Question

I need help re-writing this paper ENTIRELY. No words can be the same. When analyzing potential solutions for

Wegmans Food Markets Operations, one must consider the very basics of its business. It is described as a premier grocery chain with over seventy stores (Stevenson, 2015). The ultimate key to success of lies in the definition of the market itself. Therefore, Wegmans should fixate on assessing the market of each store. Each store will be equipped with its own needs, according to its location, target demographics, etc. and the corporation must discover a solution that balances these needs with the overall vision of the business. To better analyze potential operational problems and solutions, Wegmans should consider the distinct management of each of its stores.

According to the case study, Wegmans operates mostly as a superstore. These superstores stand at up to one hundred thousand square feet and can be triple the size of a normal grocery store (Stevenson, 2015). The fact that each store will vary in size, staff, merchandise, amenities etc. presents a unique challenge for this organization’s superstores.

           The first operational challenge of a superstore is the checkout management. The number of open check-out aisles must be properly balanced with the available number of employees (cs.ucf.edu). This is especially challenging for Wegmans, which must balance as many as thirty-five checkout lanes and up to six hundred employees in some stores (Stevenson, 2015). Wegmans must therefore develop a detailed and goal-oriented approach to this problem.

           Specifically, Wegmans must balance customer waiting time and patience, the ease and effectiveness of the point of sale systems, line lengths, etc. (cs.ucf.edu). Another operational challenge is customer demand. As mentioned above, these superstores are unique in their size and expected product variety. However, if the store fails to ease its customers’ impatience or does not deliver the proper product variety, they will lose customers. Wegmans must work to employ the properly trained and capable managers for each area (Top Challenges Faced by Grocery Stores, 2013).

           Ultimately, each store will vary in its amenities. As outlined in the case study, Wegmans always contains specific departments, such as a laundry and grocery section, but some also contain a cafe. Even the cafe specialties will differ by the store’s location (Top Challenges Faced by Grocery Stores, 2013). Thus, the key operations challenge is for the organization to balance its overall vision and maintain this variety, while ensuring that every store blends with the corporation’s standard ideals and values. Each store must be managed for similarity and uniqueness according to its location.

Wegmans is unique because of the variety of departments. The key operational challenge of this variety is the training phase. Wegmans cannot hire standardized employees. An employee trained on the checkout aisle cannot, for example, transfer to the meat department without the proper training. This facilitates two distinct sub-challenges.

           First, Wegmans can only hire properly or previously trained officials for each department.   This is an operational nightmare because of the difficulty of finding individuals for certain departments, such as the meat or laundry departments. The second major challenge of the compartmentalized nature of the average Wegmans grocery store, and that is worsened in the superstores, is the time and profit management schedule. Wegmans cannot implement a standardized checkout schedule, because the meat department might take twice as long per customer as the main checkout aisle. To even this out this, the store must analyze its customer needs via survey or focus group, and develop a proper schedule.

The key challenge of the ordering department concerns the fact that every department is responsible for its own inventory management and ordering (Stevenson, 2015). Therefore, each department must balance its own special promotions or discounts, seasonal needs etc. with that of the superstore (Stevenson, 2015). The store already alleviates this challenge by monitoring all suppliers and ensuring that each store receives a minimum of two trucks to prevent out of stock problems.

The key challenge of shipping and distribution is the multi-warehouse operation system, which requires the organization to dictate which warehouses receive which products, which store they deliver to etc. This can be especially challenging for warehouses that deliver to multiple stores.

           Finally, warehouses and forecasting represent two distinct potential challenges. In the warehouses, Wegmans must implement effective manufacturing abilities. This is achieved through special RF-id and other techniques to ease the manufacturing process (Stevenson, 2015). Wegmans must also improve communication with its vendors to improve its marketing and packaging, which are key to the distribution process.

           Therefore, Wegmans faces a variety of potential operational challenges that are unique from the type of store to the variety of its multiple departments.

References

EEL 4884 – cs.ucf.edu. (n.d.).

Stevenson, W. J. (2015). Operations management. Boston: McGraw-Hill

Top Challenges Faced By Grocery Stores – Focus Retail Software. (2013, June 06). Retrieved from http://retailsmanagement.geo-viz.com/blog/top-challenges-faced-by-grocery-stores-focus-retail-software/

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