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Backward Scheduling – An effective way of scheduling Warehouse activities

Traditionally, scheduling algorithms were used in capital intensive production processes where there was a need to optimize the production because the plant capacity was constrained and there were different lines of products vying for the same manufacturing plant resources. With warehouse operations getting more complex and automated over the years, a similar need is felt to schedule some of the warehouse jobs using these algorithms to optimize the use of resources such as cranes, conveyors, labelers and pickers deployed in the warehouse to maximize the throughput. This paper describes the approach of one of the scheduling a l g o r i t h m s c a l l e d “ B a c k w a r d S c h e d u l i n g”, i t s implementation in scheduling picking operations in Warehouse and the advantages realized by using this approach

Backward Scheduling – An effective way of scheduling Warehouse activities

About the Author
Tarun Chugh He is an IT specialist with Tata Consultancy Services for the last 8 years and has an overall experience of over 10 years. His technological forte has been IBM iSeries (AS/400) based technologies. He has extensive experience in architecting solutions in different domains such as Banking, Retail, Insurance and Manufacturing. He is currently working on a project which involves design and development of processes for automation of warehouse operations of a US based Fortune 500 retail organization. He holds a Bachelors degree in Engineering and a Masters degree in Business Administration.

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Backward Scheduling – An effective way of scheduling Warehouse activities

About the Domain
Retail and Distribution domain within TCS provides solutions in Consulting, Package Implementation, Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and Infrastructure Services (IS) to leading retailers and manufacturers around the world. Over the years, solutions provided by TCS consultants in Retail and Distribution domain have helped retailers win customers and ensure success.

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Backward Scheduling – An effective way of scheduling Warehouse activities

Table of Contents
1. Introduction 2. Types Of Scheduling Algorithms 3. What Is Backward Scheduling? 4. Using Backward Scheduling In Warehouse Operations How Backward Scheduling Is Done? Preparatory Steps Backward Scheduling Algorithm Steps 5. Variants Of Backward Scheduling 6. Advantages Of Using Backward Scheduling 7. Conclusion 8. References 4 4 5 5 5 5 6 11 11 12 12

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Backward Scheduling – An effective way of scheduling Warehouse activities

Introduction
To schedule and release orders for picking, warehouses generally use a concept of “Wave Planning”. In Wave planning, the full day's picking load is calculated a day in advance and then is spread across different “Waves” or “Batches”. Individual waves are then released and processed sequentially with a fixed time schedule, during which picking takes place in different pick areas of the warehouse. The disadvantage of using this “Wave” concept is that since the waves are processed sequentially, a new wave is released only when picking planned in a previous wave has finished. This means that a picking delay in one area will make the areas that have finished their picking job out of work as picking for next wave cannot be started. Moreover, since the wave release time is not dependent on the release time of the truck carrying goods to customer, delays are likely to be caused in loading the truck and releasing it from warehouse for delivery to stores and customers. This delay in addition to causing customer dissatisfaction also leads to blocking of the warehouse dock door, costly loading equipments and paying heavy penalties to transport companies for delays in releasing the truck beyond the agreed time. In order to overcome these shortcomings of “Wave Planning” for scheduling order release and picking, scheduling algorithms can be used.

Types of Scheduling Algorithms
Cycle time, throughput and effective utilization of equipments are important factors to be considered while planning and scheduling warehouse picking operations. The triple constraints need to be balanced in order to reduce cycle time and improve throughput and equipment utilization. Given the limited number of resources and complex warehouse operations, it is difficult to plan and schedule warehouse picking operations in order to achieve these objectives. Scheduling of picking operations should be done so as to avoid peaks and ensure adequacy of work in each area to minimize idle time. A lot of research has gone into developing algorithms and heuristics for scheduling and planning. However, there is not any one algorithm that is best suited for all the scenarios. The warehouse operations management needs to identify the best scheduling algorithm that fits their requirement and then customize and fine tune it based on the operations involved in their warehouse.

Most commonly used algorithms for scheduling order dispatch or releases are: • Forward Scheduling • Backward Scheduling • Bottleneck Scheduling • Shortest Processing Time Scheduling One such scheduling technique, “Backward Scheduling”, is commonly used to schedule warehouse operations and is discussed in detail, along with its steps, advantages, applicability and methodology, in the subsequent sections of this paper.

