Concept Design Services has gained impressive popularity among the target audience in a relatively short amount of time. Starting at Martelsham Health in 1986 as a small company built on a shoestring budget, CDS has grown into a major corporation for supply and installation based in Ipswitch (Concept Design Services, 2014). Previously an inward looking company, CDS has turned into a major corporation with a worldwide influence and solid reputation. However, over the past few years, the necessity for the company to switch to the design house partnership model has emerged. As a result, the need to introduce operations management into the company’s processes has appeared.
Operations management is traditionally defined as a management system that allows for a close supervision of the company’s production processes, as well as the related issues (e.g., the efficacy of the adopted logistics strategy, the productivity of the HRM strategy, etc.) (Slack, Chambers & Johnson, 2010, p. 27). In the context of the CDS, operation management is imperative for managing the internal processes of the company and at the same time integrating new principles of partnership into the organization. Seeing how CDS is aiming at retaining control over its every single internal process yet is willing to expand by merging with the partners and offering them to manage the company’s processes as well, it will be reasonable to suggest that the key concepts of operational management should be integrated into the CDS system.
Speaking of “four Vs” (Jones & Robinson, 2012, p. 14), CDS has an impressive variation of services and is capable of customizing some of the services so that the customers could be fully satisfied. Based on the information offered at the company’s official site, it will be safe to say that the variety of CDS services is not going to shrink any time soon; as the official data shows, a new option of choosing the new ‘Stormor’ Shelving System (Concept Design Services, 2014a) has been provided recently.
The volume of the services can also be considered rather high. The same can be said about variety; CDS offers six key types of services, therefore, making it obvious that the organization attempts at embracing the entire spectrum of services that a design company can provide. Though the data provided at the official site does not specify the amount of products released annually, the fact that the company has recently decided to expand through a design house partnership shows that CDS is definitely going to increase the amount of products released on an annual basis. Finally, as far as the visibility of the company goes, one must admit that CDS should work on the transparency of its processes. Though the final product clearly meets the initial requirements, the processes that occur in between the order and the delivery are rather obscure.
As it has been stated above the CDS Company clearly needs better supervision of the company’s core processes. Herein factors the concept of operational management (Shtub & Kami, 2010). Improving cooperation between the company’s departments can be seen as the first significant step towards a better coordination of the company’s processes and shared knowledge management. In addition, the CDS Company obviously lacks a better promotion strategy. Despite the fact that the company has grown impressively large, it has a number of competitors to fight; and, seeing how CDS is willing to expand, it will soon have to develop a strategy for raising its competitiveness on a global scale. It will be reasonable to consider new media and especially social networks as the possible tool.
Reference List
Concept Design Services (2014). Home. Web.
Concept Design Services (2014a). Latest offers. Web.
Jones, P. & Robinson, P. (2012). Operations management. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Slack, N., Chambers, S. & Johnson, S. (2010). Operations management. Harlow, UK: Pearson Education, Ltd.
Shtub, A. & Kami, R. (2010). ERP: The dynamics of supply chain and process management. New York, NY: Springer.
