Strategic Initiatives

Strategic initiatives are philosophies, creativities or initiatives as the name implies strategy that arise as a retorts to an issue or problem in an organization that, when unravel, it will bring a substantial outcome on the organization's results and this of course will necessitates a well-coordinated cross functional support for it to succeed.

Before anyone can draw a conclusion as to what extent these initiatives are simply a way of avoiding the difficult process of reconciling market requirements and operations resource capabilities as to what operations strategy is all concerned about, one will have to know and understand what they are, the reason or origin of its philosophy or viewpoint and how they are so different from each other.

These Strategic initiatives include Efficient Consumer Response (ECR): The term is been used mostly in the way businesses are been conducted in the grocery industry along with their trading partners. Its main objective is concerned with satisfying of its customers wishers in a better, quicker and at fewer or reduced cost.

Just-In-Time (JIT) and Lean systems: The main concern of these initiatives is all about eliminating waste in every area or process, a system that makes & delivers the exact product that is needed, at the time needed, with the right quantity or amount needed requiring or with less effort from human, less space, less or low capital and reduced time of making goods with rarer imperfections to meet customer necessities.

Agile operations: This is more concern or focuses its attention more on the changing needs of the market and how to respond to them effectively; this needs a lot of visibility in order to be able to know the market so well and to be able to anticipate its sudden change in taste and heaves.

World Class Manufacturing (WCM): The primarily focuses of WCM is mainly on recurrent enhancement in quality, flexibility, lead time, cost and customer service. It tries to mix the entire elements of manufacturing in order that the needs and wants of its customer might be met in a timely manner and with satisfaction.

Strategic postponement: Postponement is an orderly approach to design and develop a standard, constructing or making products that can be distinguished, fast and economically, once the actual demand of customer known. This is achieved by initiating a delay point before different types of products are made at the last possible moment.

E-business: The use of Internet for computing and communications in business processes has arisen as a key empowerment to strengthen supply chain integration. Businesses now make use Internet in the improvement of global visibility across their extended network of trading partners and this helps business respond quickly to a range of variables, from customer demand to resource shortages.

Taking a close and broad look at the above Strategic initiatives, one can deduce that