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Backward Scheduling – An effective way of scheduling Warehouse activities

What is Backward Scheduling?
The concept of starting from the goal state and moving backwards to determine the path to get to the goal has been used for many years in fields such as artificial intelligence and operations research. This approach of scheduling is known as Backward Scheduling. Backward Scheduling refers to the process of scheduling the activities by commencing with the deadlines or latest possible finish date and time of activities and working backwards in reverse order of time, ultimately revealing the latest possible start date and time. This technique allows potential bottlenecks, resource requirements and resource availability for a particular job to be identified in advance.

Using Backward Scheduling in Warehouse Operations
Warehouses receive orders from multiple stores or customers in a day. Planning is done for picking and replenishment activities to be carried out, transportation required for delivery to customers or stores and the date and time of the release of trucks for delivery to customers or stores. Once the release times of the trucks and the orders they would be carrying are known, backward scheduling can be used to find out when the orders need to be released for picking, given the available resources for picking in different pick areas, so as to meet the deadline of release time of the truck from the warehouse. Thus, the latest possible start time to start an activity is calculated. A job control or release system then constantly monitors the scheduled jobs and once the current time becomes equal to or more than the latest possible start time of an activity, it will release the order for that activity.

How is Backward Scheduling done? There are some prerequisites for carrying out scheduling using Backward Scheduling algorithm. Before carrying out scheduling, planning should be done to identify what all items are to be picked, their quantities and the pick area or module from which they are to be picked. Route planning also needs to be carried out beforehand to find out how many trucks would be required for carrying out shipping, assigning shipments to these trucks, determining loading sequence and release time of trucks from the warehouse. Once the above planning is done, scheduling can be carried out to determine the latest possible start and end times of activities required for carrying out picking and shipping. The steps required for carrying out scheduling can be further divided into Preparatory and Algorithm steps. These steps are detailed with the help of some simple examples in the following sections. Preparatory Steps Step1: Group the customer or store orders to form Task Groups Group the order lines for a particular store or customer that are to be shipped on the same truck based on the area or module from which they are to be picked. Each such group formed is assigned a Task Group ID.

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Backward Scheduling – An effective way of scheduling Warehouse activities

Example: If for a particular store, 100 cases are to be picked from Full Case picking module and all these 100 cases are to be shipped on the same truck, then these 100 cases would be grouped together and assigned one Task Group ID, that is, these 100 cases will be picked and moved under one movement task. Picking of these 100 cases from Full Case picking Module will form one movement task. Step 2: Subdivide the Task Group into activities A movement task is further subdivided into activities which need to be carried out to complete the movement task. Example: As shown in the above example, let us say that the task is divided into two activities: • Activity 1: Picking 100 cases from Full Case picking module • Activity 2: Moving the picked cases from picking module to shipping dock Step 3: Divide the available shift hours into timeslots. Once the above activity has been carried out, planning needs to be done to schedule these tasks and activities and assign a start and end time to each of these activities. For this, the available shift hours in a day are divided into timeslots. Example: If the shift lasts for 8 hours, dividing these 8 hours into time slots of 15 minutes each will result in 32 time slots. Each area or module in which some activity has to take place will have 32 time slots of 15 minutes each. If the shift starts at 7:00 PM in the evening and ends at 3:00 AM in the morning, we will have timeslots like: Timeslot 1 – 7:00 PM to 7:15 PM Timeslot 2 – 7:15 PM to 7:30 PM Timeslot 3 – 7:30 PM to 7:45 PM ……… Timeslot 31 – 2:30 AM to 2:45 AM Timeslot 32 – 2:45 AM to 3:00 AM
Timeslots

Backward Scheduling Algorithm Steps Step 1: Allocating Task Group activities to Timeslot buckets using Backward Scheduling Algorithm Once the preparatory steps have been carried out, the next step is to assign Task Group activities to these timeslot buckets of a module using the Backward Scheduling algorithm, based on the availability of resources in the module in each timeslot.
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7:00 PM 7:15 PM 7:30 PM 7:45 PM 8:00 PM 8:15 PM 8:30 PM 8:45 PM 9:00 PM 9:15 PM 9:30 PM 9:45 PM 10:00 PM 10:15 PM 10:30 PM 10:45 PM 11:00 PM 11:15 PM 11:30 PM 11:45 PM 12:00 AM 12:15 AM 12:30 AM 12:45 AM 1:00 AM 1:15 AM 1:30 AM 1:45 AM 2:00 AM 2:15 AM 2:30 AM 2:45 AM 3:00 AM

