Assignment: Business Operation Management
Critical Thinkinng
Designing Facilities for the New Whole Food's "365" Chain Concept.
Links to a news item and a video below provide an account of the facility layout for new "365" chain of Whole Food Stores. The news item (published in the "Most Creative People in Business" issue in Fast Company journal) and video describes Whole Foods new "365" concept for smaller more standardized stores with reduced costs. There are many differences from the traditional large scale stores including reduced locally sourced items, reduced individual service counters, and a standardized layout.
Write brief but well-thought out answers to the questions below:
1. Comment on what type of facility layout (as discussed chapter 7 in text) is appropriate in these new stores and why?
2. Discuss the specifics of process selection (as discussed chapter 6 in text) that is appropriate in these new stores?
3. What does this new 365 store concept mean for Whole Foods in context of Service Process Matrix (as discussed chapter 5 in text)?
4. What is your opinion on how 365 concept stores will fit into organization strategy after Amazon's acquisition of Whole Food stores?
Discussion
For our discussion, I am including below links to two articles. The first one is an article in Wall Street Journal titled The Henry Ford of Heart Surgery and the second is an editorial related to it. These offer insights on how an doctor in India is sustainably performing state-of-the-art open heart surgeries, a complex procedure, at high volume assembly line mode but with low costs, something considered hard to accomplish in the product-process matrix framework. Provide your opinion on what your learned from it in context of implications for operations management in healthcare industry.
Format your assignment according to the following formatting requirements:
1. The answer should be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides.
2. The response also includes a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the student's name, the course title, and the date. The cover page is not included in the required page length.
3. Also include a reference page. The Citations and references should follow APA format. The reference page is not included in the required page length.