Company shifted from being an inward-looking manufacturer, we became a customer-focused 'design and make' operation.

• Company became an integrated service provider as they design products jointly with specialist design houses with a well-known brand, offering them a complete manufacturing and distribution service.
• The company became a B2B rather than a B2C (Tom Jameson, CEO, Hy-Fybo-Design (HFD)) HFD had become one of Europe's most profitable homeware businesses.

Company History:

• Company Founded in the 1960s.
• Change applied as the company had moved from making industrial moldings, mainly in the aerospace sector, and some cheap 'homeware' items such as buckets and dustpans, sold under the 'Fybo' brand name, to making very high-quality (expensive) stylish homewares with a high 'design value.'
• The decorative products industry had taught company the importance of fashion and product development, even in mundane products such as paint.

Business update:

• Company manufacturers and retailers who created and supported these products were dramatically more profitable than those who provided standard ranges.
• Company decided to develop a coordinated range of such items and open up a new distribution network to serve up-market stores, kitchen equipment, and specialty retailers.
• Company had over 3,000 retail outlets signed up and provided with point-of-sale display facilities.
• Company developed an entirely new market, and within two years, 'HFD' products provided over 75 percent of our revenue and 90 percent of our profits.
• The price realization of HFD products is many times higher than for the Fybo range. Therefore, to keep ahead, we launched new fields at regular intervals.

Moving into house design partnerships:

• Company has been designing, manufacturing, and distributing products for some of the more prestigious design houses. Lead to grow, especially in Europe, where the design houses appreciate our ability to offer a complete service.
• Company has specially designed products with its design staff and offers them manufacturing expertise they can't get elsewhere.
• Company can offer a distribution service that is tailored to their needs.
• The most successful collaboration was with Villessi, the Italian designer. Generally, it was HFD's design expertise that was attractive to 'house design' partners.
• Company had a reputation for translating complex technical designs into manufacturable and saleable products.
• Company focuses on House Design partnerships which usually take long lead times but produce unique products with very high margins.

Finally, Company design expertise gained entry into the partnership, but we were soon valued equally for our marketing, distribution, and manufacturing competence.

Manufacturing operations:

• Manufacturing was carried out in a facility 20km from the head office.
• Manufacturing made with robotic material[1]handling capabilities.
• Next is the packing hall, where they were assembled and inspected.
• The newer, more complex products often had to move from molding to assembly and back again for further molding. All products followed the same broad process route, but more products needed several progressive molding and assembly stages.
• Complexity coming from process flow recycling which was increased.
• Investment an extra capacity that would not always be fully utilized for devoting a separate cell to the newer and more complex products until they had 'bedded in'.
• Products were packed and stored in the adjacent distribution center. 'When we moved into making the higher-margin HFD products.
• Manufacturing waste by disposing of most of our older, small injection-molding machines.
• Improving productivity & quality by having all larger machines allowed us to use large, multi-cavity molds leading to a 600% increase and extreme consistency of color and standardizing on single large machines, any mold could fit any machine.
• Making small runs of HFD products at short notice led to Increasing volume and a desire to reduce cost resulting in HFD sub-contracting a good deal of its Fybo products to other molding companies to release capacity for higher-margin orders.

Challenges of quality by using sub-contractors:

Some quality issues started to occur as teething problems as sub-contracting was a skill leading to low satisfactory relationships with all of company subcontractors.

Planning and distribution services:

• The distribution services department is the heart of the company's customer service drive to integrate the efforts of design, manufacturing and sales by planning the flow of products from production, through the distribution centre, to the customer.
• Planning is responsible for the scheduling of all manufacturing and distribution and for maintaining inventory levels for all the warehoused items.
• Waste reduction one of the scopes by sticking to a preferred production sequence for each machine and mould as changing mould may take up to 1 Hr.
• Planning challenges coming From higher variety of complex products, batch sizes have reduced, and it has brought down average utilization & short term changes even by promotions or new product FC or trials
• Production waste also is created from testing time which may take 24 Hrs on machine.
• Company is using their own fleet of medium and small distribution vehicles for UK orders but using carriers for the Continental European market while express delivery still valid solution for those customers prepared to pay a small delivery while almost 40 per cent of express deliveries were initiated by the company rather than by customers to fulfil deliveries of orders containing products out of stock at the time of ordering.
• Fybo delivery was relatively straightforward, the consequences of failure were significant. Missing a delivery meant upsetting a large customer.

Problems & challenges:

• HFD challenges coming from the role of the design department and its influence over new product development as Most of HFD growth is going to come from the business which will be brought in through the creativity and flair of our designers. Those who can combine creativity with an understanding of our partners' business and design needs can now bring in substantial contracts.
• Conflict to apply new design made by constraints which HFD must work under in the manufacturing or distribution parts of the business coming From lack of understanding the consequences or implications of their design decisions or the promises they make to the design houses.
• Sales forecasting accuracy improvement due significant changed because of unexpected orders coming in from our customers' weekend sales causing tremendous disruption to both manufacturing and distribution operations.
• HFD strategy to expand globally with lack of manufacturing expertise out of Europe.
• HFD lack of experience out of plastic injection for other material to maintain world class level in other manufacturing processes to overcome market challenges of competitors.

I need to understand the question & what could be best answer for:

1. Discuss the importance of Operations Management at HFD.

2. Plot and discuss HFD's 4Vs profile (Volume, Variety, Variation and Visibility) for the company's products.

3. What would you recommend to the CEO Tom Jameson if he asked you to advise in improving the company's operations.