• Establish the company as a public corporation (PLC) within next five years.
• Increase market share by expanding their market to Europe.
• Reduce operation costs by minimising waste and cost of poor quality.
• Improve the quality of both products and services to achieve excellent customer satisfaction and zero customer complaint.
• Increase product range
• Invest further in staff, equipment and storage.
• Become more environmentally and ethically sustainable.

Short Term Objectives between 1^st Oct 2015 and 31^st March 2016

• Add the authentic and luxury new product as “Pars Chilli Pepper Cheese Nuggets” in 1 kg bags to their product range.
• Add the value pack of the “Pars Seasoned Twisters” in 1 kg bags to their product range.
• Buy some specialist potato transport lorries to reduce their reliance on outsourcing.
• Implement Total Quality Management (TQM), a culture of continuous quality improvement in the company to involve everybody in quality and customer satisfaction throughout the organisation.
• Get accredited by ISO9001 for standardisation in service and production
• Purchase a new cutting machine to be used to manufacture the Twisters with value of £300,000.
• Increase the number of full time staff on the shopfloor (operations) and in the sales and marketing department by a further 25. Increase the number of part time staff on the shop floor (operations) and in “in-bound” transport by a further 30.
• Reduce the environmental impact and improve the health and safety of staff.
• Find new sources of finance for the purchase of additional equipment and to build additional storage facilities.
• Promote lean and agile operation

Operations

The key operational activities in Pars Food Ltd. are sourcing, purchasing, manufacturing, packaging, storage, transport, sales and marketing, administration, finance and accounting. The purchasing department deals with farms, Soho transport, raw materials and equipment suppliers. The manufacturing, packaging, storage and transport department has 10 different production lines, working 24 hour shifts with 280 full time and 20 part-time employees. Most of the production line capacity is used to manufacture frozen chips but other products are also produced in the same factory.

The Production manager is Jack Holmes, a young engineer who has been employed by the company for two years. He is an ambitious manager who had three years previous experience of working as a production engineer in a ready-made meal food manufacturer in Scotland. His main duty is to manage the production and packaging teams. A simple flow diagram below illustrates the supply chain and manufacturing process of material involved in producing frozen chips.

The company is currently outsourcing all of its raw material through outside transport and is considering using its own transport for sourcing the potato in the future. The board of directors is really concerned with quality, cost and reliability in its supply chain network from the initial sourcing of the material to final delivery of the goods to customers. The level of rejection in quality inspection and quality check for frozen chips is high and they would like to reduce this.

Jane Williams is a food technologist who is in charge of quality control in the company. She is a young graduate from university with just two years experience of research flow whilst working at a laboratory for “Kraft Food” in the USA. Pars Food Ltd. would also like to improve their performance in JIT (Just in Time) delivery and increase their agility in their delivery to customers. Craig Calpin, an experienced logistics manager of 25 years, leads a team of 50 warehouse and transport employees. He is constantly complaining about the lack of capacity in freezers for all products and the monthly report for the last few months indicated a high level of fluctuation of stock in storage. There has been a surplus of “Stake Cut Chips” (thick cut), suitable for “Fish & Chips” shops and restaurants, left in the storage for more than 2 months with very low selling opportunity. Craig has also asked for a detailed assessment to be conducted prior to building the new proposed storage for products so that it can be aligned with potential future production and sales volume.

A further issue in the whole operation process is a lack of standard procedures in the organisation which makes standardisation across the company difficult.  Maintenance costs of outdated machinery have also increased. Marian Holmes, a senior office manager with 20 years experience has been faced with staffing problems due to the increase in administration as she only has 5 staff.

The purchasing activities, including buying, negotiating and supplier selection, are led by two of the directors who have five senior experienced buyers working with them. Their responsibilities are to find appropriate suppliers, deal and negotiate with them, liaise with the production, marketing and finance departments and finally to identify alternative supply sources globally

The sales and marketing team consists of 20 people who are managed by Philip Jones, the marketing and sales manager. The employees are involved in telesales, advertising, website design and six of the team are regional marketing executives. The marketing department’s main ambitious objective is to increase their market share within Europe, especially northern European countries, within the next two years.  They have already been working with quality management and the production team to develop five new products for the future. They have just launched the “Pars Chilli Pepper Cheese Nuggets” and “Pars Seasoned Twisters” to appeal to two different segments within the snack market, the former to appeal to a basic market and the latter a more luxury market segment.

The department have asked for additional funding to support their plans and also an increase in their budget for advertising and new product development. They have recently spent £50,000 on advertising these two new products and have asked for a further £100,000 advertising budget for next year.

The marketing team is also working on developing new software as part of their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) policy. This will store all possible information from customers including their personal details, their shopping habits, any feedback they have previously given regarding Par Foods’ products and even identify products which customers are currently not buying with a view to using this information in future marketing campaigns and promotions.

The company would also like to conduct research into the organic food market as a possible future growth area. They first need to investigate the wider implications of this both from a legal and an economic perspective. Before they enter this market it is necessary to identify potential / actual risks and benefits of the strategy for their business and the wider environment. (Social, Economic, Environmental, Technological).