Enventory for 2008 Beijing Food Service operations: To serve a \"world menu\" of
ID: 335636 • Letter: E
Question
Enventory for 2008 Beijing Food Service operations:
To serve a "world menu" of more than 800 recipes throughout the Games requires:
93,000 pounds of seafood
130 tons of meat
38,000 pounds of pasta
134,000 pounds of rice (about 20 million half-cup servings when cooked)
743,000 (or 232 tons) potatos
800,000 (44 tons) eggs
1 million apples
936,000 bananas
312,000 oranges
684,000 carrots
nearly 24 tons of onions
50,000 pounds of mushrooms
57,000 pounds of cheese
190,000 loaves of bread
5,500 pounds of butter
16,000 pounds of tofu
20,000 heads of lettuce
All those ingredients create a rotatng menu of:
320 hot main entree dishes
160 vegetable and potato dishes
128 rice and pasta dishes
Explanation / Answer
1. Managing inventory in this kind of environment has its own challenges. The unique aspect of inventory management is that the compny needs to reinvent its supply chain for every case. There are new suppliers, service providers, logistics partners every time, with which the company has to negotiate, work and deliver every time. Other prominent aspect is that being a large and visible event, the company's reputation is always on stake and there is no room for failure. The inventory needs to be managed meticulously because any shortage will put company's competence under question and any excess inventory will cause losses as it will have to be disposed after event is over.The perishable nature of inventory also makes it essential to order in the right quantity at right time to avoid losses due to spoilage.
2. Laura needs to manage the inventory with the help of techniques she learnt during her course, so as to maximise the service level and minimise the chances of loss. However, she needs to maintain sufficient buffer to meet the uncertainties in demand, as no stock outs can be afforded. Besides application of lean in managing inventory, she can work with the production staff to plan the dishes so as o maximise the output and minimize the effort. By forming a makeshift lean supply system, she can make the supply chain leaner and ensure high quality of service. However, she will need to work with the suppy partners sometime in advance.
She will face the challenge of working with new people eveytime, she is not much conversant with. Besides region specific challenges of supply, pricing, availability of resources and maintaining the same level of service through new set of resources, she will also have tp deal with cultural and linguistic differences across the world.
3. Lean principles can only be applied to a limit in such companies because for them service quality level is far more important than cost savings. A stock out incident ia highly undesirable under any circumstances, therefore, there has to be a safety stock to ensure that supply is ensured at all times. This conservative approach of being cautious, may limit the application of lean concepts.
Related Questions
Navigate
Integrity-first tutoring: explanations and feedback only — we do not complete graded work. Learn more.