Aldi Case Essay

Individual Action points included in the presentation8 Appendix8 Executive Report Group 9 was assigned with the Aldi case study for the Marketing Management assessment. I was assigned with the role of Group Leader by the members and also trusted with the work for the PowerPoint presentation slides as I stated that I have the proper knowledge. The role of the leader was taken seriously and I starting setting the meeting conditions and proposed and delegated the individual research subjects related to our group case study. The individual research I undertook for the Aldi case study was the defining the Lean concept and detail research of the Continuous Improvement concept. As a group leader I took the decision that all the individual pieces of research to be presented inside the group for all to acknowledge the management concepts used into making the company run lean processes and getting customer satisfaction. Personally I designed the slides and the structure, which was later slightly modified by John Vincent’s proposal. Together we practiced and we have presented remarkably at the final presentation. Within the presentation I exposed a summary of the theoretical concepts of Lean Production, Continuous Improvement, Time Based Management, JIT production and Total Quality Management and was followed by Medet Coban who presented the Economies of Scale Concept while in the closing part John Vincent presented the benefits of Lean Thinking concluded with a Market research regarding Aldi’s competitive advantage. Key areas of personal research and sources of information As part of the Group 9 which had as case study the food retailing company ALDI, the following areas of research have been identified: * Lean thinking philosophy * Lean production * Continuous Improvement * Just In Time Management * Total Quality Management * Economies of Scale. The research of these concepts was distributed among the group members for a more in depth research and understanding. The key areas of research that I undertook for the group activity were 1. Defining and understanding the concepts of Lean Thinking Philosophy and Lean Production 2. Continuous Improvement. Used as sources of information for the foundation of my research were the LSC Library where I am registered as a student and the internet research. Also the group used the information of the case study. The proportion of the Library research weighted aprox. 80% of the total personal research, while the case study information weighted 10% and the internet sources also about 10%. The book references will be found in the appendix at the end of this report. Key theoretical positions summary In the group presentation there were analyzed and presented the following theoretical issues: The Mission and the Objectives The Mission is established by the top management of a company. It represents the long term achievements that are wanted to be reached and the basic principles to be followed to get as close as possible to the proposed mission. These principles must be followed by all employees as they represent the company’s values and in time the will develop into the company’s culture. The Objectives or targets are meant to set the results of the activity that the company needs to achieve in order to accomplish the mission set at the beginning. They can be quantitative or qualitative but always they have to be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time defined) In our presentation it was specified that the Aldi’s mission was established using the ideology Lean Thinking and that Aldi uses the same philosophy’s principles in order to achieve its business objective for growth and continuous improvement. Lean Thinking is the concept where efficiency is developed by the improvement of the quality while reducing the costs, time, space and effort. The concept is used most of the time interchangeable with the JIT concept. Lean Production is the process of organizing each process of an organization with the purpose of increasing the efficiency and minimizing the waste. Next there were presented the others concepts used as tools into achieving the lean processes as they were also presented in the case study: Continuous Improvement – relies on gradually improving the organization’s processes for a cumulative increased rate of performance improvement. A learning organization is also able to generalize the knowledge gained in the improvement process by its employees and then replicate it among them. Time Based Management – it’s a general approach meant to reduce the level of unproductive time of the business’ processes. It usually requires multi-trained staff and/or advanced technology but it leads to advantages like faster market adaptability and a faster new product development. Just in Time Production – the management system where a company provides its products/services only as demanded on the market. The benefits of JIT are the reduced cost of stock management (only the necessary stock needed to cover for potentially delay of the suppliers or the production itself), fast adaptability for the demands on the market and waste reduction. Total Quality Management – a general management concept that concludes that all the factors and the resources of the company should be used towards achieving long term success through customer satisfaction. Its philosophy is getting things done right the first time. Economies of Scale – is an effect of running the organization efficiently and applying also the previous concepts. It presumes that a company will increase their incomes with a larger production/activity while maintaining approximately the same level of costs by using its resources efficiently. Individual Key Conclusions First we learned about Lean Thinking concept and how important it is in today’s world to be efficient. Studying ALDI case study we analyzed and discovered that having a competitive advantage on the market is both beneficial for the company and the customers in the same time. ALDI’s competitive advantage was to offer the customers the high quality products at lower prices by using the efficiency concepts that allowed them to run their processes with the minimum waste and costs. The lean thinking was adopted