and frees their thus allowing them to
monitor global operations, expansion planning and brand development.

Unilever’s Process Management

he objective of operations management in this strategic decision area is to ensure adequate

resources and develop processes to support production. Unilever applies robotics and
automation in most of the production processes under its control. This approach maximizes
operational efficiency and productivity. For example, Unilever’s automation of the production of
its home care products prevents inconsistency in quality. Operations managers can also adjust
production capacity to address fluctuations in demand based on seasons and special
occasions. Moreover, Unilever conducts regular evaluations of processes and capacity
requirements to keep the business productive, while minimizing issues in operations.

Unilever’s Quality Management

In this strategic decision area, operations managers deal with satisfying

consumers’ expectations on product quality. Unilever’s approach involves
implementing quality standards in operational processes to satisfy product
quality requirements. For example, the company applies a threshold for
defects and related issues in production operations. These operations
management standards are derived from Unilever’s market research data, as
well as conventions in the consumer goods industry. To maintain high
productivity in quality management, corporate standards and local standards
are applied for certain product lines to support the company’s generic and
product development strategies

Unilever's Supply Chain Transformation

Declining sales and revenue generation due to increasing competition in the consumer good and
service market meant that Unilever had to adopt a radical supply chain transformation to remain in
operation. The first move would see Unilever adopt a new approach to managing its supply chain by
focusing on the following areas:

1. Understanding the supply chain influences to growth,

2. Emphasis on Improving Profit margins through Automation,
3. Increasing capital efficiency,
4. Developing a Unilever Sustainable Living Programme.
In addition to the above-mentioned areas, Unilever has also fully integrated its back office operations
at the supply chain control tower of its operations centre in Poland. This would allow better
monitoring of operations at different manufacturing plants and data analysis which can help
determine areas that needed further improvement. As digital technology and the internet make
connectivity easier Unilever back office operations also becomes more efficient with regard to
monitoring and report on different Unilever manufacturing and supply chain operations .

Another major development related to the supply chain transformation was the way Unilever took
charge of handling its European Logistics. Traditionally, Unilever had depended on contracted
logistics companies to distribute its products to customers across different regions in Europe but this
was leading to high costs and low revenue generation. Instead, Unilever would develop its own
supply chain network known as the point to point network which adopted a courier type approach of
distributing Unilever products across Europe. The point to point network would comprise of 9 main
hubs across Europe which would result in reducing the movement of a truck by 20%.

Unilever has 260 factories and over 460 ware houses across the globe results in Unilever having
huge operations and supply chain management task on its hands. This was one of the main reasons
linked to Unilever revamping its operations and supply chain management due to the company
gradually registering lower profits as the brand expanded. This is contrary to expansion laws where
a business should actually be registering rising profits with expansions which have resulted in
Unilever adopting some radical approaches towards regaining optimum operations and spiking its
profit margins.

Unilever's Lean Thinking

Unilever would also require developing a different approach linked to manufacturing so as to reduce
overhead expenses and costs related to manufacturing products which remained on shelves for long
periods. This meant that Unilever would need to put in place a lean thinking task force who would
analysis the brand's product consumption over a specific period and determine changes in consumer
purchasing interest. This data would allow Unilever would determine periods when certain of its
products attracted more demand from consumers and when the products had lower demand. This
would, in turn, allow Unilever organize is factory production lines accordingly and organize the
production of fast flowing products thus helping reduce costs incurred during the manufacturing
process. It would also mean less capital was invested in products that sat on shelves and allows the
business to have more liquid capital at all times.

Unilever's Capacity Planning

Another Area Unilever would need to focus its attention was towards capacity planning which
involves the expansion of production capacity for certain products which have high consumer
demand. OMO, Skip laundry detergents, Knorr, Robertson’s, Knorrox, Aromat and Rajah have all
registered overwhelming demand among consumers globally. This made it important for Unilever to
increase its production capacity for these brands as opposed to other products which may register
lower demand (Unilever 2013). This would also allow Unilever to focus its efforts towards certain
products thus allowing the brand to increase its profits and reduce overhead expenses related to
mass productions of a wide array of products.

