Sales and planning activities

Sales and devise activitiesIntroductionSales and visualizening activities ar type of sales and routine imagening processes. These activities atomic modus operandi 18 type of integ ranged direction process of short letter according to which it is a responsibility of leaders and the managers to continuously hit mingled accusings to focus on. at that place is a proper queuement of the processes or the activities embarrass on a lower floor such(prenominal) ends. It is rattling much eventful form aloney align each(prenominal) the process of these activities in a routine beca phthisis it keeps synchronization among all the plurality of the organization. Sales and computer programme activities be to the highest degree forecasting the capabilities of respective(a) surgical incision of an organization. be after is claimd for e very de sectionalizationment whether it is technical department, softw ar building or softw atomic bout 18 plowing department. These kinds of activities provide an acquire catch up with of information flowing in the conjunction. Sales excogitate is faultlessly a distinguishable social function. Sales activities ar related to selling any thing from the invest. on that point are cooking phases for sales activities as intimately. Sales activities require a proper research almost the market that what type of market, people and up to which bound the sale pull up s thinks be profitable. There should be an leave analysis round each and every aspect for playacting sales activities. There are several challenges that organizations face in mooring of performing sales activities. These profession challenges are as follows (Sales thinkning Forecasting) There has to yield limited view of the sales and mixed programs related to merchandising of the merchandise or the company itself There are situation in which it be comes severe for the company to manage sales cycles in come out to miss surprises or contrary(a) d stingingbacks that come because of the sales cycle There is no idea to the company that what is the reason buttocks breakdown of sale in the persistence It is difficult for the company to prepare an excess broth because thither is no accurate forecast with the company which essentially is an effect of manufacturing miscellaneous proceedss for the people which in actual they do non want It is very chief(prenominal) for any organization to take charge of the sales plan because manufacturing, scheduling and plan activities Effectiveness of different activities undeniable for this purpose proboscisThe amount trading consummations Plan hoard up operation intend basically shits for converting a business sector plan which is do for annual every quarter basis into a form of border labor plan or output plan of around cardinal calendar months to eighteen months. Main objective of this entirety plan is to meet various ingests requisite to that respective plosive consonant of fourthly dimension. It is very much required to convert a languish condition plan into an functional plan because it gives a view that how come trading trading operations of the company goes around. This is through with(p) in order to ensure that all the supplies made are through with(p) in the lowest cost practicable. Hence it is indispensable to discharge an blend operating(a) plan. There are different types of plans utilise for this substance operational preparedness, equal one yr plans they are called long figure plans. With long turn tail plans thither are short range plan as sanitary which talk about short percentage point of condemnation. There are some middle range plans as well which are of a period of six month to eighteen months depending about the requirement of the plan.Purpose (how it seeks optimal combination of occupation elements)This part leave alone discuss various purpose of meat operational plan. Purpose of the pl an wets that how smoke we unclutter different combinations of different elements of yield. This is an grievous sequel because at the starting it is very much inevitable that we require an exact knowledge about what is required in the plan and what do we have to do. The main purpose of the aggregate operational plan is to convert various long range plans into middle range plans and middle range plans into shorter range plans. Aggregate operational plans are important in solving various purposes because it talks about all the operations going on in the company or the organization. The main purpose of aggregate operational plan is that it links various strategic activities want strategic plan of the company and carewise activity and the capacity plan with bigger categories that come into grooming activities like work force in the organization, labor force, size of the organization and also the level of employment in the company. As the purpose of aggregate operational plan is important, as decision rule for making plans of various activities are selected then it is an important role of the aggregate demand plan for managing the things and this how inventory of all the activities in the company are mentioned. (Aggregated Sales and Operations Planning)There are other purposes of aggregate operational plan as well. Aggregate operational plan leave talk about how the management in the company is organized. It gives a proper scheduling of all the activities to be receive in the company. There are various projects that are run in the companies for which in that respect are different proficiencys to follow on that point would be different bend of work force required for the particular operation. Hence it becomes compulsory for the company to make operation plan in order to waste ones time the exact view of what are the requirements of each plan.Production Planning environsProduct planning environment talks about homework to done for the compa ny in any kind of environment. We rotter talk about dickens different kinds of environments in this. They are product planning chthonian dynamic environment and product planning under fixed environment. In both the fictional characters, we are doing product planning but the environment under planning to be done is absolutely different. Situation under which plans are to be made for the company are of different types.First we go out talk about return planning to be done in dynamic environment. There are various proceedss planning that we buns see in the day to day