SNHU MODULE 3-1 CASE ANALYSIS FOR 3M CORPORATION Aligning Resources to Market Opportunities Assess your companys or organizations internal capabilities and limitations with respect

SNHU MODULE 3-1 CASE ANALYSIS FOR 3M CORPORATION

I. Aligning Resources to Market Opportunities

A. Assess your company’s or organization’s internal capabilities and limitations with respect to its current operations. In your assessment, include human, organizational, and infrastructure factors.

B. Based on the company’s or organization’s internal capabilities and limitations, what expansion or business development opportunities can you identify? How will these opportunities align to the current domestic and global markets? Your response should consider the political, economic, social, and technical factors that affect the company.

C. Based on the company’s or organization’s internal capabilities and limitations, what cost-savings opportunities can you identify? How will these opportunities align to the current domestic and global markets? Your response should consider the political, economic, social, and technical factors that affect the company.

D. Describe the external threat factors in the domestic and global markets that the company or organization should consider when developing these business development and cost-savings opportunities. Your response should consider the political, economic, social, and technical factors that affect the company.

II. Managing the Quality Imperative for Global Competition

A. Based on your assessment of the company’s or organization’s internal capabilities and limitations and the opportunities you identified, select total quality management (TQM) means that the company or organization could employ to strengthen organizational performance. Justify your selection.

B. Based on your assessment of the company’s or organization’s internal capabilities and limitations and the opportunities you identified, select an appropriate series from an ISO 9000 family of standards that the company or organization could employ to strengthen organizational performance. Justify your selection.

C. Based on the TQM and ISO 9000 benchmarks that you selected, recommend global best practices that strengthen organizational performance by ensuring quality, cost containment, and customer satisfaction for the company or organization. Justify your recommendations.

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SNHU: QSO 690 TOPICS IN OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT

Lean Methods and Forecasting Evaluation

Introduction

3M Company

The Minnesota quarrying and Production Company (3M) is an American multinational scientific firm that creates innovative solutions to tackle real-world challenges that individuals and companies face daily. This Successful organization employed over 80,000 people in twenty-eight states and sixty-five nations, with the most working outside America and was established in 1902(Melo et al., 2020). The corporation offers healthcare, electronics, industrialization, security, telecoms, and other markets. The company operates in more than sixty countries, serving customers globally. The 3M corporation has been among the first fifty fortune companies, and the corporation has been the most appreciated company for the last ten years. Since the organization started long ago, it has become one of the globe's most ingenious and effective firms. Because of its many years of expertise, the organization is in a great spot to provide services to a broader spectrum of individuals. As a result, regardless of the matter that the organization has accomplished its planned goals, development, and brand image, the company is experiencing problems due to operational efficiency. And therefore, 3M organization aims to improve firm productivity while supporting current corporate operations. This journal thus offers the best methods the business can utilize to ensure its institutional effectiveness in different sectors of its operations. These sectors include service delivery, operational cost reduction, promotion of cumulative strategies and objectives, and maintenance of competitiveness by utilizing Lean methods, JIT procedures, OPT as well as the approach of constraints (TOC), and finally, Forecasting models.

Lean Production and its Potential Outcomes

A lean production approach focuses on minimizing waste in manufacturing processes while enhancing efficiency. Waste is categorized as everything buyers do not feel worthy of and are unwilling to spend for. Lean production may offer shorter lead times, reduced operational costs, and enhanced productivity.3M organization has been successful since it started to operate despite the competition it has been experiencing from its rivals. However, the institution has identified some issues arising from organizational performance. Corporate performance is an important factor in assessing a firm's performance concerning its planned outputs (Jansen, 2017). As a result, the company can comprehend the issues and the ramifications of such obstacles on their operations. Because of shifting client demand, the concept of Lean methods has assisted 3M organizations in eliminating any procedure that does not provide worth. The organization's production must be inspected to improve the correct execution of the services provided. Lean techniques serve an advantageous impact on the company’s effectiveness while promoting the existing operations. These techniques help the 3M corporation eliminate waste within the institution by reducing all sorts of inefficiency, from product flaws to employee ergonomics. Environmental circumstances restricting worker efficiency are another type of waste eliminated by this learning technique. Elimination of such wastes helps in worker satisfaction hence promoting the general effectiveness of the organization.

