Project Plan For Business Improvement Report Report Samples

Abstract

The report examines a feasible project that can be carried out by Morrison Flower World. The project seeks to reduce the overall transport and production costs accrued by the company in the process of importation and retailing of their flowers. In addition, the paper shall report on the efficacy of the project and how it helps to improve the business. In business, costs are crucial since they determine the profits acquired by the company. High costs of production will translate to a reduced profit margin; low prices in turn will lead to a maximum profit for the organization. While the process of Business Improvement translates to better results, the process is detailed and involves effects on the entire company processes. The paper shall look in detail at the effects and how their control measures.
1.0 Brief Introduction to Morrison Flower World
According to the company’s website, the company started operating in the flower back in 1987. From 1987, it has grown to become one of the leading flower importers and later distributes them in the UK. It deals with fresh cut flowers, plants, bulbs, seeds and wreaths. They then distribute them to florists and retailers. There are many factors that cause the rampant increase in the Flower World imports and distribution and the company boasts of a strong management team who has an extensive experience and passion on the flowers field. The knowledge and skills include which includes the overall plant growth and marketing process, development of the flowering plant after growth and designing the plant to meet the specifications of their consumers. Morrison Company was initially operating on its own, but later in the year 2011 they developed a good relationship with the flower world and acquired it.
2.0 Business process improvement project and purpose
Business plan improvement is one of the most challenging fields to the project managers. Morrison World has warehouses that receive imported goods waiting distribution to their consumers. All the product deliveries are in the form of pellets and the delivered pallet is always found stacked in an overall pallet box. The height of the overall pallet box will be determined by the height of the individual pallet stacked in it. One of the company intentions is to reduce the individual pallets so as to minimize the overall perimeter of the boxes and to reduce the sizes will consequently reduce the transportation costs by reducing the number of the outgoing pallets. Previously, the company used to pack and store any size of the pallet depending on the inventory of a particular type of pallet. However, currently the warehouse has progressed in terms of automation and the supply chain has also increased in sophistication. Therefore, Morrison Flower World found it necessary to manage not only the provision of pallets, but also the type of the pallets. In addition, inventory level and overall process entailing the handling of pallets were also changed. The process will be expected to affect almost the entire pellet program.
3.0 Identifying costs that pellet impact
The choices made by the company of the pallet program will impact on almost all the aspects of the operations involved in the flowers Import, retailing and packaging to be stored in the warehouses. It requires an extensive, and a comprehensive evaluation of the company and consumers needs to be able to carry out an optimization of the pallet program to ensure maximum cost-savings. Notably, the company had been accruing a high amount of transport costs. By carrying out the pellet optimization process the transport costs shall be reduced successfully (Zellner, 2011).
The initial step of the plan will be identifying the areas of the whole supply chain, they include the procurement of the pallet or sourcing from its suppliers and the transportation process is also affected by the pallets; the kind of transportation that is used depends on the sizes and orientation of the pallets. Other areas that are hit by the pallets include; warehouse storage, production, distribution and waste disposal and lastly the environmental issues. Most of the processes identified above affect the process that revolves around the warehouse. There are other processes and initiatives outside the warehouse that are affected by the pallets. They include the program administration and management, corporate compliance and security, customer services and outsourcing as explained by Larson & Gray (2014).
Distribution costs are also related to the transport costs (Kerzner, 2013). The weight of the pallets will directly influence the distribution costs. As explained earlier, it is notable that heavier, bulkier, block pallets will most likely take up more room in the trailers used in the transport more than the stringer pallets. Therefore, in case of heavier and substantial size pallets, the outbound trailers will carry few loads since it is only a limited size of the loads can fit on the trailers. There is a big necessity to reduce the sizes of the pallets since with the current pallet sizes; there is usually an elimination of an entire layer of products.