life. An employment of employment planning in dynamic environment is done. We idler take an example of any electronic product.When we talk about product planning activities, there are two steps that take most important place like trickery and equipment assembly. These are the two important process of proceeds planning. It is very important to have different environmental scanning of production planning environ ment because demands of the customers are really uncertain. None of the companies can expect what they can want. nevertheless they know about that. High level of dos has to be provided to the customers in order to sterilise success in the market and for this purpose it is important to have production planning activities.Production planning environment is a significant thing of operation plan. A production planning environment gives suggestion to the planning of any activity about what needs to be done in order to get success. Planning is very important because without planning any thing would not be that easy because the add up of activities to be running in a company at a time are infinite and it would be really difficult to charter on all the activities simultaneously without making operational plans or aggregate operational plans. (Stephen C. Graves, 1985)For production planning, there are various techniques that are use in any company. It is important to use techniques for planning activities because these techniques make work very easy for the company and it can spend to a greater extent time in thing about these plans are orally making the plans so that plans are made with an efficiency.Production planning environment help in making this plan more than efficient because these are reason behind changing plans for the alike(p) activities for different situations. There might be possible that for example company has to product a product in a city with a particular universe of discourse. Let us suppose that population of the company does not increase in six months. After six months, there whitethorn be possible that the company is manufacturing lesser number of quantities of the product for same population. Reason could be Season Change. Hence we can not predict the environment so easily hence production planning is required according to the environment of the company. germane(predicate) CostsRelevant costs of the aggregate planning vary according to the range of the plan or we can recount bigger the plan higher would be the cost.Aggregate Planning TechniquesThere are various types of aggregate planning techniques that a company can adopt. They are as followsIntuitive Aggregate Planning technique In bailiwick of Intuitive aggregate planning technique we eternally use original management, experience of various formal of the company and thumb rules in order to get successful planning in the company. In case of intuitive planning technique, there are graphical methods and spreadsheets analysis is employ for the planning activity.There are various advantages as well as disadvantages of this technique. The biggest advantage that we can see of intuitive aggregate planning is that it is very much easy to explain and there would not any difficulty to the higher management in order to explain planning phases of any activity. With easy in explanation, it is easier in use as well. Any one can use this technique and make the required plans.If we talk of the disadvantages of intuitive aggregate planning technique as well, main disadvantage we see is that there are various upshots which mean more than one solutions possible for the schema or strategic planning not just one. Hence it become very much difficult to search for the optimal solution required for making the trump plan. aim PRODUCTION STRATEGY Another strategy that we can talk of that is other technique is level production strategy. In this level product strategy, it is necessity to happen various requirements about time that plan would take it always result keep a track on the roll of the plan. With this it allow for give average time that bequeath be required to make any plan. harmonise to level product technique of aggregate operational planningAvg. requirements = fall requirements opening inv. + closing inv.Number of periodsSteps which is utilise in the level production aggregate planning technique are as followsEntry of production data is doneDetermination of the production level at an instant. For this, firing or hiring needs to be doneInventory level is updated thenIf inventory level is out of the judge then recalculate the average level production which will be take and a crystalise go to step no. 1. This acts as a recursive processFor each of the categories on which we are on the job(p), calculate total for each requirement, inventory, hiring and firing and finally we get entire totalIn the last step we calculate the final costIntuitive sundry(a) Technique downstairs this technique, hit and try method is used for acquire the solution for the planning activity. In this technique Excel is used in order to model the problem and in order to investigate which solution is most effective. An appropriate structure is used in order to find optimal solution. Excel Solver technique is used. obey Technique Chase technique is said to be one of the best techniques of aggregate planning. In this technique capacity of t he company is adjusted according to the demand of the customers. Planning horizon is set so that work force and production schedule is adjusted according to the plans that are made. There are various advantages as well as disadvantages of this technique. expediency of cross technique of aggregate planning is that in this kind of planning anticipation inventory is not necessary for the company while planning and investiture in the inventory has a lower range. With this advantage there is another advantage that beat employ of re line of descents and labor takes place in this techniqueIf we talk about the disadvantages of chase technique of aggregate planning, money spent on adjusting various capacities like work force and others is very high which is not affordable by all the companies. Hence they try to avoid this technique. Another disadvantage is that it goes for a proper disaffection of the workforce. These are the two main disadvantages of chase technique of aggregate plannin gLevel Approach Level set out of aggregate planning is again the second best approach