Figure 1: Division of Shift hours into timeslots

Backward Scheduling – An effective way of scheduling Warehouse activities

Backward Scheduling algorithm tries to schedule all the activities “as late as possible” by assuming that any activity’s finishing time is the end of some timeslot. It starts allocating the activities into timeslots, starting from the last timeslot. An activity is allowed to go over more than one timeslot, in which case the start time of the activity is set to the start time of the previous timeslot. An attempt is made to fully utilize the available resources in a given timeslot before the previous timeslot is considered. If any activity crosses over to the previous timeslot, algorithm calculates the remaining resource availability in the previous timeslot, based on the utilization there. Essentially, all the resources are either overloaded or filled up to full capacity from the shift end time, before it tries to fill up the earlier one. The algorithm starts with the activity which is last in sequence of the activity list of a Task Group and schedules it first. The next higher activity is then scheduled once the latest possible start time of its successor activity has been determined. Example: Continuing with the previous example of picking 100 cases from Full Case picking module, we had identified the activities as: • Activity 1: Picking 100 cases from Full Case Picking Module • Activity 2: Moving the picked cases from picking module to shipping dock The backward scheduling algorithm will schedule the Activity 2 first and once the latest possible start time of Activity 2 is known, it will take it as a baseline and schedule Activity 1, which is picking of 100 cases. Basically, the idea is that start time of Activity 2 should be as close as possible to the end time of Activity 1. The backward scheduling process of allocating activities to timeslot buckets is explained with the help of examples. Let us say that we have to schedule picking activities for a particular day in a warehouse. For doing this, following steps need to be taken assuming that Task Groups have already been formed, activities identified and shift hours divided into appropriate timeslots as discussed in previous steps: 1. Calculate Resource Availability in terms of picks / hour, cases / hour, order lines / hour etc. for a module e.g. we define the available picking capacity as 100 cases / hour from the Task Group Id Truck Release Time Full Case Picking area and for movement of picked cases from Full 100 1:00 AM Case Picking area to shipping dock as 50 cases / hour. 55 1:30 AM 2. Arrange the task groups in ascending order of the truck release time from the warehouse, that is, the task group that has the truck leaving earliest is given a rank of 1 and so on and so forth.
40 102 134 2:30 AM 3:00 AM 4:00 AM

Table 1: Task Groups arranged in ascending order of Truck Release Time

For example, from the above table it is now known that the cases picked in Task Group Id 100 are supposed to leave on a truck leaving at 1:00 AM (which is the first truck leaving the warehouse) 3. Next, the activities that comprise the Task Group Id 100 need to be scheduled first and assigned a timeslot. For example let us say that the Task Group Id 100 contains the following activities:
Task Group Id 100 100 Activity Id 1 2 Activity Description Picking 100 cases from Full Case Picking Module M oving picked cases to Shipping Dock Scheduling Direction

Table 2: Task Group Activities

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Backward Scheduling – An effective way of scheduling Warehouse activities

4. Backward scheduling will start with the activity that is last in sequence in the activity list for a task group and assigns that activity to the timeslot, which is nearest to the truck release time. The algorithm then assigns the end time of the activity as the end time of the timeslot that is closest to the truck release time. Continuing with our above example, the activity end time of activity “Moving picked cases to Shipping Dock” will be set as 12:45 AM as the timeslot closest to truck release time of 1:00 AM is the Timeslot 23 - 12:30 AM to 12:45 AM.
Task Group Id 100 Activity Id 2 Activity Description Moving picked cases to Shipping Dock Activity End time 12:45 AM

Table 3: Activity End Time assigned to last activity in a Task Group 5. Now, the algorithm works backwards from the last assigned timeslot to find out what all previous timeslots will be used for carrying out this activity and determines the latest possible start time of this activity. It will take into account the available capacity or resources in each timeslot in that module for making the calculations. In step 1 we had defined the available capacity to move the picked cases from Full Case Picking Module to Shipping Dock as 50 cases / hour. As we have timeslots of 15 minutes each, the available capacity in each timeslot will be 50/4 = 12.5 cases / timeslot. Since we have to move 100 cases for our example activity, we will hit a resource utilization of 100% per timeslot when we move 12.5 cases in a timeslot. Going by this, we will need 8 (=100/12.5) timeslots (timeslots 23, 22, 21, 20, 19, 18, 17 and 16) for completing our movement. Thus, the latest possible start time of the activity is assigned as the start time of the first timeslot which will be used to carry out movement of picked cases. In this case it would be start time of timeslot 16 which is 10:45 PM.
Latest Possible Start time 10:45 PM Activity End time 12:45 AM Activity Duration 120 minutes

