5UOM Level 5 Operations Management Of Hewlett Packard Enterprise Questions Answers

TITLE OF THE ASSIGNMENT- OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT

Executive Summary 

The Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HP) was founded in the year 1939 by the name of Hewlett Packard Company in a car garage in California. The present headquarters is at the same location, and the Key people involved are Patricia Russo as the chairwoman and Antonio Neri as the CEO of the company. It is a leading information technology company, although the start of the company was with electronic goods. The major revamp of the product line of HP was brought about in the year 1999. The merger of the company with Compaq boosted its efficacy in the computer and peripherals segment. HP has been the leading producer of computer and peripherals from 2007 until 2013. 

The mass production of the goods and the quality of the goods produced by the company earned the respect of the company throughout the globe, and in the present day, HP has been a household name. The company has been ranked 107^th in the list of Fortune 500 companies of 2018, judging by the largest revenue in the USA. HP is considered as a global supplier of computers, printers, toners, cartridges, networking and electronic equipment with employee strength of 55000. The major competitors of HP are Lenovo, Dell, Acer, Asus, Apple, Toshiba, Samsung etc. The major segment of customers comprises of the other industries, who seek IT related solutions and up-gradation of their companies with artificial intelligence and cloud computing. The direct customers are individuals, owning business/ personal computers, laptops, printers, and other peripherals.

Task 1

A. Discussion on the ways in which products are offered by the organization influences its ways its operations are conducted.

The products and services of the HP Enterprise (HPE) are mainly networking and electrical equipment, including computers and printers. The chain of command and the management of the corporation are very much aware that the same is not only lucrative to the huge business houses but also to the common person in need of a computer or printer (Burgelman et al. 2017). The huge business houses needing a solution to their data storage and analysis issues approach the HP Enterprises directly or through proper bidding. HP has until now won many such biddings being the key product or program developer and the lowest cost. Since its inception, the company has urged its commodities to be cost-effective and most resilient.  

Figure 1: The operations management in HP Company

(Source: Burgelman et al. 2017)

The ethos of the company has, therefore, never changed, resulting in effective conduct of operations and ensuring the best product and support. The longevity of the commodities and the efficacious output capability of the products has also urged everyone to own a personal or business computer of the HP Enterprises (Amankwah-Amoah & Syllias, 2020). Although the cost-effectiveness of these products is competitive; however, the brand name of HP and the prolonged user support customers. The sales in respect of the HP personal / business computer and peripherals are also quite high (Bastas & Liyanage, 2018). The working culture of the company as they call it the “HP way” has always enabled the best product at the cheapest cost for all customers, be it business tycoons or common professionals or students. This has allured many companies to emulate the "HP Way" in their organization to bring in better results.

B.Discussion on the two key performance objectives and its importance for the organization

HP has forever since the start tried to make reliable and cost-effective products. The first profitable product made by HP was the HP200A precision Audio Oscillator. The other organizations creating similar products were not very reliable and were selling them for over $200 each. HP, however, sold these HP200A at the cost of $89, and they were much more reliable than the other ones in the market (LeBaron et al. 2017). This shows that the innovation of the company was the sole reason for a better and cheaper product. The first success story of every organization is always imbibed in the heart of every employee. This is the reason that HP relies on innovation and thereby provides the customers with products which are reliable than all others in the market and cheap by all means. Some companies cut production cost by using materials of a lower category and lower durability (McIntyre & Ortiz, 2016). However, HP is always of the opinion that the production cost can be cut but not compromising on quality. Rather, search newer approaches, which will be better but cost-effective, thereby providing the best services to the customer along with a cheaper cost. 

The intertwining of the production line along with quality control techniques to ensure the best product is a state of the art approach diligently followed by the company. The production line itself has innovation experts who are always on the lookout for improving the quality standard of the product irrespective of the present production line. The innovative approaches of the company have assured the best security of data systems in the present-day world. The recent success of Bendigo Telco in achieving a faster resolution to customer data problems and faster service schedule can be rested on the HPE Nimble system (Bendigo Telco, 2018). Bendigo Telco has duly appreciated the effort by HP and acclaimed that the system and the Flash arrow tray system in the HPE Nimble was the most accurate solution to the problems faced by the Telecom giant.

