The Wegman’s food market reputation

The Role of Inventory in Wegman’s Food Market

The Wegman’s food market’s stellar customer service and high-quality merchandise are the foundation of its enviable reputation. But several operational problems also play a role in the business’s overall success. The massive food chain must therefore consider specific changes to its operations in light of the intensifying competition in the food markets.

Inventory Management

Inventory is the quantity of stock retained by a firm for resale or transformation into valuable items, and it is one of the specific tasks required by the company. Each Wegman store has a capacity of up to 70,000 units. The company also conducts a monthly inventory count to determine the amount of inventory held by each unit. Stock within a particular unit comes with various costs including; carrying-cost, ordering costs, and shortage costs. Since the company operates a continues ordering system of inventory, it is crucial for the inventory managers to use inventory control models to ensure a steady flow of stock.

If a unit of the firm has a high inventory level, this will increase the carrying costs of the stock leading to improved overall costs and a reduction in the firm’s profits (Slack, 2015). On the other hand, also, if a unit of the firm orders fewer amounts of inventory than the quantities required, the company will also incur shortage costs. Shortage costs are as a result of a loss of sales. Shortage of stock also leads to dissatisfaction of customers which may lead to long-term reduction in profits for the company.

Quality Control

Every company strives to maintain the quality of its products, and this serves as one of the strengths of the company. The Wegman company is known to offer high standards of quality products and services to its customers and employees. The company evaluates the quality of its products in the kitchen as well as label the products according to their brands. Within the company, it is the responsibility of managers to determine high-quality products. Employees, on the other hand, report to managers in case of inferior quality products before they are placed on display for sale.

Quality control is essential to every company to increase customer satisfaction. Quality management within the production has evolved to include dimensions such as performance, safety, reliability, durability among other dimensions (Jacobs, 2013). Due to the increased levels of competition from other companies, the Wegman company needs to improve on its special features of the products. Most products produced by other companies are similar to those provided at Wegman’s, thus to ensure the company increases its competitive edge, it needs to introduce unique features to the quality of its products. Another essential feature that the company needs to improve on is the safety of the products. The customer trust is earned through the safety of products.

Capacity Planning

Capacity planning determines the amount of floor area to be used depending on the customer’s demand for various products. Wegman supermarkets have one of the largest floor capacities of up to 10,000 square feet. This capacity is double the size of average food stores in the states. Due to the large floor capacity, the stores have up to 25 to 35 checkpoints in every store. The company offers different sections including the bakery section, video rentals, the floral section among other sections.

Capacity planning is essential to the operations of the stores as it offers customers greater selection choices and accessible location of what the customer needs (Slack, 2015). On the other hand, also, capacity helps reduce the overall costs of the company by maintaining the sales staff per customer. Wegmans supermarket supports several stores and a reduction of the expenses by any means is a priority. Thus, the company will need to maintain staff costs through capacity planning. Lastly, since the company plans on opening new locations in other areas, capacity planning may be used to offer accurate projections of the capacity of the new locations.

Scheduling

Wegman’s operations scheduling involves human resource scheduling, transport scheduling, and inventory schedule. The human resource scheduling involves employee schedule, which entails keeping the running costs low while the staff is not understaffed in all units. The human resource also uses the scheduling operations to ensure service quality from the employees and maintain the competitive advantage of the company.

Current business operation procedures change over time. It is thus important for the Wegman company to improve its operations through proper planning and scheduling. Scheduling comes with various benefits such as keeping operational costs low according to the budget. For instance, an appropriate planning of inventory within the supermarket units will ensure controlled inventory costs leading to a decrease in the overall costs hence high profits (Jacobs, 2013). Also, the schedule helps make the business goals more realistic and achievable. The management plans many processes within the organization such as transportation and inventory control. Scheduling resources for these plans help the company understand the level of resources needed and if the plans are achievable.

References

Jacobs, R., & Chase, R. (2013). Operations and supply chain management. McGraw-Hill Higher Education.

Slack, N. (2015). Operations strategy. John Wiley & Sons.