Task Group Id

Activity Id

Activity Description Moving picked cases to Shipping Dock

100

2

Table 4: Latest Possible Start Time assigned to last activity in a Task Group 6. Once last activity has been scheduled, the algorithm will pick up the predecessor activity to the one that has been scheduled. The algorithm will assign the end time of the predecessor activity as the end time of the timeslot with available resources that is closest to the end time of successor activity. Continuing with our above example, the activity end time of Activity 1, “Picking 100 cases from Full Case Picking Module” will be set as 10:45 PM as the timeslot with available resources, closest to the activity end time of successor activity of 10:45 PM is the Timeslot 15 - 10:30 PM to 10:45 PM.
Task Group Id Activity Id Activity Description Latest Possible Start time Activity End time 10:45 PM Activity Duration -

100

1

Picking 100 cases from Full Case Picking Module Moving picked cases to Shipping Dock

100

2

10:45 PM

12:45 AM

120 minutes

Table 5: Activity End Time assigned to the predecessor activity in a Task Group

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Backward Scheduling – An effective way of scheduling Warehouse activities

7.

Assign the latest possible start time to the predecessor activity by following the same method of checking availability of resources in that module. We had earlier defined the available capacity to pick the cases from Full Case Picking Module as 100 cases / hour. Since we have timeslots of 15 minutes each, the available picking capacity in each timeslot will be 100/4 = 25 cases / timeslot. As we have to pick 100 cases for our example activity, we will hit a resource utilization of 100% in a timeslot when we pick 25 cases in it. Going backwards from timeslot 15, we will need 4 timeslots (=100/25) (timeslots 15, 14, 13 and 12) for completing our picking activity. Thus, the latest possible start time of the activity is assigned as the start time of the first time slot which will be used to carry out picking. In our example it would be start time of timeslot 12 which is 9:45 PM
Task Group Id Activity Id Activity Description Latest Possible Start time 9:45 PM 10:45 PM Activity End time 10:45 PM 12:45 AM Activity Duration 60 minutes 120 minutes

100 100

1 2

Picking 100 cases from Full Case Picking Module Moving picked cases to Shipping Dock

Table 6: Latest Possible Start Time assigned to the predecessor activity in a Task Group

Following is the graphical representation of the distribution of resource utilization across different timeslots for the modules involved in the above activities:

Resource Utilization across Timeslots for moving Picked Cases to Shipping Dock
100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%

100% 90%

% Resource Utilization

Direction in which scheduling takes place

80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32
1:00 AM. Release time of the truck from warehouse

Timeslots Figure 2: Resource Utilization spread across multiple timeslots for movement activity

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Backward Scheduling – An effective way of scheduling Warehouse activities

Resource Utilization across Timeslots for Picking Cases from Full Case Picking Module
100% 100% 100% 100%

100% 90%
% Resource Utilization

Direction in which scheduling takes place

80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 1213 14 15 1617 18 19 2021 22 23 2425 26 27 2829 30 31 32 Timeslots

Figure 3: Resource Utilization in Full Case picking module across multiple timeslots for picking activity

8. Once all the activities for a Task Group have been scheduled, the algorithm will pick the next Task Group in the list and try to schedule its activities. This process will continue till all the Task Group activities have been scheduled. 9. Timeslots that have already been scheduled and reached 100% resource utilization will not be considered. The scheduler in that case will work backward till it finds a timeslot which has not reached 100% resource utilization. As an example of this case, let us say that resource utilization in a timeslot for picking module is 60% when one activity belonging to a task group was fully scheduled. This means that there is still 40% resource availability in that timeslot. While scheduling another picking activity belonging to a different task group, the scheduler will schedule some work in that timeslot so as to make the resource utilization to 100% before moving on to the previous timeslot. Translating this % into figures, 40% of resource availability in a timeslot means that we still have a capacity to pick 10 more cases in that timeslot (as we have a capacity of picking 25 cases / timeslot, this translates to 40% of 25 i.e. 10 cases). Now, say as a part of another picking activity, we have to pick 50 cases. The scheduler in this case will first utilize the timeslot with available capacity. That is 10 picks out of 50 will be made in that timeslot and the remaining 40 will be scheduled in the previous timeslots.
Resource Utilization across Timeslots - Utilizing Timeslots with available capacity 100% 90% 80%
Resource Utilization
Direction in which scheduling takes place

