Operations Management: Azizia Panda United

Operations Management: Azizia Panda United
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Institution
Operations Management: Azizia Panda United
Introduction
An Outlook of Azizia Panda United
Established in 1978, Azizia Panda United (APU) has developed to become one of the most successful organizations in the retail sector in Saudi Arabia. Initially, the company operated under the name, Panda. In 1994, it merged with Azizia to form Azizia Panda United. The company continuous development in the region attracted several investors who wanted to share in the success of the company. This led the company to be acquired by Savola Group of Companies, in 1998. Savola Group is a leading retail company in Saudi Arabia, specializing in food products. Through the acquisition, APU further developed, expanding its market base by managing to secure the biggest market share in the region’s retail sector. The tremendous expansion of the company was further facilitated by Savola Group purchasing the leading supermarkets in the region, which provided considerable market for the company’s products.
The APU has continuously grown in terms of market share, capital investment, and profitability. For instance, in 2009, the company demonstrated its success by acquiring Geant Stores, which is a chain of leading retail stores in Saudi Arabia. The move managed to raise APA’s share in the retail sector from 7% to 8%. The acquisition increased the company’s customers, promoting profitability. In 2010 alone, the company witnessed over 100 million visitors, which become a whopping record of visitors it has ever had before. Today, APU not only operates within Saudi Arabia, but also outside the country’s border. It manages over 260 supermarkets and hypermarkets, employing over 19,000 employees. In its retail stores, it exclusively sells its products branded “Panda,” which have gained recognition among consumers for their high quality and competitive prices. The company’s management believes that the company’s stores are strategically designed to satisfy all family needs under one roof. This has helped the company become the leading choice among a majority of the Saudi’s families, enhancing the entity’s growth and development.
As the company aspires to further increase its market share, there is the need for the company to adopt superior performance strategies in its stores. As much as the entity has proven capable of developing new ventures at a fast rate, there is need to promote efficiency in customer services and allowing every branch the freedom to exercise creativity to enhance inter-branch competition, which could translate to a positive outcome in the company’s development process.
Background of the Project
Creativity in management and customer satisfaction are core factors in management capabilities for any company. A good manager should be able to utilize his/her creativity to foster efficiency in meeting customer expectations, which is an essential factor in promoting customer satisfaction. Rigidity in management approach hinders managers’ creativity in utilizing what they learn about their market segment s and creatively implementing it in order to attract more customers by providing them with what they want to satisfy their ego. Different market segments have set of consumer needs. By only adhering to specific business operations such as completing repetitive tasks, maximizing machine and labor productivity, no creativity is needed. Conversely, this may result to inefficiency in providing customer services, ending up hindering customer satisfaction, which could be detrimental for the business operations.
In APU stores, there have been some complaints from customers concerning the speed of customer service. Some of the complainants assert that they spend more time shopping in the company’s stores than they would do in other stores. As the company seeks to progress in it development goals, customer dissatisfaction could be a huge barrier to achieving the firm’s targets. The diagram below represents some of the factors that contribute to customer satisfaction. SHAPE \* MERGEFORMAT 

Despite the situation, branch managers have not been in a position to implement any substantial changes in their jurisdictions, claiming they have to stick to the company’s system and guidelines in the provision of services. This has limited managers’ creativity in designing strategies that can help solve specific problems at their branches of operation. Owing to the company’s massive expansion plans and implementations, it is necessary that they also focus on improving efficiency in customer service. That can be facilitated by allowing branch managers work on the issues that hinder efficiency in their areas of operations. Creativity allows solving complicated problems, and so it can be of great assistance in facilitating this.
Objectives of the Study
From this operations management project analysis, we want to understand the various problems that can inhibit the efficiency in the operation processes in a food retail company. Some of the broad objectives of this project include:-
To learn the importance of authoritative management in the operations of a food retail store.
To learn about the processes that promotes consumer satisfaction in a retail food store.
To learn about the contribution creative management can make on the operations of a food retail store.
To learn the factors that enhances good operations management to improve efficiency in a business.
To suggest recommendations, if any, on how to improve efficiency in APU retail stores.
Scope of the Study
Despite the limited time we had for studying the company’s operations in one of its major stores, we managed to acquire some vital information about the operations that relate to the issue of customer satisfaction. Through an in depth observation of the company’s processes and customers’ feedback both oral and written, we accomplished a considerable step in pinpointing the issues that affects the company’s ability to identify with good customer service. Given our detailed understanding of Operations Management...