PM206 Logistics and Operations Management Level 5 Plymouth University

1. EVALUATION OF PLANNING AND CONTROL ACTIVITIES OF UNILEVER

In order to improve the performance of Unilever by developing an effective plan and control, the organization is required to focus on the various types of planning and control activities, such as long-term, medium-term and short-term. The evaluation of planning and controlling the activities of Unilever in order to attain the performance objectives is mentioned below:

Long-Term Planning and control

Long-term planning and activities of control are based on the mission, vision and long-term objectives of Unilever, which are described below:

• To maintain sustainability in the various activities of the operation and logistics management.
• To increase the profitability of the organisation by 20% in the coming years.
• To be a market leader in the industry of consumer goods and manage the competitive advantage in an appropriate manner.
• To achieve the goals of the organisation in proper time frame.

In order to attain this objectives in effective manner, Unilever have to focus on the different activities of planning and control. There is reduction in the extra cost and wastage of the raw materials in order to increase the profit by 20% so that the organization is required to develop the appropriate plans (Brown, Bessant and Lamming, 2013). Allocation of resources in an optimum manner helps in reducing the extra cost of the company and so that resource allocation plays an essential role in reduction of the cost in the organisation. The stated organisation have to focus on monitoring and controlling the activities of the plan as it is long-term process of planning. The company also required to introduce the new and unique products to be a market leader in consumer goods so that it helps them in leading all other organisations. All these strategies plays an essential role in forming various products from the existing competitors ad so that it helps them in attaining competitive advantages.

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Medium-term planning and control

In order to attain long-term planning and control, Unilvere have to focus on medium-term planning and control and for that, there are some of the objectives of the organization, which are mentioned below:

• To increase the revenue of the sales in upcoming year.
• To enable the employees as they achieve the superior standards of performance of work.
• To make the necessary arrangement of the training and development programmes in order to increase in the skills and knowledge in an effective manner so that it helps employees in identifying the appropriate knowledge (Christopher, 2016).

The objective of performance of Unilever as the employees is to achieve the superior standards, The organisation gives proper working environment and technologies as it helps the employees in improving the performance with the superior standards. Further, to increase the revenue of sales is another major objectives of the company and for this objectives they have to use proper techniques of promotion of the products so that customers are attracted towards the product and hence there is increase in the revenue of sales. Moreover, the management of Unilever have to make proper arrangements of training and development programmes according to the requirement and needs of the employees. So that it helps in maintain the knowledge and skills of an individual, it plays an important role in order to attain the medium-term objectives. Thus, it can be said that the medium-term objectives attained by the proper arrangement of the planning and control.

Short-term planning and control

The short-term objectives of Unilever focus on the day-to-day operation of the organization, which are described below:

• To make proper communication between the team members and employees.
• To improve the performance the employees (Dekker, Bloemhof and Mallidis, 2012).
• To motivate the employee for providing their best performance.
• To complete the daily activities according to the production and operation planning.

In order to increase the performance of employees, there is requirement of planning and controlling different activities of Unilever. To complete the activities in an appropriate manner, the management of the organisation makes proper arrangement of guiding and supervising the team members in an effective way. For managing the day-to-day performance of the organization, they have to focus on the process of communication, which is managed by them as per the requirements. The use of technologies such as mobiles, emails, video conferencing and telephones—these all helps in making appropriate coordination between the team members of the organisation. Thus, all these activities of planning and control helps in performing the short-term objectives of Unilever.  

2. STAGES OF PLANNING AND CONTROL ACTIVITIES OF ORGANIZATION

Planning and activities of control of Unilever concentrate on long-term, medium-term, and short-term objectives of the organisation and there are the following stages of planning and control, which are as follows:

Sequencing

In order to attain the objectives of Unilever, it focuses on various planning and control activities but determining these activities is not only important as the organisation requirement to decide the priority of the activities is known as sequencing process. The principle of these includes the physical constraints, due date, first in first out, customer priority and longest operation time. Unilever can decide the sequence of the activities according to the needs of the customers so that the priority of customers is considered as the most essential method for the planning and control the activities (Fernie and Sparks, 2014). The stated organisation can decide the sequencing of the activities according to the requirements and needs of customers. In addition to this, there are some of the physical constraints for the consumer goods products, such as needs of organizations to do design the products as per their needs. LIFO is one of the important model which focuses on the concept for deciding the sequence. The stated organisation requires to complete the activities which need longest operation; otherwise, this affect the total time of the project. Therefore, all these tools must be used by the management of Unilever in order to manage the sequencing of planning and control activities.

Loading

This stage focuses on the proper allocation of work to each and every activity and loading is the process of the allocation of the work as part of the planning and control of operations. This is based on the capacity of the machinery and available working time and the theoretical capacity of the skills and knowledge. There is reduction on the quality of products due to the overloading and so that underloading can impact the speed of the planning and control the operations. The management of Unilever can use appropriate tools for the allocation of proper time and cost. There is increase in the total time of the task as the waiting time, lead time and extra time. Unilever required to take some safety time in order to manage the tasks in effective manner (Gunasekaran and Ngai, 2012). Thus, all these considerations helps in improving the overall loading of work and activities of planning and control.