70% 60%
100% 60% 60% 100% 100% 100%

50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 Timeslots

Figure 4: Resource Utilization in Full Case picking module by utilizing timeslots with available capacity

40%

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Backward Scheduling – An effective way of scheduling Warehouse activities

Once all the activities belonging to different task groups have been scheduled, we will have a schedule that is compliant to Backward Scheduling. The activities would be starting “as late as possible” so that each activity is performed only when it is required to and at the same time it does not delay the release time of the truck from the warehouse. A similar schedule can be prepared for replenishment activities as well, in case pick faces are to be replenished from back up or reserve locations before picking has to take place. In case of replenishment activity, the latest possible end time will depend on the latest possible start time of the picking activity and rest of the scheduling steps will be similar to the ones carried out for scheduling picking and shipping activities. Additionally, once the schedule using Backward Scheduling algorithm has been prepared, the activities which violate truck release times can be identified. Additional resources can then be assigned to those activities and another iteration of scheduling can be performed in order to meet the truck release deadlines.

Variants of Backward Scheduling
The Backward Scheduling performed above will result in a schedule which is compliant to beginning the activities “As late as possible”. However, in order to make the schedule more robust and compliant to “As soon as possible” also and also to reduce any possible idle time of resources in the schedule, a “Forward Pass” step can be performed after the Backward Scheduling. The basic concept of Forward Pass is that it will start from the first timeslot and try to “Pull” the tasks in the next timeslot till the resources get loaded to 100%. This process is repeated till the last timeslot. These steps will not affect the truck release times and will reduce the idle time. In addition, to improve the quality of the solution, iterations can be performed on the schedule to fine tune it as per the requirement. The kind of passes or iterations required on the schedule will depend on the business requirements in the warehouse. For example, a warehouse with picking from multiple modules in the same tote or bin will require slightly modified scheduling for arriving at a quality scheduling solution.

Advantages of using Backward Scheduling
Backward Scheduling algorithm: • Tries to meet the truck release times and create a schedule that is fully driven by the truck release times, thus minimizing the chances of delaying the truck for delivery to stores or customers. • Ensures high level of resource utilization. • Takes resource constraints and bottlenecks into account while scheduling. • Lowers equipment handling costs as equipments are not used until they have to be. • Reduces exposure to risk in case of schedule changes or in case of new orders coming in. • Suggests if additional resources are required in an area depending upon the activity load in a particular day.

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Backward Scheduling – An effective way of scheduling Warehouse activities

Conclusion
From the above discussion it becomes clear that the scheduling algorithms have a clear cut advantage over scheduling activities in a warehouse using the traditional way of “Wave Planning”. However, the choice of scheduling algorithm and its variant will greatly depend upon the nature and complexity of operations in the warehouse. Backward Scheduling algorithm that is generally used in manufacturing operations can be applied for scheduling activities in the warehouse as well. This results in improved resource utilization and also takes into account the release time of truck from the warehouse. A schedule prepared using the backward scheduling algorithm minimizes the risk of not being able to meet the deadline of delivery to stores or customers. Carrying out scheduling using Backward Scheduling algorithm is an iterative process. The scheduling process needs to be run iteratively after assigning additional resources or in case new orders come in after scheduling has been carried out, to arrive at an optimum schedule solution.

References
[1] Jain, Sanjay and Chan, Stephen, [1997], EXPERIENCES WITH BACKWARD SIMULATION BASED APPROACH FOR LOT RELEASE PLANNING, Gintic Institute of Manufacturing Technology, Singapore.