Just-in-time (JIT) Opportunities and its Potential Outcomes

Many companies have adopted JIT techniques throughout the years, which has developed into a system known as lean practices. These technologies across the supply chain have transformed them into potent instruments for enhancing quality, lowering prices, and shortening lead times (Chen & Wang, 2022). JIT stocking is more productive in firms with a high stock turnover rate, such as 3M. JIT inventory helps the firm reduce expenses and increase safety stock while boosting company operations. One of the most significant issues that face 3M companies is a scarcity of competent labor, which stock management records can solve through JIT.

Just-in-time (JIT) inventory seems not to fit organizations that request bulks, for example, the flooring stores. It might not be helpful for the company since just holding such amounts of products without understanding the period the clients will come to buy and the amount they will buy. Therefore, it is clear that a firm that orders several quantities of commodities might not benefit from the JIT inventory (Lai & Cheng, 2016). However, companies that make a bigger order like 3M only order for products whenever the client has requested from them to avoid waste. The organizational and operational management challenge facing the organization requires the employees to closely work with the administration to promote the services and products produced within the institution. This inventory will help the company examine the optimum stock level, thus reducing the burden of increased inventory expense. Therefore, the warehouse and inventory holding expenses are minimized when this tool is applied.

3M’s Operational Strategies and the Current Improvements

3M company has always been a client-centric firm since the products they produce are based on promoting the lives of their customers. 3M's operational strategy involves an integrated marketing approach, including the four Ps: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. Product development, pricing policies, promotion planning, and other marketing tactics are used in 3M corporations. These business methods, centered on the 3M corporate model, aid in the brand's success. The translation is a crucial strategy for 3M's international integration.3M company is currently prominent for its outstanding and spectacular inventive solutions, such as the dental technology they acquired from the vehicle parts. Conventional robotic computing is used to promote workflow efficiency in 3M production. Currently, sophisticated robotics is being used to generate mass-individualized goods.

According to Fredendall & Hill 2016, the lean six sigma systems used in 3M companies are required to produce enough products, quality services, and fast and productive administration procedures to meet and satisfy their customers' needs. 3M company utilizes the lean six-dimensional concepts and innovations for process optimization and reliability. Although Lean Six Sigma practices were already ongoing at 3M firm for some years, the organization began a business-wide Lean Six Sigma program with top leadership backing in February 2001. And since 2006, 3M company has educated over fifty-five thousand salaried people in Lean Six Sigma methods and systems, and over forty-five Lean Six Sigma initiatives have been launched or completed (Alosani et al., 2018). The phrase bottleneck, as used within the company, is the workstation that limits the circulation of products through the manufacturing system. Calculating the institution's system capacity is units divided by the total hours.

Forecasting Analysis and Sustainability

Forecasting is an important technique in approximating or predicting future occurrences that can negatively impact a firm. Therefore, for any institution to attain sustainability, the forecasting technique will help attain such an objective. The commitments of both workers and leaders will assist the various sectors within the institution, such as medical services, in prioritizing merchandise that might have an extra beneficial effect. This becomes possible by addressing an ecological crisis, like the immediate necessity to reduce carbon emissions, or a sociocultural consideration, like worker protection.

3M turns science into reality with breakthrough products for consumers, businesses, and industries. As a huge, multinational corporation, 3M sought to consolidate on a simple automated process for forecasting demand to substitute the numerous and extremely manual approaches now in use throughout the firm. 3M company utilizes azure machine learning to forecast its customer demands and identify specific threats involved in the decision undertaken by the firm in constructing its objectives, missions, and visions. 3M also uses qualitative and quantitative forecasting techniques, time-series, draft, and naïve techniques (Cooper et al., 2017). Therefore, the exercise of forecasting will benefit the firm in advertising plans concerning the circulation of money, overhead, and budgetary. Via forecasting, the 3M organization organizes to avoid any risk, challenge, or uncertainty associated with the ecological functions of the company, thus satisfying the customer demands.