Conclusion
Being able to adopt the above-mentioned measures has allowed Unilever to cut down its
manufacturing costs and also allowed the business increase is productivity and supply chain
management. All these factors have contributed towards the business operations and growth thus
allowing Unilever to maintain it’s competitive and edge on the global consumer product market. 
Today Unilever is ranked 5th position among the top 10 FMCG Companies in the World (Lists 2017)
 2. ITC Limited

 Introduction
ITC Limited is an Indian multinational conglomerate company headquartered
in Kolkata, West Bengal. Established in 1910 as the 'Imperial Tobacco Company of
India Limited', the company was renamed as the 'India Tobacco Company
Limited' in 1970 and later to 'I.T.C. Limited' in 1974. The dots in the name were
removed in September 1974 for the company to be renamed as 'ITC Limited' where
'ITC' would no longer be an initialism. The company completed 100 years in 2010
and as of 2012–13, had an annual turnover of US$8.31 billion and a market
capitalization of US$52 billion. It employs over 30,000 people at more than 60
locations across India and is part of Forbes 2000 list.

 ITC Operation Management

ITC has distributed its operations very strongly under the boundary of our country
which has resulted in the head office needing to coordinate and manage operations at a very large
scale. This has resulted in the need to distribute responsibilities among operation managers who
have been assigned specific roles that allow each manager to monitor and report their assigned
work stations performance. There are ten decision areas that the operation managers have been
assigned to manage namely:

1.Products/ Service Design,

 2.Quality management,
3.Process and Capacity Design,
4.Location Strategy,
5.Layout Design and Strategy,
6.Human Resources and Job Design,
7.Supply Chain Management,
8.Inventory Management,
9.Resource scheduling and Management,
10.Maintenance
Each of these operations plays a critical role towards ensuring the brands smooth operations and
also ensures the brand remains competitive on the global market. To manage each of the
operational tasks effectively, operation managers have been assigned to monitor, manage and
report their operation progress following a hierarchy leadership platform. This eliminates the
requirement for highly ranked officials to manage operations and frees their thus allowing them to
monitor global operations, expansion planning and brand development.

 ITC Process Management (Product & Services)

Major Products
ITC Ltd sells 81% of the Cigarettes, Bidi in Asia, where 275 million people use tobacco
products and the total cigarette market is worth close to $11 billion (around Rs. 757399.4
million).

Others Products

Foods: ITC's major food brands include Kitchens of India; Ashirvad B natural, Sunfeast, Candyman,
Bingo! and Yippee! ITC is India's largest seller of branded foods with of over Rs. 4,600 crores in
2012–13. It is present across 6 categories in the food business including snack foods, ready-to-eat
meals, fruit juices, dairy products and confectionery.

 Personal care products include perfumes, haircare and skincare categories. Major brands
are Fiama Di Wills, Vivel, Savlon Soap & Handwash, Essenza Di Wills, Superia and Engage.
 Stationery: Brands include Classmate, PaperKraft and Colour Crew. Launched in 2003,
Classmate went on to become India's largest notebook brand in 2007.
 Safety Matches and Agarbattis: Ship, i Kno and Aim brands of safety matches and
the Mangaldeep brand of agarbattis (Incense Sticks).
 Hotels: ITC's Hotels division (under brands including WelcomHotel) is India's second-largest
hotel chain with over 90 hotels throughout India. ITC is also the exclusive franchisee in India of
two brands owned by Sheraton International Inc. Brands in the hospitality sector owned and
operated by its subsidiaries include Fortune Park Hotels and WelcomHeritage Hotels.
 Paperboard: Products such as speciality paper, graphic and other paper are sold under the
ITC brand by the ITC Paperboards and Specialty Papers Division like Classmate product of ITC,
well known for their quality.
 Packaging and Printing: ITC's Packaging and Printing division operates manufacturing
facilities at Haridwar and Chennai and services domestic and export markets.
 Information Technology: ITC operates through its fully owned subsidiary ITC Infotech India
Limited.
 Dairy Products: ITC also in a process to start Dairy Products.

 ITC Quality Management

The unique nature of ITC's businesses requires each business to adopt and implement
necessary management systems and controls to meet policy requirements.

All the manufacturing units in the Company are certified in accordance with ISO 9001, ISO
14001 and OHSAS 18001 managements systems. All major hotels have been certified to ISO
14001 and 4 hotels have received HACCP certification. Others are in the process of receiving
the certifications. International Quality Rating System (IQRS) for Business Excellence, which
rates key processes against international benchmarks, has already been introduced in a
number of businesses. In addition, various other quality improvement tools such as 'Six Sigma'
initiatives and 'Total Productive Maintenance' (TPM) are integrated with the Quality
Management Systems

 ITC Integrated Manufacturing and Logistics

The manufacturing capability of ICML Trichy was augmented during the year with the
commissioning of state-of-the-art lines for Finger Snacks, Atta and Biscuits.
Capacity Utilisation at Kapurthala, Panchla, Uluberia, Mysuru and Guwahati being
progressively ramped up.
 Steady progress is being made towards development of other such facilities which
are expected to be commissioned in the near to medium term.