Scheduling

Scheduling is one of the most important stage that helps in determining the timetable for each and every task and activities. With the help of this stage at Unilever, they can decide the schedule of proper activities, which helps in completing the various activities on appropriate time. Further, these also includes the Gantt chart and evaluation of the project for scheduling the activities and reviewing the techniques (Ivanov, Tsipoulanidis and Schönberger, 2016). In addition to this, backward and forward scheduling is also necessary for deciding the time for the path in order to complete the project. Thus, this stage is considered important for scheduling the activities in an appropriate manner.

Monitoring and Control

Monitoring and control is also one of the important stage in planning and controlling activities and determining the progress of the entire operation. It helps in assuring the quality of the products and determining the changes which are required in the process of manufacturing of products and services. The management of Unilever also require to monitor the sequencing, loading and scheduling stages for completing the planning and control the activities in an effective manner (Langabeer and Helton, 2015). The tool of pull and push is also an important aspect which is used by Unilever for the input and monitoring the output of the organisation so that the organization can compare and re-plan the activities in an effective way. Thus, Gantt chart and the structure of work breakdown can also be used by the organisation for controlling and planning all the activities in an appropriate manner.

3. DISCUSSION OF PLANNING AND CONTROL ACTIVITIES AND RECOMMENDATION

According to the above discussion, each and every activities of planning and controlling of Unilever helps in attaining the performance objectives of the company in an effective manner. With this, all the activities are effective in order to attain long-term, medium-term, and short-term objectives in effective way (Rushton, Croucher and Baker, 2014). As sometimes inappropriate activities of planning and controlling can impact on the quality of the products and services, it also affect the overall sales and profit of the organisation. In order to resolve this issue, the management of Unilever has to focus on the needs and requirements of the customers so that the products according to the preference of customers helps in achieving the goals of the organisation. In addition to this, the stated organization is required to use the electronic customer relationship system of management that helps in making strong level of communication with their customers, which plays an efficacious role in identifying the needs of customers, which is helpful in attaining the goals towards the consumers (Tayur, Ganeshan and Magazine, 2012). This also plays an important role in order to develop various strategies to manage such things in effective manner.

Further, the management also uses various tools and techniques to develop the activities of planning and controlling. The company can also use a Gantt chart and push-pull system for loading, sequencing, scheduling, and monitoring and control the activities in an effective way. Therefore, all these recommended strategies help to manage the activities of planning and controlling in a proper manner so that the organisation can achieve the performance objectives in a more effective manner, which is beneficial for the stated organization (Schönsleben, 2016). 

Conclusion

From the above study, it is concluded that planning and controlling the activities of Unilever are required to focus on long-term, medium-term, and short-term objectives in order to accomplish the performance objectives of the company. Further, for the process of sequencing activities required to focus on the LIFO, FIFO, and customer priority methods. In addition to this, PERT and Gantt charts are appropriate tools for loading, scheduling, and monitoring and controlling the activities in an effective manner. Therefore, the report has recommended that Unilever should use the management of operations tool for the planning and control of the activities in order to attain the performance objectives of the organisation. 

References

• Bichou, K., Bell, M., and Evans, A., 2013. Risk management in port operations, logistics, and supply chain security. CRC Press.
• Brown, S., Bessant, J.R., and Lamming, R., 2013. Strategic operations management. Routledge.
• Christopher, M., 2016. Logistics & supply chain management. Pearson Higher Ed.
• Dekker, R., Bloemhof, J., and Mallidis, I., 2012. Operations Research for Green Logistics: An Overview of Aspects, Issues, Contributions, and Challenges. European Journal of Operational Research. 219(3). pp. 671-679.
• Fernie, J., and Sparks, L., 2014. Logistics and retail management: emerging issues and new challenges in the retail supply chain. Kogan Page Publishers.
• Gunasekaran, A., and Ngai, E.W., 2012. The future of operations management: an outlook and analysis. International Journal of Production Economics. 135(2). pp. 687-701.
• Ivanov, D., Tsipoulanidis, A., and Schönberger, J., 2016. Global Supply Chain and Operations Management. Springer,.
• Langabeer II, J.R., and Helton, J., 2015. Health care operations management. Jones & Bartlett Publishers.
• Rushton, A., Croucher, P., and Baker, P., 2014. The handbook of logistics and distribution management: Understanding the supply chain. Kogan Page Publishers.
• Schönsleben, P., 2016. Integral logistics management: operations and supply chain management within and across companies. CRC Press.
• Tayur, S., Ganeshan, R., and Magazine, M. eds., 2012. Quantitative models for supply chain management (Vol. 17). Springer Science & Business Media.
• Toth, P. and Vigo, D. eds., 2014. Vehicle routing: problems, methods, and applications (Vol. 18). Siam.
• Van Wassenhove, L.N. and Pedraza Martinez, A.J., 2012. Using OR to adapt supply chain management best practices to humanitarian logistics.International Transactions in Operational Research. 19(1-2). pp. 307-322.

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