Rebuild our Bays

Pallets are usually loaded on the bays. Previously, large pallets were used in the packaging process which had impacts as explained above. For the choice of the pallets select6ed to be useful, the bays have to be rebuilt. Bays can be artificially modulated without a necessity of purchasing a new bay. Bays contains a specific number of pallets, however the number of pallets stored in them shall be determined by the bay size and shape. The purpose of the overall strategy is to minimize the costs while maintaining the desired market and customers’ preferences.
Morrison World is an international flower importation and distribution company; therefore all specifications must meet the international standards. Bays are stored ion the warehouses waiting to be loaded on the trailer. The trailers carrier is designed with reference to the bay specifications. In addition, the higher the number of bays the higher the number of pallets that shall be transported. Therefore, any adjustment of pallets should also translate to modification of the bay. The impacts of the bay to the transport and production costs are similar to those of the pallets.
4.0 Project Overview
4.1 How pallets affect each areas cost
4.2 Transportation
The pallets interfere with the transportation costs through third party charges, efficiency of the logistics used in the processing and how the space in the trailer us utilized. The third party expenses are accrued by the pallet suppliers passing along it, and this is by increasing the fees for the delivery or exoneration the built-in pricing. The supplier's operations are affected by the availability of the third party; this limits them from effectively responding to the demand of pallets from the Morrison Flower World. The business plan will involve seeking for a pallets supplier who owns a fleet, and this enables the company to eliminate any variable that may result in delaying the process of importation or distribution to the retailers. The delays and additional costs will also affect the storage processes into the warehouses. The selected pallet suppliers who own large fleets will enable the company to control transportation tightly and provide the company with the logistic efficiencies that include the cost savings wherever possible. It will be necessary to seek for the supplier who has the largest fleet, suppliers who have large fleets helps the company to accrue several benefits. Some of the possible benefits include; ability to provide drop trailers at the company’s facility and the pallets shall be delivered in time. There shall be no time wasted during the shipping process. In addition, they shall ensure that there is a flexible scheduling, and they shall have ability to manage and accommodate multiple shifts. In the case of any changes that may be noticed before the delivery of the pallet trailer, the changes shall be supplied by the supplier without any delays (Duke, Carr & Sterrett, 2013).
Pallet size and weight are one of the major factors that the company seeks to come up with an improvement; they are the primary factors that determine the transportation and handling costs. Previously, before the proposed improvement changes are adopted the outbound shipments usually weigh out before they cube out. Hence, once the proposed lighter content is selected, greater differences shall be noticeable since they shall create a positive impact. According to an excerpt, by Larson & Gray (2014), the business improvement plan involves the adoption of a recycled stringer pallet that also includes some plastic pallets. The recycled stringer pallets with the plastic pallets weigh up to 40% less as compared to the weight of the block pallet. In real sense, the difference in percentage is equivalent to the shipping of twenty-five to twenty-six pallets of flower products. If our company shall shift from using the block pallets to using stringer pallets it shall save a lot of money amounting to thousands. It will be an important step forward in a reduction of the production costs that will change the entire process. Flower World will establish stable pallet measurements in an action to ensure that the suppliers only supply the pallets of the right size every time of delivery.
4.3 Production
In the production process, the wrong pallet specifications that include the pallet size, construction and the grade of the pallet will have an adverse impact on the production process. Results of such wrong specifications will be vital since they shall lead to the pallet failures. Consequently, leading to damaging of the perishable flower products, may also cause injuries to the farmers and effects on the production line that may go down. Therefore, to be able to minimize the costs, it is necessary for the pallets to work with the fork-lifts, apply automated production machines, conveyors, racking and other equipments. Poor quality pallets are also a cause of the failures; however, high intensity of the failure can result by the over-built pallets. Hence, the company has rolled out a project to ensure that the number of outgoing pallets significantly reduced. Therefore, to be able to reduce the production costs effectively, the company will be avoiding any purchases of high size pallets. However, they can be bought in several situations. Firstly, in case customers require them, secondly, where they enhance a value that can be quantified in the process of importing or retailing (Duke, Carr & Sterrett, 2013). The plan will be necessitated by accessing and evaluating different pallet specifications that can be used in our operation will help the company to determine the efficient mix of quality and the most cost-efficiency.
5.0 Project Scope
5.1 In-scope