 The user-oriented approach along with the quality and innovation experts imbibed in the production line of the company ensured the perfect fit of the problem analysis and exact solution of the problem in itself with a few improvements inbuilt for necessary fitment (Komljenovic et al. 2017). The improvement rate of data restoration times of Bendigo Telco increased by 300%, and this ensured a high success rate along with lesser idle time thereby ensuring the cheapest costing and lower losses (Wolniak, 2019). Jarrod Draper, Executive General Manager—Business & Enterprise Division, Bendigo Telco has expressed that the HPE Nimble was the perfect fit as the HPE brought in with them the expertise and road maps to the organization which was not the job of a traditional developer.

C. Discussion on the challenges of Total Quality Management in operations of the organization

The reliability of HPE products is beyond doubt as they ensure the industries top quality and lifelong warrant to most products. The quality of HP products is rather a benchmark for all other rival companies in the industry (Panuwatwanich & Nguyen, 2017). The total quality management in the operations of the HPE is assured by the implementation of HP Quality Improvement Cycle and Lean Six Sigma Quality programs. 

Figure 2: HP Quality Improvement Cycle

(Source: Panuwatwanich & Nguyen, 2017).

The HP Quality Improvement cycle is also known as the “Continuous quality improvement cycle” as the quality concerns are duly addressed during the production stages, and no loose ends are left unattended (Aziz & Morita, 2016). The continuous analysis of the product quality assures the creator of the resilience of the product as well as allows the rechecking of the formulation of the product repeatedly.

Lean Six Sigma Quality Measures

Figure 3: The deployment of six sigma in Total Quality Measure of the company

Source: Aziz & Morita, 2016)

The chart above depicts the quality assurance of a company in the steps, as shown. Almost all companies need to start with 5S quality strategies but to attain a level of the Lean 6 Sigma Quality measures it requires prolonged purification and analysis to the intricate production line activities which have been done at HPE (Saberi et al. 2019). This embedded culture of six sigma ways in the production line of the HPE products does ensure the company products retain the best quality of the industry tagline. 

The challenges faced by the HPE are of a different nature than of quality. Although quality is the forte of the company products, the arduous quality inculcating tactics employed by the industry takes a toll on its production time (Ismail et al. 2016). Obviously, the customers do enjoy a faster delivery of products, but the technological know-how and procedural road maps of the HPE to ensure the best-suited solution to company problems does assure the customers that the time is well deserved to create a specific to the industry solution.

Task 2

Evaluation of the proposals of the organization which intends to benefit the best practices in environmental sustainability and ethics management in supply chain

The CSR of HPE is an aspect in itself, thereby enabling the company to be the forerunner in environment sustainability and torchbearer of the ethics management in any country that is a market to the company. The huge workflow of the HPE is mostly based on the networking aspect in addition to commodity production like computers and printers. Hence, the net worth of the company is highly engaged in online tasking and thereby reducing the ill effects on the green earth. The carbon footprint issue, which has been so enormously pondered over during the last decade, has been wisely and efficiently curbed in the company (Sustainability Report, 2016). The management of the company is well aware that a habitable planet will only enable the company to run, and the essence of being habitable resides in the reduction of carbon footprint and emissions on earth. The same has been given due cognizance and thereby reduction of carbon footprint in the year 2019 has been reduced to 47% as of 2016. In addition, 1 million hours of volunteering towards the greener planet by the employees of the HPE has also gained much news. The HPE has also given 
$ 01 billion towards the development and self-sustenance of poor women and army veterans through setting up of small-scale business ventures for them throughout the USA. 

Figure 4: The environment sustainability report shows how materials are recycled and reused by the company

(Source: Sustainability Report, 2016).