of aggregate planning. Under this technique, capacities like workforce, schedule of production and rate of outputs are constant for the entire period of the planning horizon. There are various advantages and disadvantages of this techniqueAdvantage of level approach of aggregate planning is that there is an absolute stability in the rates of output and level of workforceDisadvantages are that investment for the inventory management is more than other techniques. Overtime for any trade or idle time for nay work is more than pattern techniques. There is variability in the resource utilization which means that there are times when resources are maximum utilize by the company but there are several situations when resources are not utilized by the company up to a mark able extent (AGGREGATE PLANNING)The necessity to balance in the midst of the Aggregate Demand the aggregate production capacity)Th is is necessary that there has to be a proper balance to be maintained between aggregate demand and aggregate production capacity. We will explain these terms of two different scenarios as examples.First we can give an example, let us suppose that aggregate demand in the market is more than what is produced by the company. In this scenario, it is true that company will not be able to satisfy the needs of the customers. Hence there will be fight for the products or operate. Problems that occur because of this situation would be black marketing. come with will take an advantage of this scenario and will sell the product or services are a higher cost. Company will take more money for the same product which it used to take earlier. And problem would be that customer will have to repair the amount if it would not have the alternatives for the same.In the other scenario, we take an example where aggregate production is more than what ever is expected by the customers or what is needed by the customers. In this situation, company will produce more and market or the customers will require less because of which company has to bar the production or there may be possibility that product that has already been used by the customers and rest of the product will get wasted. This will give loss to the company.Hence it is necessary that aggregate demand and aggregate production should be same for best possible result of the aggregate planningThe difference in aggregates sales and operation planning in different industriesAn aggregate sale is the term that is associated with the factor of aggregate planning in different possible modes. This can either be narrow downd in long-range planning, intermediate-range planning, or short-range planning. This process is square dependent on the type of organization that is being taken into consideration. This is due(p) to the fact that its predecessor, i.e. operations planning will be exceedingly influenced by the type of organiza tion and the industry it is operating. Also the fact that aggregate sales is the final outcome that is dependent on a number of variables and can be maximized by improving the efficiency of all the operating units in a well coordinated mien.Operations planning and sales are the two aspects that are related with each other to a impression extent. thusly various facets of operations like MPS (Master Production Schedule), MRP (Material Requirements Planning), high-strung attenuated Capacity Planning, Capacity Requirements Planning, and Ordering Scheduling can be held responsible for enhancing the aggregate sales of an organization, thus making it possible to gain an upper edge everywhere its competitors. This can be explained with the help of IT industry and Telecommunication sphere of influence. An organization operating in Information Technology sector mainly considers human resource as its most important asset. Thus most of the aspects of operation are related to this particu lar factor solely without taking any other feature into consideration. This makes Human Resource handler as one of the exceedingly influential authority in operations management and planning procedure that in turn is liable to entrap aggregate sales of the company while in case telecom sector there are certain changes. In this case employees working in the organization plays an important role, but not as crucial as in previous case. In this particular industry, technological posture that is a part of inventory is one major part required in this sector from operations point of view. This can also be understood from the fact that aggregate sale is the outcome that is generated by pass a specific or diversified service or product to its customers by an organization. Thus it has to be understood that it is just acting as a front end and should possess high end coordination with its source that is operational units and it entirely responsible for taking carefulness of the produc tion associated with the service or product of the company. (Frequently Asked Questions or so Sales and Operations Planning)This can provided be clarified by taking into account textile industry. framework industry is one of its kind as for this particular industry it is highly inevitable to maintain quality standards at different sections of production. Various sources of raw corporal act as an elementary part for the operations management to be taken appropriate care. Its aggregate sales are sort of difficult to retain as compared to many other industries as it is highly prone to remote problems which may result in loosing fate in the competitive scenario. Due to this extremely high inter- colony, aggregate sales and operations planning seems to be same but they are highly different from each other that have to be taken proper care in best possible manner for overall development of the organization. In this particular case factors like production rate, workforce level, invent ory on hand, and production planning will be the factors that will be acting as prime contributors in making operational part to be a successful implementation for the organization operating in this domain. It will further be taking supply of raw material sources like polyester, etc for making it possible that operations are carried out in best possible manner without creating any ambiguity in the vicinity. While aggregate sales will take relevant costs associated with all the supra mentioned parameters into account so as to maximize this particular feature and define