Analysis of QuikTrip Company’s Optimization

Background

The operations management concept is a critical element to effective businesses. QuikTrip is among the many companies that have effectively applied the concept to optimize its operations. The company deployed an effective strategy to sharpen the efficacy of a highly streamlined value chain with modern technologies that have affected the customer experience favorably. The outcome has been the exceptional performance of QuikTrip and profit maximization in a highly competitive environment.

Operations Strategy and Competitive Advantages

Operations management refers to the control processes a business incorporates to achieve efficiency. The primary focus of the concept is the transformation of labor and raw materials into services and goods efficiently to guarantee profit maximization (Bendapudi & Bendapudi, 2015). QuikTrip priorities are in five areas: innovativeness, flexibility, quality, and delivery performance. The primary aspects concerning costs are effective product distribution and cost control. The quality aspect emphasizes ensuring that working processes and goods are per specifications. At the same time, flexibility implies changing product mix and volume and production processes as per the changing needs. For innovativeness, QuikTrip is always investing in R&D to establish effective ways to improve and market its products. Merging these priorities, QuikTrip has developed a robust strategy to enhance its position in the market and provide a framework of decision-making about planning, capability, control, and processes.

QuikTrip’s operation strategy is a smart combination of products, including gasoline, fresh foods, tobacco products, processed foods, and beer. The company’s focus is on quality and time as the topmost priorities (Heizer et al., 2020). Customers benefit from a package of convenient location, great customer services, speedy delivery, and free commodities. The company enjoys its competitive edge based on quality and efficiency, together with an attractive service delivery system. Product efficiency incorporates the supply of fresh food commodities and quality guarantees and affordable prices, and product variety. The other competitive advantage of QuikTrip is its consistency in implementing a workable strategy on management. These priorities have allowed the company to acquire new product orders and fend off competition from rivals. It frequently reevaluates these priorities and adjusts them to ensure it remains competitive and guarantees that they are aligned with environmental changes.

QuikTrip’s strategy has assisted the company in guaranteeing sustainability by providing quality services and products conveniently and speedily. According to Schönsleben (2018), it ensures marginal wastage of materials and times, high customer retention, and quality customer service. Due to value creation, the company provides ample time to customers to review products after purchase. It strives to catch the eyes of customers through what they see.

Impact of Operations Management Activities on Customer Experience

For QuikTrip, activities impact customer experience in numerous ways. For instance, the company has developed a system that promotes the rapid acquisition of gasoline products and delivery of quality food commodities to customers in a timely fashion. The main challenge QuikTrip confronts is its facility design. Customer experience can be impacted significantly by the poor location of its facility because other stores are within prime locations.

Another challenge concerns incompatible internal processes, which involve employee shifts and the non-standardized food preparation modes at its stores. Inconsistency also stems from the differing quality of gasoline and food products across its multiple stores. The problem of product inconsistency can be addressed through open communication and ensuring common standards and procures across all stores.

Value Chain and Its Effectiveness

QuikTrip’s supply chain is the primary impetus for better service delivery to consumers. Conversely, the value chain refers to the design upon which a company receives and transforms raw materials into products for sale to customers. The value chain incorporates information collected from customers and the suppliers of its raw materials for the company. Its value chain is highly effective because the information gathered from customers is translated to suppliers and manufacturers (Heizer, Render & Munson, 2020). The information is translated into customers’ needs and guides the production process to ensure high customer satisfaction. As such, the production process is masked with the relevant insights into customer needs to ensure quality products and timely delivery.

QuikTrip’s Performance Metrics

There are numerous performance metrics that QuikTrip can use to assess service delivery system design. These tools include business performance, altruism, price, customer satisfaction, customer growth, organizational productivity, and service quality (Schönsleben, 2018)

. Service quality and customer growth are some of the easily accessible measurements to QuikTrip. The former is a crucial metric because the return of a satisfied customer, coupled with retention of existing ones, is critical to sustaining the success of the company in a highly competitive company. Equally vital is service quality, as a performance metric, for service delivery design (Heizer, Render & Munson, 2020). QuikTrip’s central strategy is providing high-quality products to its customers, and when its products’ quality is compromised, the company’s returns will be highly impacted.

Technologies and the Effect on Value Chain

QuikTrip service operations incorporate different classes of technologies. For purposes of delivering efficient and convenient services, the company will need to deploy reliable technology together with an error-free support system. It employs multiple technologies to achieve customers’ quality expectations, including clean gasoline and fresh food commodities. The company has customer relationship management system that aligns the needs of customers with those of producers to ensure quality (Schönsleben, 2018).

The point of sale software collates information from customers and shares it with its employees to support target marketing. Because it pursues excellence in service provision, it has adopted human resource management techniques that promote efficiency among its workforce. One of these technologies is the just-in-time approach, where managers and employees are assigned specific, discrete responsibilities to guarantee efficiency (Schönsleben, 2018). Its stores are well-staffed to ensure timely and efficient services to customers. Similarly, it has adopted state-of-the-art equipment to ensure operational efficiency at food stores and gasoline stations.

These investments have seen the company reinforce its commitment to efficiency in its operations. Moreover, it places more emphasis on store with its facilities to send to its employees, who are its most prized resource.

As such, the technology it adopts to assist in product packaging makes customers feel more secure about their offerings. These technologies have made the QuikTrip store so friendly with customers shopping with much comfort. The design of inventory in all of QuikTrip stores is common, and so is their layout. These arrangements are designed to ease shopping and make it more convenient. Its system of delivery is a distinct selling point while its inventory management system promotes automated ordering. The creative use of point of sale software to collect customers’ data gives it an edge and promotes customer loyalty through target marketing. These aspects form the competitive advantages package of QuikTrip, securing its market share from its competitors.

References

Bendapudi, N., & Bendapudi, V. (2015). Best practice – Creating the living brand. Harvard Business Review, 124.

Heizer, J. H., Render, B., & Munson, C. (2020). Operations management: Sustainability and supply chain management. Pearson.

Schönsleben, P. (2018). Integral logistics management: Operations and supply chain management within and across companies. CRC Press.

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