lecture 11

Question 1

what is strategy

Answer 1

• a high-level plan to achieve goals
• what are we going to achieve?

Question 2

business strategy and operations strategy

Answer 2

• business strategy –> “who are our target customers?”, “what attributes will we provide”, and “what products/services the company will sell to its customers?”
• operations strategy –> “how is the company going to deliver its attributes?” –> how to achieve the business strategy, and “how is the company going to deliver these products and services to its customers?”

Question 3

competitive dimensions

Answer 3

• price
• quality
• delivery speed
• branding
• variety/customization

Question 4

order winners and order qualifiers

Answer 4

• order winners = reasons why customers choose your company (differentiable goods and services from your competitors)
• order qualifiers = minimum levels of performance –> minimum standard to be a candidate of the industry

Question 5

zara case study

Answer 5

1. advantages of short production runs
   - make mistakes –> not stuck with huge amount of unsellable inventory
   - make their products relatively unique –> high profit margin
2. zara operation strategies
   - vertical integration –> tight control on supply chain
   - investment in logistics –> low capacity utilization and flexible production process
   - multi-functional teams –> organized by product families with cross-functional teams –> frequent communication