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About Tata Consultancy Services (TCS)
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...Question 1 Operation management is the term used in managing resources for produce and delivery of goods and services, by using the most cost-saving and effective ways (Pycraff, 2000). Consequently, it would be clear that operation management is important in CDS. This is because a well operation management can lead to the minimization of production costs, successfully met with customer’s requirement and the increase of business revenues. Operation management is directly responsible to design the operation and system processes for the products and services. Next, operation management is requires to plan and control the activities of operation, yet they have to detect and respond to deviation from the operation. (Wps.pearsoned.co.uk, 2010) In general, these responsibilities can be emphasized through Sandra White, the Planning Manager in Concept Design Services (CDS) whose is in charge for all manufacturing and distribution activities in the organisation. For example, she has subcontracted some of the lower end products assembling jobs to other smaller moulding companies as to increase the production volumes and control its production costs. Furthermore, operation management in an organisation is indirectly responsible to work closely with other functional areas of business, for instance, Marketing, Accounting and Finance and Human resources (Pycraff, 2000). Also, they will have to encourage those functions to suggest ways that can improve its “service” to the rest of others...

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Operation, Management

...Operations performance objectives This first point made in this section is that operations objectives are very broad. Operations management has an impact on the five broad categories of stakeholders in any organisation. Stakeholders is a broad term but is generally used to mean anybody who could have an interest in, or is affected by, the operation. The five groups are: * Customers - These are the most obvious people who will be affected by any business. What the chapter goes on to call the five operations performance objectives apply primarily to this group of people. * Suppliers - Operations can have a major impact on suppliers, both on how they prosper themselves, and on how effective they are at supplying the operation. * Shareholders - Clearly, the better an operation is at producing goods and services, the more likely the whole business is to prosper and shareholders will be one of the major beneficiaries of this. * Employees - Similarly, employees will be generally better off if the company is prosperous; if only because they are more likely to be employed in the future. However operations responsibilities to employees go far beyond this. It includes the general working conditions which are determined by the way the operation has been designed. * Society - Although often having no direct economic connection with the company, individuals and groups in society at large can be impacted by the way its operations managers behave. The most obvious example...

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Operation Management

...holding company, mainly engaged in real estate development in Malaysia. It does this by three parts: property development, education, and a clubhouse. The company develops, build and sell residential, commercial, industrial, leisure, and institutional property; management of private and international schools; and management and operation of the club. It is also involved in the sale of land; investment property; purchase of building materials; and providing landscape management, project management, management and administrative services. The company was founded in 1996 and is headquartered in Seremban, Malaysia.Matrix Concepts Holdings Berhad, a Negeri Sembilan according to property developers, it has earned a reputation for developing quality and affordable residential and commercial buildings since its incorporation in 1997.So far, the formation of a strong track record of completed development projects worth over one billion US dollars RM2.4 gross development value (GDV) of about 1900 acres of land in Negeri Sembilan and Johor. Part (A) Operations Management is the management of business practices to create the highest level of efficiency in the organization. The purpose of the operational management is the conversion of materials and labor into commodities and services as much as possible to maximize the profits of such an organization. Direct responsibility method individual or team, is responsible for all the necessary clients will need to go to the results...

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Operations Management

...What is Operations Management? 2013 Joshua Richards POM 343 Due: 12/11/2013 Table of Contents Tale of Things to Come 1 Conceptual Model 2 Class Two: What is Operations Management / Productivity, Competitiveness & Strategy 3 Class Three: Forecasting, Aggregate Planning, MRP and ERP 4 Class Four: Product and Service Design 5 Class Five: Capacity Planning, Process Selection and Facility Layout 6 Class Six: Design of Work Systems and Learning Curves 7 Class Eight: Location Planning and Analysis 8 Class Nine: Management of Quality and Quality Control 9 Class Ten: Inventory Management 10 Class Eleven: JIT and Lean Operations 11 Class Twelve: Supply Chain Management 12 Conclusion 13 Tale of Things to Come I am going to take you on a whirlwind of wonder and learning all based around operations management. At least that is what I saw it as. Coming in to a class with no expectations, mainly because I have never heard of the topic, I was pleasantly surprised. Coming from a person who has hopes and dreams to own or at least run a successful company someday this class had a plethora of information that I will hopefully someday have the opportunity to use. I decided to break the class down week by week. The reason I chose to do this is partly because of the material and partly because of the teaching method. One thing I loved about the class is that as you go along you always continue to use the stuff you learned previously. When we were doing supply...