The project will cover the pallets size and weight and how they can be altered to minimize the transport costs. There are several departments in our company that shall be involved; the units are made up of team members who will facilitate in achieving the project scope. The departments involved will be; purchasing and supplies department, transport, warehousing and packaging departments. All of them shall be having a role to play in the realization of the project set goals.
5.2 Out of scope
Consumers have their specifications on the type of pallets that they consider. Additionally, the resources may limit the size of the pallet that is used by the company. Customer’s tastes and preferences will be included in the outline of the project scopes and goals, one of the enterprise's vision is to increase their clients' base and improve in their investments.
6.0 Project goals
There are goals and objectives that define projects that must be achieved and the goals include reducing the height of the pallet used in the packaging of our products and increase the average boxes loaded per pallet. In addition, the project shall be seeking to increase the average number of boxes packed in trailers which are used in the transport process. By reducing the average boxes per palette, the quantity of the palettes sent will be reduced and consequently, the annual production costs shall be significantly reduced.
7.0 Project objectives
The primary purpose of this project is to reduce the transportation costs by reducing the number of outgoing pallets (Snyder, 2009. However, there shall be other objectives that the project shall be seeking to achieve. Firstly, it will attempt to increase the efficiency of the shipping process. In addition, the time used will be reduced since less time shall be used in the packaging process. Secondly, is to prevent any workers being injured, damages and efficiency of the warehouses.
8.0 Project Resources and Timeline
The complexity of the project is intense in that, it will be expected to take a lifeline of four months. The reason for the longevity of the project implementation is due to the entire supply and delivery processes being affected and reorganized. It is not a one-step process but multiple steps that shall be touching on different sections of the company. To support and enhance a success to the implementation of this process improvement plan, there are various resources that shall be needed. In addition, their availability will translate to the success of our project. The resources will be broken into financial resources and human resources (Kerzner 2013).
8.1 Human Resources
8.2 Financial Resources
In any project that seeks to have maximum benefits, there must be cost incurred. The cost will be extra from the value that the company accrues. However, despite the project costing the organization an additional cost in its implementation, in the long run, the project will be of great help to the company (Snyder, 2009). Resources will be necessary so as to pay the suppliers who have high number of fleets to supply the pallets for the enterprise. Additionally, the steering group needs to be appreciated to ensure that the repackaging process is well done. The process of improvement is not a single step initiative, but made up of multiple steps that require resources for their implementation. In addition, the improvement process shall affect the activity flow in the entire organization. They have to reorganize their operations, and this will require resources to be available. Estimates of the project cost are 100-500 thousand dollars.
9.0 Project management
9.1 Risk Management
A project risk is any happenings that may occur that have an adverse impact on the success of the project. The technique that shall be used in this project will be based on predetermining the occurrence of any risk the earliest possible (Duke, Carr & Sterrett, 2013). Identification of the impending risk will translate to formulating ways of solving the risk or containing it at a level that it has no effect on the success of the project. One of the primary roles of the project managers is to identify, quantify and report the risks to the necessary department mandated to manage the risks. Some of the risks that may be encountered by the project are the lack of resources since the initiatives will be much involving. In addition, the company may face rebellion from their consumers as a result of changing their processes. If some of the tastes and preferences of consumers are not met, they may seek goods and services from other companies in the market.
9.2 Project Tracking
The purpose of this process will be to monitor the progress of the project. The reporting is made on a weekly basis through meetings and forums. They will be used to discuss issues and progress. The meetings and discussions facilitated by all the project participants and the management conducted. Every step of the project improvement is monitored since that is what shall determine the efficacy of the project (Kerzner, 2013).

Expected Outcomes

10. Conclusion

Reference list

Company’s History and its operation retrieved from >http://www.morrisons-corporate.com/About-us/Company-History/ on 27th February 2015 at 1245hrs
Duke, D. L., Carr, M., & Sterrett, W. (2013) The school improvement planning handbook: getting focused on turnaround and transition. New York: Wiley and Sons
Kerzner, H. R. (2013) Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.
Larson, E. W., & Gray, C. F. (2014) Project Management: The Managerial Process with MS Project. London: Sage Publications.
Snyder, C. (2009) A project manager's book of forms a companion to the PMBOK® Guide, fourth edition. Hoboken, N.J., Wiley. http://site.ebrary.com/id/10521347.
Zellner, G. (2011) “A structured evaluation of business process improvement approaches”. Business Process Management Journal, 17(2), 203-237.