Read through the scenario provided and complete the following task.

Scenario

Vitality Natural Care is a small family business based in the Auckland. Britney Malcolm started the company five years ago because she wanted shampoos and conditioners made with $100\%$ natural, renewable, raw ingredients and packaged in glass bottles. The business runs out of a workshop shed Britney put on their rural property.

Vitality Natural Care has a committed customer base. It does not compete with supermarket brands and has a niche marketing strategy with a small, but popular, variety of shampoos and conditioners for women and men. Britney sells her products in$-$person at markets, at several health and well$-$being stores, and online through the website.

Currently, Britney employs her sister Amber and works with her to make the products. She also employs a friend, Jess, to handle the administration on a part$-$time basis.

Typically, Britney and Amber work on production from $9\mathrm{.}30$am$-2\mathrm{.}30$pm on weekdays because of the needs of their families.

Britney says that this arrangement works well on average, but the winter months can be a bit slow $$ there is surplus production capacity, and no one is fully occupied. Conversely, in summer, especially before Christmas, they struggle to keep up with demand as more people visit markets and shop online for interesting niche products. At this time of year Britney often has to work in the evenings and on weekends because her small amount of equipment limits daily production capacity. Amber and Jess are not able to increase their hours.

Britney has often thought of hiring more workers for the summer months but notes that she and Amber now have a lot of experience at the manufacturing process, a feel for when things are just right. She wonders whether temporary staff would be able to develop that feel quickly enough. She also wonders whether the time she would spend on training and quality control would mean the overall benefit to production capacity would be quite small.

Another limitation at the busy time of year is that there is limited storage space for ingredients, bottles and packaging materials. Britney also finds that getting orders delivered to customers can be a problem in the pre$-$Christmas period.

Britney says that, ideally, she would like to spend less time on production so that she can focus on her real passion of product research and development. She has developed a recipe for a new product $$ a hand cream that uses a native ingredient known for its soothing and healing properties. She is hopeful that this product will enable Vitality Natural Care to target new market segments.

So far Britney has only made the hand cream in test batches. Now she needs Amber to learn how to make it and check that they can scale up production with consistent quality. Britney wants to begin by including a free sample of the hand cream with sales of hair care products and asking for feedback online. Assuming the feedback is good, she would like to launch the product in time for the Christmas season. But she is not sure how she can add production of the hand cream to her operations without employing extra staff or decreasing production of the hair care products. She believes that if sales of the new hand cream are strong, she can easily create a whole line of hand cream products.

Production of the new hand cream will require some changes to operations. It will increase the challenge of storage space. It will put pressure on workspace and require additional equipment so that it doesn$$t affect production of existing products. Britney will require increased quantities of ingredients, in particular, significantly larger quantities of the key native ingredient than she sourced for the test batches. The hand cream will also need different containers, first small ones for the free samples, then larger ones for sale. It will require new labels and packaging.

Britney also needs to think about delivery logistics$.$ So far, she has just used a courier

service. But, given the busyness of the Christmas season, she is mindful that she shouldn$$t

assume the courier will be able to handle a significant increase in volumes.

Britney is optimistic that the new hand cream will be a success, but she is also pragmatic: Vitality Natural Care is a small company that won$$t be sustainable if its products aren$$t profitable. So$,$ Britney is committed to making decisions about the performance of the hand cream based on financial data at the end of the financial year.

Task instructions

Write a report for Britney that applies the following operations processes to address the operational consequences of producing the new hand cream at Vitality Natural Care:

$$ capacity planning

$$ production scheduling

$$ inventory control

$$ facility layout

$$ external supply chain management

$$ quality management.

Your report must communicate clearly with awareness of the context of the businessWriting and referencing

Ensure the structure and flow of