Lost Pines Outfitters: Operational Issues And Recommendations Essay.

The Present System of Lost Pines Outfitters (LPO)

The Lost Pines Outfitters mainly operates on both the online storefront as well as the physical storefront providing services to the customers in Texas Hill Country. The organisation is facing major operational issues which are causing issue in providing proper services to the customers and therefore, this report aims to recommend new system to the organisation which would help in eliminating the issues and introduce efficiency.

Lost Pines Outfitters are presently operating from both the online storefront as well as the physical storefront with the single warehouse that is being used for fulfilling the orders placed by the customers from either process. The present system accepts orders from the customers and sends the order to the warehouse department. The inventory management system is opened and location of products and then it is picked and sent to the fulfilment department. The products are then packed and tracking number is assigned to the package [1]. After shipment of the package, the tracking information is checked and delivery status of the package is updated. The parts of present system identified are:

• LPO’s online ordering portal
• LPO’s retail store
• Warehouse
• Inventory system
• Fulfilment department
• Feedback system
• Inventory at the retail store

The main nodes of the system are:

• LPO’s online ordering portal
• Inventory tracking system
• Delivery management system
• Order tracking system
• POS system
• Warehouse database

The high-level processes and components of the present system are

• Customer placing order from the LPO’s online ordering portal
• Warehouse department receiving the order details
• Warehouse manually checking the inventory management system for determining the location of the products
• Warehouse department picks the products and sends it to the fulfilment department
• Fulfilment department packages the products and assigns the tracking number for the package [2]
• Customer visiting the store and then purchasing any product from the store
• Purchases are tracking through the LPO’s POS system
• Update the inventory in the warehouse database of LPO

The interactions and relationships among the parts of the system are:

The LPO’s online ordering portal receives the order from the customers and it is passed to the warehouse department for picking. In the warehouse department, the employees access the inventory system for checking the location of the products to start picking the products. After products are picked according to the customer order, the products are sent to the fulfilment department [3]. In the fulfilment department, the products are properly packed and tracking number is assigned for each order. After the order has been shipped from the fulfilment department, the tracking number is tracked and the delivery status of the product is updated. When the delivery has been completed to the customers, the organisation sends a card acknowledging and congratulating for the purchase and feedback is requested by the organisation for the services and products received [4].

The feedback loops of the system Using the principles of system thinking could be determined as:

Customer opens the system of LPO’s online portal and places order of products. After placing the order of products, the customer receive the order confirmation. The warehouse receives the order of customers for picking and picks the products according to specification and saves the confirmation of picking in the warehouse database. Fulfilment department receives the products and starts packing the products for shipping. After products have been shipped, the associate opens the tracking number and tracks the information. The system provides the tracking information to the associates [5]. The associate requests for system to update the delivery status and the delivery status update is accepted by the system properly. The customer receives the delivery and feedback card is sent to customer for providing acknowledgement. Customer receives the products and leaves a review of item plus their experience.

The issues highlighted by the client due to the present system are:

• Lack of updated inventory data to the customers during ordering products
• Lack of multiple systems in warehouse for completing warehouse tasks easily

Using the principles of system thinking, specifically wholeness and interaction principle, the recommendation is being provided to LPO that automated inventory management system should be implemented in the organisation for tracking the inventory of the organisation in real time and provide the customers with updated information about the products available [6].

The other change being suggested to the organisation is the implementation of several workstations at the warehouse that would provide the details of customer orders to the warehouse employees. There would be no requirement of entering the order details in the system after introducing the new automated inventory management system.

The impact of the changes to the system is that there would be no requirement of manual entry of inventory data in the system and the customers would be provided with the updated inventory status for ordering products easily. The other impact of the changes on the system is that warehouse department would be able to work efficiently through several workstations implemented in the warehouse because the workers would not have to waste time in front of one system for checking the details of the customer orders. The productivity and efficiency of the warehouse workers would be increased.

Conclusion

System thinking helps in exploring the new business prospects plus create compelling vision of future for any organisation. The system thinking also helps in understanding the complex challenges related to human factors related to change and then re-design the broken system of the organisations. Through using the feedback looks and principles of system thinking, the entire system of LPO was broken down into smaller constituents and each module was analysed for determining the pressing issue of the organisation which needs to be solved.

References

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