Operations management of H&M DOCX

Title	Operations management of H&M
Author	Valeriia Paliichuk
Pages	17
File Size	40.4 KB
File Type	DOCX
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Operations management of H&M Introduction Hennes & Maurtiz AB (H&M) is a Swedish multinational clothing retail company known for its fast-fashion apparel. It operates in 62 countries with over 4500 stores worldwide, which makes it the second-largest retailer after Inditex (parent company of Zara) (Petro, 2012). The company is seen as the originator of the fast fashion concept by ensuring the right quality clothes at a relatively low price and up to date trends. Company's value chain describes the full sequence of processes involved in the production from product manufacturing to the usage of the product (H&M Group, 2018). To improve operations performance, H&M uses Artificial Intelligence in manufacturing and distribution processes. The clear view of the vision and strategic goals puts contributions of operations towards the brand in internally supportive stage, which makes the company one of the best in the market (Hayes and Wheelwright, 1984). The key to success for H&M can be seen in its double integrated supply chain model or 'leagile' system (Lu, 2014). It involves long-term planning of collections using lean production for 80% of its apparel and agile manufacturing process for 20% of the apparel. Such an integrated model allows observing operations strategy from top-down and bottom-up perspectives in mutually reinforcing ways (Slack and Brandon-Jones, 2019). The lean production focuses on lead-time, costs reduction and the increase of product quality, while the real-time response to the customer needs shows the flexibility of the chosen strategy (Brown et al., 2006). The top-down perspective sets the overall direction of operations decisions, and bottom-up adds the experience gained from daily activities and built it into the capabilities of the organization (Slack and Brandon-Jones, 2019). Moreover, looking from the inside-out perspective, H&M renews its operational resources (clothing material, design, storage) in order to follow a sustainable approach. Reflecting the intended market position, it updates the manufacturing processes and distribution channels with updated advanced technologies, which is suitable for the outside-out perspective (Slack and Lewis, 2015). The integration of all four perspectives gives a full picture of the H&M operations management strategy. Further, to understand the efficiency of operation processes, the operations performance objectives such as quality, speed, dependability, flexibility and cost would be the most appropriate to assess (Neely, 2011). Therefore, this essay will analyse how the design process...