The Opportunities of OTP To an Organization

The optimized manufacturing innovation (OPT) is a planning program utilized as a computerized system for arrangements and manufacturing scheduling within a 3M organization. This program helps lower manufacturing and inventory costs, thus attaining an organization's progressive and effective workflow. Such a system seems to help any manufacturing company optimize and maximize production. This program has helped 3M become prominent due to its increased effectiveness, newer innovations, reduced relocation, and finally, the replacement of the older commodities with new as well as advanced items while minimizing costs.

The Opportunities of TOC To An organization.

The theory of constraints is an administrative structure utilized to recognize the factors that limit a company from attaining its aims and then systematically remove the risk when it's no longer a challenge or a limiting force (Zokaei et al., 2016). This program helps 3M firms to promote the flow of processes and effectively manage the bottleneck of the firm. The workflow is essential in supporting the current corporate operations and promoting the organizational productiveness.3M organization is obligated to ensure its customers get quality goods and services on time without any deployment. Thus, to achieve effective workflow in an institution, the firm must implement the mechanism of the theory of constraints to recognize limiting forces (Urban, 2019).

Potential Outcomes of OTP and TOC

The potential results the 3M organization will experience by implementing this principle involve reduced time to serve the clients and creating a faster and smoother flow of products. Finally, it will assist the firm in identifying the limiting factors in achieving its objectives.

Summing up, implementing these strategies will result in a major improvement in organizational effectiveness. The above study demonstrates the importance of focusing on how to enhance organizational effectiveness. Adopting the Lean approach, JIT, OPT, and TOC is probable to occur in a fantastic potential outcome for the firm. Thus, to accomplish optimal workflow in the corporation, the concept of an approach of constraints must be used to discover the limiting variables. The firm's objective is to serve its respective consumers by acquiring the finest services required and producing excellent products, supporting the maintenance of a good community. Using this idea, the firm can shorten the time it takes to serve clients, produce a quick and seamless product flow, and assist the organization in identifying the major limitation to reaching its mission and targets.

Reference

Alosani, M. S., Yusoff, R. Z., & Alansi, A. M. (2018). The effect of Six Sigma on organizational performance: the mediating role of innovation culture. Journal of Advanced Research Design, 47(1), 17-28.

Chen, T. C. T., & Wang, Y. C. (2022). Basics in Lean Management. In Artificial Intelligence and Lean Manufacturing (pp. 1-12). Springer, Cham.

Cooper, L. G., Baron, P., Levy, W., Swisher, M., & Gogo’s, AP. (2017). Promo Cast™: A new forecasting method for promotion planning. Marketing Science, 18(3), 301-316.

Fredendall, L. D., & Hill, E. (2016). Basics of supply chain management. CRC Press.

Jansen, W. (2017). New business models for the knowledge economy. Routledge.

Lai, K. H., & Cheng, T. E. (2016). Just-in-time logistics. Routledge.

Melo, T., Alves, A. C., Lopes, I., & Colim, A. (2020). Reducing 3M by improved layouts and ergonomic intervention in a lean journey in a cork company. In Occupational and Environmental Safety and Health II (pp. 537-545). Springer, Cham.

Ponderable, M. A., & White, G. P. (2013). Operations management [Electronic version]. Retrieved from https://content.ashford.edu/

Urban, W. (2019). TOC implementation in a medium-scale manufacturing system with diverse product rooting. Production & Manufacturing Research, 7(1), 178-194.

Wild, T. (2017). Best practice in inventory management. Routledge.