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Operations Management

...Operations Management is a fundamental and vital part of any organization from a niche market to a multi-million dollar conglomerate. It aim its focused on effectively turning inputs to outputs and by doing that obtaining a competitive advantage among everyone that is in that market. In fact, Forbes magazine reported in 2011 that about three quarters of all CEOs came from an operations background. Not all these CEOs studied operations in school; only some of them did. OM orchestrates all the resources needed for the final product. It includes designing, deciding what resources are needed for e.g. A hospital resources would be its team of qualified doctors, nurses, clerical/ administrative staff, their strategically analysed medical procedures and their state of the art, outstanding medical equipment. Operations Management focuses on all various Departments whether it be Sales and Marketing, Quality, Accounts, Finance or Human Recourses to assure to production of the good or/and services. Human Resource would be able to make good staffing decisions better job descriptions, applicable training programs. Without operation Account Department wont be able to pay off bills and suppliers also staff which can lead to big problems further down the road. If operations fail to run well the consequences of HR are not good. They help implement strategies that would assist the company in reducing cost and maximizing its profits to also improve flexibility to meet that swift changes of...

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Operation Management

...1. Why is it undesirable for the United States to evolve into a service economy? It is undesirable for the United States to evolve into a service economy because several problems arise if jobs shift from manufacturing to service. One is that service job pay less. Many service jobs are in minimum wage, while hourly wages from manufacturing jobs have historically exceeded the minimum wage by a substantial margin. As a result the standard living will necessarily decline. Furthermore, manufacturing allows the firm to capture payoff for the development of new technology. If this payoff is lost, so is the incentive to invest in research. The decline of manufacturing domestically has led to a shift in jobs from the manufacturing sector to the service sector. Because there are major disparities in labor costs in different parts of the world, there are strong incentives for American firms to locate volume manufacturing facilities overseas to reduce labor costs. 2.What disadvantages do you see if the CEO is primarily concerned with the short-term ROI? In the short term, decreasing the denominator by cutting back on the investment in new technologies or new facilities. Performance is measured over short time horizons. There is little motivation for a CEO to invest in a project that is not likely to bear fruit. 3.Can you think of companies that have gone out of business because they focused only on cost and were not able to achieve a minimum quality standard? -“Enron went from...

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Operations Management

...Operations Management… By D.B.S. Saurabh Marwah(201401017), Dingnan Ouyang(201400084), Boyang Yu(201400104) Students – Asia Pacific International College Literature review 1 Literature review of Operations management Saurabh Marwah, Dingnang, Boyang Asia Pacific International College Research Topic: The impact of total supply chain management on organization performance? Literature review 2 Introduction Operations management is an important part for all the organizations to run themselves successfully or in a professional manner. It refers to decisions and responsibilities of managing the resources dedicated to the production and service delivery. Managers are the people who are responsible managing the resources that make up the operations function. There are other functions also which are not core to the organizations which are for the smooth running of the organizations such as accounting, IT, human resources. Being an operations manager contains a lot of responsibilities and activates in the organization, which contribute to give good service. * Strategic objective: Operations managers must clearly understand the goals of the organization and develop vision in order to achieve them, which also involve translating the goals into implications. * Operations strategy: There are numerous decision-making involved with operations, it is important that operations manager should have a set of guidelines that are connected with organization’s...

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Operations Management

...1. Explain how operations management activities affect the customer experiences described in the Museum of Science and Industry anecdote at the beginning of this chapter. What “moments of truth” would a customer encounter? Operations Management, focuses on the goods, service and processes in creating customer experiences and satiations. This is done by job design and customer flow, the importance of service management skills, creating a demand, capacity and staff/show scheduling, employee training, purchasing, forecast call volume, determine the number of customers serviced to have on duty by the time of day, design of their jobs and training them to offer superior delivery of customer service. The anecdote at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry focuses on the role of guest call center, information services, exhibit maintenance, food service, protective services, facilities, operations, and processes in creating customer experiences and satisfaction. Moments of truth might include; buying a ticket and the associated service encounters with a call center, getting to the (parking, train, taxi, walk) museum site, web site or travel agency, waiting in line, food service, rest rooms, handicap and discarding trash processes, museum security, interactive museum and learning displays and continuous improvement orientation. 2. Explain why a bank teller, nurse, or flight attendant must have service management skills. How do the required skills differ for someone working...

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