Essay: Analysis Of Jaguar's Business Functions And Objectives.

Business Functions of Jaguar

Questions:

1.1. Identify two core organisational functions (or department) of the Jaguar company ( or your selected organisation) and evaluate the interrelationships between their functions and processes?

1.2. Describe and justify the methodology used to map processes to organisation’s goals and objectives?

1.3. Evaluate the output of the process and quality gateways of the organisation?

Business functions may be referred as the operation or the duty which is performed by the organization daily to fulfill a particular mission of the organization. The general important business functions are concerned with the departments’ namely human resource, sales and marketing, R& D, customer service, finance, production and IT (Page, 2010). Jaguar Land Rover Automotive PLC is a UK based company specializing in the sales of vehicles. The report deals with the analysis of the relation between business functions of Jaguar and the business objectives thus achieved by Jaguar.

According to Paul (2012) business process may be defined as the function within an organization that enables the organization to successfully deliver its products and services. The business process can be divided into three major areas namely management process, operational process and supporting process. The management process governs the operations and includes the corporate governance and strategic management decisions. The operational process creates primary value and it the core part of the business. The activities like purchasing, marketing and sales are a part of the operating process. The supporting process acts as a support to the core processes and enhances the productivity of the organization. The major activities like accounting, recruitment and technology acts as supporting processes to the core process.

The key functional areas in Jaguar are namely, the administration, business protection and security, corporate, finance, health and safety, human resources, IT and technology, legal, marketing and sales, PR and communications, property and supply chain and logistics. Jaguars being a manufacturing company the two important business functional areas are namely the IT and technology department and the supply chain or logistics department (Barjis, 2011).

The IT department: Without the right implementation of the technology Jaguar Land rover will not be able to produce the right products in accordance to the customer’s specifications. The state of art technology, advanced designs and engineering has played an important part in Jaguar’s success over the years. The company uses virtual reality technology in creation of prototypes of the car models for experimenting before launching the actual model. The Virtual engineering process adopted by the company includes employing of world class engineers in order to devise methods of making 3D design rooms and printers in effective cost structure. Mendling et al. (2010) stated that the use of extensive technology in enhancing the appeal to buyers and making the cars more desirable to the customers. Thus the use of appropriate technology enables Jaguar to achieve the organizational goals successfully.

Supply chain or logistics: Jaguar maintains an effective supply chain management by maintaining supplier quality, initiating material planning and logistics and effective management of parts of the supply chain process. Jaguar relies on DHL as their logistics partner in order to maintain cost visibility and budget accuracy in the overall supply chain process. The company after partnering with DHL was able to reduce the supply chain cost by 12% and engage in responsive planning process.

Importance of IT and Technology Department

Figure 1: Supply chain process of Jaguar

(Source: www.jaguar.co.uk, 2015)

The supply chain process of Jaguar starts with the procurement of the raw materials alike the cars parts, engines and tiers and processing of the materials using the 3D technologies. This stage is followed by the manufacturing stage where the use of visual technologies helps Jaguar to create a prototype and judge the efficiency of the manufactured car. The next step involves the transportation of the cars to retail companies with the help of logistics partner DHL.

According to Nwabueze (2012) recent developments in the IT system creates a positive impact on the logistics systems of the companies. Jaguar is able to gain advantage in the following matters of logistics with the help of improved technologies.

• Cost management of inventory due to prompt communication of stock out
• Easier production scheduling due to use of IT technologies
• Coordination of JIT programs with the vendors with the help of IT systems
• IT developments helps to decrease transaction costs between buyers and creates a more co operative governance structure

Figure 2: Inter relation between logistics and Technology

(Source: Barjis, 2011, pp-105)

Jaguar with the help of following software namely Enterprise resource planning (ERP), warehouse management systems (WMS) and transportation management system (TMS) increases the accuracy, consistency and efficiency of the transportation process of supply chain. Further the use of software like supply chain event management, Collaborative planning, Radio frequency identification and forecasting and replenishment helps Jaguar to increase the speed of communication, co ordination and accuracy in the communication process with the vendors and suppliers.

Process mapping is a visual aid that helps in understanding the work process of Jaguar. According to Wood (2011) it’s a technique where the business process or workflow of an organization is converted into a visual diagram. The success of any business depends upon the ability of the business to communicate the core functions and key activities of business as well as maintain the processes (Adekola and Sergi, 2007). The process mapping provides the organizations with the basis based on which the organization can form a statistical control chart for the process of different departments. The modern tools like Business QFD, PDCA, stimulation and Process analysis helps the companies to measure the goals of the objectives

Figure 3: Core business process and their functions

(Source: Page, 2010,pp-96)

The above diagram shows the core processes of Jaguar and the activities of the core processes. Among the above core processes the R&D department can be considered as the most important process in Jaguar for the achievement of the organizational goal. The R & D department of the company is focused on the production of new car models every year with new kind of technological innovation in order to cater to the high requirements of the customers and thereby fulfilling the organizational objectives of Jaguar. The next important department which is involved in the attainment of the organizational objective is the sales and marketing department. This department devises innovative promotional strategies, selling techniques and maintains huge client leads in order to maintain the revenue and profit for Jaguar (Wood, 2011).

Steps of quality gateways

Requirements elicitation: In this step, Jaguar collects product requirements from the customers and other concerned stakeholders are collected before devising strategies for the production of the cars and car parts.

Importance of Supply Chain and Logistics Department

Analysis of requirements: There can be various different requirements as demanded by the customers and the stakeholders however, it is not possible on the part of the manufacturing company to fulfill all the requirements. Hence, in this step of quality gateway Jaguar establishes an agreed set of requirements thereby omitting the unrealistic requirements from the list. In this stage, Jaguar also identifies the potential ambiguities, omissions and overlapping of the requirements and frames the structure accordingly (Dumas, 2013).

Representation: In this stage, the company documents the requirements in a formal manner so that the production units can follow the requirements in the document in order to design the final product. The formal representation helps the company to keep a proof of the approved requirements for further modifications in the product design.

Specification and validation:  This is the last stage of quality gateway that focuses on the validation determination of the requirements proposed in the initial stages of the QG. This the most important process in the QG because this stage uses different prototypes and technologies in order to evaluate the quality standard of the requirements (www.jaguar.co.uk, 2015).

Figure 4: Steps of quality gateway process

(Source : Nwabueze, 2012, pp-65)

The gateway process of Jaguar has been successful in providing high quality products to the customers. The latest customer satisfaction surveys show that Land rover of Jaguar has been rated at 6^th position by the customers due to the improvements in the car requirements in 2013.  The use of the gateway process within the lean management production technique of Jauguar has helped Jaguar to reduce around 50% of the total production waste.  The production line managers work with the minimum required quantity of stocks and uses the just in time approach to fetch requirements. The gateway system has also helped the company to improve the shift quality and reject the type and capacity of products that are not relevant to the market demand (Kyriazoglou, 2012).

Conclusion

The report shows the importance of the business process within the context of the famous car manufacturing company Jaguar. The report shows that the CSFs can be established effectively only when the business processes are implemented fruitfully and Jaguar is able to link the business process along with the business objectives. The major business process departments as identified in context of Jaguar are R&D department, IT department and logistics department. The interrelation between the three departments shows that adoption of visual technologies and 3D concepts by jaguar has helped the company in establishing an efficient business process for manufacturing of the cars as well as improve the logistics process of the company. Hence, for a business to be successful proper implementation of all business processes are necessary.

References

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Jaguar UK | Luxury Sports & Executive Saloon Cars. (2015). [online] Available at: https://www.jaguar.co.uk/index.html [Accessed 6 Feb. 2015].

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