Zokaei, K., Lovins, H., Wood, A., & Hines, P. (2016). Creating a lean and green business system: techniques for improving profits and sustainability. Productivity Press

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MODULE 9-1 FINAL PAPER

I. Aligning Resources to Market Opportunities A. Assess your company’s or organization’s internal capabilities and limitations with respect to its current operations. In your assessment, include human, organizational, and infrastructure factors. B. Based on the company’s or organization’s internal capabilities and limitations, what expansion or business development opportunities can you identify? How will these opportunities align to the current domestic and global markets? Your response should consider the political, economic, social, and technical factors that affect the company. C. Based on the company’s or organization’s internal capabilities and limitations, what cost-savings opportunities can you identify? How will these opportunities align to the current domestic and global markets? Your response should consider the political, economic, social, and technical factors that affect the company. D. Describe the external threat factors in the domestic and global markets that the company or organization should consider when developing these business development and cost-savings opportunities. Your response should consider the political, economic, social, and technical factors that affect the company. II. Managing the Quality Imperative for Global Competition A. Based on your assessment of the company’s or organization’s internal capabilities and limitations and the opportunities you identified, select total quality management (TQM) means that the company or organization could employ to strengthen organizational performance. Justify your selection. B. Based on your assessment of the company’s or organization’s internal capabilities and limitations and the opportunities you identified, select an appropriate series from an ISO 9000 family of standards that the company or organization could employ to strengthen organizational performance. Justify your selection. C. Based on the TQM and ISO 9000 benchmarks that you selected, recommend global best practices that strengthen organizational performance by ensuring quality, cost containment, and customer satisfaction for the company or organization. Justify your recommendations. III. Lean Practices in the Workplace and the Supply Chain A. Determine opportunities for the company or organization to employ lean techniques to strengthen organizational performance while supporting current business operations. What is the potential outcome of using these lean techniques? B. Determine opportunities for the company or organization to use just-in-time (JIT) practices, such as safety stock, to reduce inventory costs while supporting current business operations. What is the potential outcome of using these JIT practices? C. Determine opportunities for the company or organization to use optimized production technology (OPT) and theory of constraints (TOC) principles to reduce costs and increase throughput while supporting current business operations. What is the potential outcome of using these OPT and TOC principles? IV. Technology for Competitive Differentiation A. Evaluate current business operations in one segment of the enterprise to identify performance gaps relative to cost, production, and delivery of products or services. B. Based on the performance gaps you identified, describe specific opportunities that would benefit from technology enhancement or technical solutions. Ensure that your response focuses on using technology to reduce costs, increase production, and deliver consistently superior products or services. C. How can the technology you described be utilized to mitigate the performance gap? Ensure that your response focuses on using technology to reduce costs, increase production, and deliver consistently superior products or services. V. Sustainability in the Value Chain A. Assess the sustainability of your company or organization with respect to profits, people, and the planet. You might consider questions such as these in your response: What are the challenges to sustainability? What sustainable business practices does your company or organization already employ? Do you see any gaps between current business operations and sustainability? B. What alternative business practices could the company or organization employ to mitigate risks to business operations while enhancing sustainability? C. How can the company or organization implement the alternative business practices while ensuring long-term viability?

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SOUTHERN NEW HAMPSHIRE QSO-690 OPERATIONS MGMT

Business Operations Opportunities Analysis

Introduction

Competition remains the most challenging threat to many organizations, regardless of whether they are small or larger companies. Organizations need always to know their competitors and how the competition will influence their bottom line. The main reason why firms compete is to gain market shares, which are the leading forces in the profitability of an organization. In the absence of competition, companies start to produce and offer low-quality goods and services and lack the desire to excel. Therefore, in some manner, competition between companies is essential as it enables the firms to excel and explore various strategies for reducing expenses within the company. Differentiation refers to developing a series of significant differences to distinguish what a particular firm produces from its competitors. A competitive differentiation refers to a deliberate positioning technique that a company can utilize in setting up its goods, brands, and services different from its competitors. Technology is among the essential tools to provide competitive differentiation in an organization.