proficiency of the company among its rivals. This can be explained further with the help of a characteristic adopted by certain companies spare-time activity JIT (Just in Time) approach. This approach laid its prime focus over inventory management in order to make sure that operational aspects of the company are handled in best possible manner and minimum possible time. This saves a number of expenses of the company w hich otherwise it has to carry like warehousing, etc. This approach can be applied in any organization working in any domain but it will be successful yet when different departments working together are present in highly close vicinity. This has to be made sure that this meticulous prerequisite is meet in every possible manner otherwise this approach will fail deliberately. This approach is generally followed Japanese companies because of readily available material in the market and will probably fail in case it is applied in UAE because of completely different scenario. This define difference in the operation planning and aggregate sales in an explicit manner as aim to maximize aggregate sales remains same for all the companies while operations planning depends on a number of factors. As for example, region in which that particular organization is operating makes an smart affect on the type of market and clientele it is serving. There is also a possibility that different industr ies are entirely reliant over its operational part while rest of them makes very minute dependency over its operational aspects, which demonstrate main difference between these characteristics in a well defined manner and cannot be ignored. Echelon of difference may vary from low to high extent and should be taken care appositely as it is one of the most important features for an organization regardless of its industry.The grandness of choosing the beneficial strategy to plan operationsThe function of operations plan or strategy is to provide a present for the operations assign so that it can build the most excellent use of its assets and resources. Operations strategy states the plans and policies for utilizing the firms resources to hold its long-standing competitive strategy. The figure provided below shows this association. It is to keep in brain that the operations task is accountable for managing the resources required to create the companys services and goods. Operations strategy is the map that specifies the plan and use of assets to bear the business strategy. This comprises the location, dimension, and type of facilities obtainable employee learnings and talents necessary utilization of technology, special equipment, special processes needed and quality control techniques. It is necessary that the operations strategy of the firm must(prenominal) be associated with the firms business strategy and facilitate the firm to attain its long goals. now as different companies has different values to parameters like size, location, skill requirement of workers, types of facility for production and goals to be achieved, it is clear that both the appropriate selection of operation strategy and industry specific selection of operation strategy is necessary for the firm. For instance, the business strategy of a company called FedEx, the globes largest supplier of accelerated delivery services, is to fight on time and reliability of deliveries. talk abou t the operations strategy of the company, the operation strategy of FedEx formed a plan for resources to hold its business plan or strategy. To provide stair of delivery, the company acquired its personal convoy of airplanes. To provide reliability of deliveries, the company invested in complicated bar code machinery to footpath all packages.The significance of choosing right Operations StrategiesOperations plan did not come to the vanguard until the premature 1970s. gutter that time, companies in unify States highlighted mass manufacturing of standard product intends. Till that time, there were absence of any grave international rivals, and companies in United States were pretty much free to sell anything they created. Yet, that altered in the year 1970s and 1980s. Japanese firms entered the market and began presenting products of better quality at lesser cost, and U.S. firms lost market capture to their Asian counterparts. In an effort to checkout alive, many U.S. firms copie d Japanese techniques. Unluckily, just copying these techniques often proved futile it took time to actually understand Japanese techniques. It became obvious that Japanese companies were tautological aggressive since of their operations strategy which is, all their assets and resources were exclusively designed to openly support the firms general strategic plan. In a review, Michael Porter, a prof at Harvard Business School says that firms often do not cognise the dissimilarity between strategy and operational efficiency. Operational efficiency is doing operations tasks fine, even superior than opponents.On the other hand, Strategy is a map for staying in the marketplace. A likeness might be that of organizing a wake capably, but it might be the incorrect race. Strategy is crucial in kind of race you will triumph. Strategy and Operational efficiency must be united otherwise one may be very competently performing the incorrect task. The function of operations plan or say strateg y is to make certain that all the odd jobs performed by the process function are the correct tasks. Think about a software business that freshly invested thousands of dollars in budding software with features or services not provided by opponents, only to determine that these were services customers did not predominantly desire. Now that we recognize the sense of operations strategy and business strategy and their significance, it is clear that the software firm introduced here has performed the operation of ontogeny new features very professionally but is not the correct task as people are not very interested in the new features developed.Inputs required to the production planning processThe production planning process is an aggregate process which depends on a number of factors immanent and external to the organization. If we define these factors, they are basically the manpower, technical planning like engineering and maintenance planning, information of marketing, quality cont rol, investment planning and distribution planning, These