by the top management and included in the mission statement and the business objectives as the strategy to deliver the business benefits to the stockholders and the customers. The efficiency concepts used are interchangeable and complementary and they all lead towards achieving economies of scale profitability. Continuous improvement – everybody in the organization is to accept the responsibility of their tasks and contribute to the efficiency of the organization by improving the process and the standards of the activity. Time Based Management – is the most efficient when the company relies on multi skilled trained staff and can be considered as one of the main results of the continuous improvement. Just In Time concept orientates the company’s activity towards the market requirements and allows it adapt its production volume, standards and diversity to the requirements of the customers. Total Quality Management is a global management concept that guides the entire organization’s activity towards achieving customer satisfaction and every process must be efficiently improved to meet the quality, price and customer service demanded by the consumer. Economies of scale are the primary result of the efficiency concepts that have been applied in an integrated manner towards improving the business processes and to deliver the customer satisfaction. This will achieve the long term durability and development of the company as the mission and the objectives are oriented. The practical issues that arose prior to the presentation were: * The difficulty into arranging a meeting were all the members be present and therefore making some of the group decisions just based on the judgement of the named leader. * The structure of the presentation was changed just on the last meeting as an intervention of one of the members. The risk of losing time into the preparation and repetition was bigger than the risk of the last minute change and therefore we adopted the idea. After having the Power point slides done there have been modifications into the presentation which there were not changed into the printed handout due to the lack of time. Key Critical Observations and Commentary The first impression regarding the case study was that I would have had rather as the group assessment the marketing research and the development of a new marketing strategy. The start of the work on this piece was delayed due to the uncertainty of what exactly we are supposed to do. However, working on this case study gave me the opportunity to remark that Marketing is an integrated component of the entire organizational structure even though the concepts were mostly about operational management. Discovering the management concepts like Continuous Improvement, Just In Time Management, Time Based Management or Total Quality Management made the group realize that the Marketing Strategy is more efficient when the company has its production and services oriented towards getting customer satisfaction. The individual assignment directions I found to be a little bit confusing. Key topics of personal learning They key topic that I personally learned as a result of undertaking the group assignment was the Continuous Improvement concept. I have learned that Continuous Improvement is one of the two improvement methods, the second one being Discontinuous Change or Business Process Innovation. While the second method has a rather radical approach and it’s mostly used as a final resort to adapt to the environment requirements, Continuous improvement relies on gradually improving the organization’s processes for a cumulative increased rate of performance improvement. The 3 steps in assuring CI are: 1. creating the appropriate environment – the Company must create an ambience where all employees adopt the organization’s values and then set up standard procedures for the improvement process. The most common procedure is Deming’s and Shewhart’s Plan Do Control Act cycle. 2. Involving everyone in the Organization – Company is responsible for the employees’ participation. They must train the staff in Statistical Programming Control and work teams to encourage employee participation as well as setting the objectives like Quality Costs Delivery Safety Moral. . Using the proper Problem Solving Skills – Company must make sure that all teams have the appropriate Problem Solving Skills for the process improvement they’re responsible for. Continuous Improvement also relates to the concept of Learning Organization which means that learning of individuals must be generalized and replicated inside the comp any to achieve the best optimum improvement performance. Executive Summary of The Group activity I consider that the team we created and the group assignment was successful due to the following factors: * The final presentation went well, as planned and everybody was happy of the result; * Each student had the opportunity to do a piece of research and then presenting it to the other members of the group which helped learn individually and also teach each other in an interactive manner; * Group relations were well linked and there were no complaints to each other inside the group. The presentation of the individual research increased everyone’s confidence of taken a real presentation on their own for different subjects and in different situations. Individual Action points included in the presentation The personal contribution towards the group presentation consists of: 1. I was firstly elected as the leader of the group. My role was taken seriously and I tried to set the best times for meetings and also tried to get everyone involved in the decisions and brainstorming proc ess 2. I suggested leads to be followed for the presentation. I divided the research subjects and made everyone responsible for their own piece of work. The summary of each subject of research was presented individually inside the group. 3. PowerPoint slides’ design and structure were set personally and each member has its contribution with the content of their research for one slide of presentation. 4. Created the speech for the piece of presentation I was involved and took an active role into the practice of the presentation by directing and suggesting improvements.