The link between competitive capacity and competitive edge can be changed by technology (Maldonado & Ramos, 2018). The technology improves a business's capacity to plan its operations locally, nationally, and internationally. 3M company is a prominent American international firm that manufacturers around sixty thousand goods used in homes, institutions, and healthcare facilities.3M corporation has four main segments: security and industrial, transport and electronics, and consumer goods health care. This study will mainly focus on the transport and electronics market segment in 3M company and predict the best technology that can benefit this corporate sector.

Performance Gaps in the Segment of Transport and Electronics

The transport and electronics sector are among the leading market segments of 3M corporation. This sector involves corporate activities that serve worldwide transportation as well as initial electronic equipment producer (OEM) consumers (Melo et al., 2020). The company is serving an influential role in developing water as well as environmentally friendly forms of transport. Although the corporate world is quite aggressive, 3M company has managed to secure a better place in this sector of transport and electronics because of the corporate structure and customer satisfaction. To mitigate the increased competition, this company provides its clients with effective and trustworthy transport services to ensure that they retain its client. However, the administration of the company finds it more challenging to manage the expanding amount of client information as businesses expand in size. Client records and information that are poorly organized and maintained by a business can cause issues for the business and the client.

The drivers employed by the 3M company have bad behavior where they inappropriately handle the customer luggage, converse with clients rudely, and recklessly drive, thus affecting the company’s brand image. This behavior has made many customers look for other companies where they are handled with respect. Also, 3M company is suffering poor administration of capacity demand. The company has made several random investments in in-vehicle technologies, aircraft, and package facilities. These investments are fixed costs, and variables in the shipment volumes may affect the organization's profits. The increased competition and the decreased profits within the company are attributed to the high costs of goods and services offered. However, the company has applied the technology to develop the vehicles with improved driver help systems (ADAS), automated as well as deliberate self-driving vehicles; most customers do not prefer them because most of them do not afford the charges (Ranieri et al., 2018). Although these cars might limit the costs within the organization, they need to consider the profitability acquired as clients are looking for other transportation companies. However, the growth rate has also drastically slowed during the pandemic periods, and if inflation continues, customer spending will reduce, thus making the company secure reduced profits. The general manager of 3M company stated that the infrastructure is essential for the safety of all users of roads involving vehicles with or without automated technologies.

To promote sustainable expansion, 3M is modernizing its business structure, simplifying its operations, and concentrating on international trends. A crucial milestone in the firm's transition, 3M introduced a new worldwide business structure in 2020(Zhongming et al., 2021). This model has modified the firm's operations, allowing it to become more client-focused and agile and have a competitive edge. The steps 3M is currently adopting will help the business improve its sales and branding powers. 3M will do away with redundant processes and use more data to increase operational efficiency. Despite 3M corporation investing much of its resources in technology, the company faces stiff competition due to a lack of diversification in this sector and the high cost of its goods and services. Additionally, many delays are experienced in transporting both customers and goods. Therefore, the company needs to develop new technology and strategy that is cost-effective and promotes effective delivery of goods and services, thus providing a competitive differentiation to the company.

Specific Opportunities That Would Benefit from Technology

As a result of increased competition among shipping organizations and an attempt to limit expenses, it has become critical for shipping firms to embrace technological advances, such as the Internet of things, to obtain optimal functionality and survive in the market (Sakyi, 2019). There are mainly three opportunities obtained from utilizing technology in an organization. Among these three opportunities are increased quality of services and goods, enhanced perceived quality, and increased efficiency of operations, which are the main factors for cost-saving and competition differentiators. The application of technology in the production of an item is essential as it helps improve the quality of a product in all its manufacturing processes and not just as an end product. This leads to the effectiveness of an organization due to increased productivity and reduced material wastage.