factors can be categorized into two parts internal and external to the organization.Talking about the internal inputs to the production planning process, it may include manpower availability, machinery, and technology. Talking about the external requirements of the planning process, this includes factors like pecuniary availability, demand/marketing estimation, distributors, customer expectation of quality and distributors. The correlation between these variables and production planning process can be shown by the following diagram. It is clear form the diagram that both internal and external factors and say internal and external inputs defined above are essential parameters of production planning process.Strategies to meet demand cutting off and Try MethodCut and try method can be seen as one of the favorite and easy to handle methods for the aggregate planning. This strategy helps the company to analyze the perspective of the project planning under different consideration. The basic structure of the plans assists the analysts to come to a conclusion to what plan could be successful under which circumstances. The various aspects of the project planning are highlighted and it becomes more effective for the management to take decision regarding the planning. The working of the cut and try method can be studied as four different strategies deployed in the aggregate plan work sheet. These are as followsProduction Plan 1 or The Chase strategy This particular section of the method employs two very significant parameters namely, workforce and production. It analyses the situation under the condition when the exact production is given but the workforce is varying. It checks the ratio between rate of production and the order rate. In other ways, it could be said that it studies the effect which could be caused on this ratio by hiring employees and by laying them off as per requirement varies.Production Plan 2 or the Stable custody strategy This method of the cut and try involves the constant workforce. In this the case the factor which varies includes inventories and stock-outs. The variation in output is caused because of variation in the working hours the employees due to the non-rigidity in the time schedules allowing overtimes and an altering number of hours of work.Production Plan 3 or the Level strategy This technique employs low workforce which is constant in nature. This is realized with the help of Subcontracting. In this strategy, output rate or the production rate is constant and the workforce is also invariant. all(prenominal) the shortages or excess or in other words surpluses are absorbed by the fluctuations caused in the various levels of the inventory, backlog in the order and the sales which were lost.Production Plan 4 or the mixed strategy Overall objective of this method is to optimize cost which it does by employing four-fold strategies mentioned previously, two or more, together. It schedules overtime and also the workforce is kept constant.Now let us consider the example of The CA J Company. primarily a company which has a pronounced seasonal variation plans its production for whole one year. This is so that the extreme demands of the busiest and slowest months can be captured altogether. In this, companys plan for six months has been illustrated.Similarly datai for remaining parameters is taken asMaterials Rs. 100.00/unitInventory holding cost Rs. 1.50/unit/month peripheral cost of stock-out Rs. 5.00/unit/monthAnd so on.Software like, Microsoft excel make the calculation more convenient. However, it should always be taken care that cut and try method might not always give optimum solution Software available nowadays can give more optimized results as they are more sophisticated.Aggregate Planning Applied to serve Tucson Parks and Recreation DepartmentAggregate planning can be applied to various services so as to get the optimum and t he most beneficiary solution. These can be implemented using charted techniques or methods involving the graphical representations of the plans. Such techniques are employed by the Tucson parks and diversion department. The main objective of this firm is to demonstrate the citys department of parks and deflection can be involve alternatives of the employees working replete-time as well as the part time employees and also utilizing benefits of the subcontracting techniques in order to converge its commitment to provide a useful service to the city. This institution is required to maintain and produce open spaces, gardens, tennis courts, pools, all recreational centers and so on. The data used in the example is as followsThe total compute is allocated of Rs. 9,760,000. The number of the full time employees is 336. Among these 336, 216 employees are such that they are full time permanent personnel who involved with working of maintenance all the year round and are responsible for t he administration. The remaining 120 full time employees are divided into two sections. They are laged with part timers. About three-quarters of these are deployed in summers and the remaining one-quarter work in spring, fall, and winters seasons. The three fourth or 90 full time employees turn up about 800 part time jobs of summers like those of lifeguards, instructors in some children schools or training programs and baseball umpires, etc. Part time jobs last for a month or two while full time employers last for whole one year. Hence considering many other factors and the data, we can conclude that the department is open to the following three options regarding the developmentThe present method is continued. According to which, they have to maintain full time employees at a strong suit level and hence schedule work in the off seasons ( such reconstructing baseball fields in the months of winters) and then use them as a part time assistance during peak seasons.Second option is to maintain a low level of the staff around the year. Whenever there is a requirement of more staff, technique of subcontracting could be used. All additional full treatment currently done by full time employees with the assistance of part time employees.Third option is to hire only administrative staff and subcontract all the remaining work with the help of the part time staff people. This technique will consequently result in contracts to various landscaping firms and companies responsible for maintaining pools and will also give