The development of this technology may potentially lead to the adaptive adjustment of production lines in response to demand in the long term, as well as the ability of machine learning techniques to predict when servicing may be required before a problem arises (Rey et al., 2021). Technology also maintains product quality by removing human error, enhancing precision and reliability, enabling the production of more complicated items, and spotting mistakes along the increased productivity-based solutions enable organizations to offer clients additional freedom, efficiency, and diversity. As a result, from the firm's perspective, it raises the consumer's perceived worth. Due to the reduction in the price of technologies, consumers may now evaluate value based on other factors like quality, services, and relationships (Zikria et al., 2019). Lastly, to create processes that are compact and productive, technology may be helpful. Automating operations can assist businesses in accelerating operations by reducing or eliminating delays and redundancy. The best way to maximize staff productivity is through mobility and connection. Additionally, technological advancements leave little room for human mistakes, which is always feasible. Removing the strain of these jobs increases performance by allowing everyone to concentrate on more productive activities.

Internet of Things (IOT) and Mitigation of Performance Gaps

A performance gap refers to the discrepancy between a person, group, or organization's present performance and intended performance (Elijah et al., 2018). Worker underperformance due to performance gaps causes a company to operate less well than expected. Among the most performance gaps in 3M corporation include delays in the transportation of their customers and goods, lack of diversification and flexibility, and increased transport costs. The Internet of things in the 3M organization can significantly mitigate these performance gaps. The Internet of things is described as a system of tangible objects that relates to gadgets of all forms and sizes, such as cars, mobile phones, game consoles, home automation systems, video cameras, surgical instruments, machine components, tower blocks, and individuals (Bloom et al., 2018). These items are all linked to one another and exchange information under predetermined guidelines to accomplish brilliant institution, placing, tracking, defense, surveillance, and control activities.

With the advancement of technology, digital data and sensors have integrated into every aspect of the transportation industry, helping to manage, regulate, issue tickets, and make passenger data available (Nauman et al., 2020). To reach specific targets in transport activities, many transit businesses to use the Internet of Things (IoT) need the needed facilities for exchanging data and connectivity. Using specially created alternatives, the Internet of Things (IoT) assists trucking companies in accelerating their manufacturing and earnings processes. These solutions allow businesses to grasp and share crucial data, attain high operational disclosure on time, and perform the appropriate improvements. Therefore, the application of technology such as the Internet of Things (IOT) helps in the collection of more data that can be helpful in the execution of better business techniques, thus saving the company on production costs. Since on the Internet of Things, various items are connected to form a system that helps track, position, and control various activities within an organization, the delays in production and supply can be easily mitigated (Pal & Kant, 2019). Therefore, this technology is vital in any organization as it promotes the organization's quality products and services and reduces production costs, thus leading to the general effectiveness of an organization.

References

Bloom, G., Alsulami, B., Nwafor, E., & Bertolotti, I. C. (2018, June). Design patterns for the industrial Internet of Things. In 2018 14th IEEE International Workshop on Factory Communication Systems (WFCS) (pp. 1-10). IEEE.

Elijah, O., Rahman, T. A., Orikumhi, I., Leow, C. Y., & Hindia, M. N. (2018). Benefits and challenges include an overview of the Internet of Things (IoT) and data analytics in agriculture. IEEE Internet of things Journal, 5(5), 3758-3773.

Maldonado, T., Vera, D., & Ramos, N. (2018). How humble is your company culture? And, why does it matter?. Business Horizons, 61(5), 745-753.

Melo, T., Alves, A. C., Lopes, I., & Colim, A. (2020). Reducing 3M by improved layouts and ergonomic intervention in a lean journey in a cork company. In Occupational and Environmental Safety and Health II (pp. 537-545). Springer, Cham.

Nauman, A., Qadri, Y. A., Amjad, M., Zikria, Y. B., Afzal, M. K., & Kim, S. W. (2020). Multimedia Internet of Things: A comprehensive survey. IEEE Access, 8, 8202-8250.

Pal, A., & Kant, K. (2019). Using blockchain for provenance and traceability in the Internet of things-integrated food logistics. Computer, 52(12), 94-98.

Ranieri, L., Digiesi, S., Silvestri, B., & Roccotelli,

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