 The setup of the HPE is such that the company also takes up different networking based work for other industries. The company is a torchbearer in the green earth project also tries to inculcate the same thought into other companies and helps them achieve sustainable production thereby reducing their carbon footprint and ensuring that they have less waste along with less loss. The inculcation of the cloud server system incorporated among many of the customer companies of HPE has enabled the useless hardware server system thereby implored the world to take a look at the system which is free and does not entail a huge carbon footprint in the making. Although many may argue that the cloud server is not secure enough, then the company has also ensured that they provide to its customers with the necessary protection they get from hardware-based servers and sometimes even better (Kim & Chai, 2017). All these have enabled the customer companies of HPE to reduce their carbon footprints. 

Although the production of computers printers and peripherals do have a carbon footprint, the company is vehemently trying to innovate the recyclable products and bring them to the market so that the better and beloved earth of ours remains unharmed any further and the things already created are duly recycled and used to beget better products. The innovation in these aspects has a total wing of HPE innovation systems. The HPE is also trying to evolve towards a philanthropic company by innovating medicines for diseases at low cost for the poor people of the globe.

 Commitment towards the earth does not only entail CSR or innovations but curtailing energy costs from user end are also a huge step ahead while considering the global HP market and usage of HPE products across the globe (Karrieva, 2020). The HPE products created since 2019 are three times more energy-efficient than the 2015 product energy baseline. The amount of energy consumed by HP products across the globe will definitely reduce three times, thereby ensuring the energy consumption of the globe reduced. 

In the Middle East, the HPE has collaborated with a telecom giant and has been assigned to monitor and reduce emissions of the telecom giant. To ensure the same HPE has innovatively created an online monitoring and control system for all the telecom offices of the middle east thereby reducing the emissions of the part of the world. The energy savings as has been envisaged by the company will be around the multi-million dollar and thereby ensuring a huge emission reduction too (Chen et al. 2019). Direct actions are not the only ones to speak of as the indirect emissions caused by the products are also thought of great concern when it comes to saving our earth. 

 Danfoss headquarters located at Denmark has in 2019, entrusted the HPE to reduce its energy consumption levels. The headquarters was equipped with old machinery, and now that the headquarters has been geared up with the latest technology from HPE the energy consumption of the server and the office building will reduce by at least 30% (Danfoss News, 2019). In addition to that Danfoss being an engineering company by itself also is to install the cooling equipment it innovated for the server cooling bringing down the energy consumption of the HQ building of Danfoss and its server at 50 % than before. 

Figure 5: The partnership between Danfoss and HPE ensures climate-friendly data centres

(Source: Danfoss News, 2019)

The finite energy and resources of the world cause the establishment to believe that the consumption of the resources of the planet is not only unhealthy for the planet but also is unwise. Therefore the company has explored the roadmap towards being a resource non-consuming company. The work on the running of the company as such has already been envisioned and work is in progress (Marchet et al. 2016). The main outcome of the same will be to utilize the company in a service pattern wherein the non-consumable resources will be most used while the consumable resources will be least used. In addition, the consumable resources will be used in manners wherein the resources can be easily recycled without any loss or consumption (Progress data, 2018). The circular service model as it has been named will be the source of inspiration for most companies and reverting to such practices will save earth for far longer than expected.

 Packaging being a great effort towards natural resource usage, the company is overwhelmed to pronounce that the company will be using only environment-friendly packaging for its products and will also utilize recycled packaging the most frequently. The packaging of a computer peripheral is important, but an environment friendly is far more important (Clarke & Boersma, 2017). Even the company has ensured its customers that the life expansion of all products are in vogue and the customers can also utilize the services of the company for upgrading their equipment on life expiry of the equipment or will buy back the piece of equipment for recycling purposes. These cyclic measures have resulted in 324,194 metric tons of CO2 avoided, 1,177,083 MHz of energy saved, and 24,734 metric tons of waste diverted from landfill in the year 2019 itself.

Task 3

Evaluation of the partnership sourcing as a better operation strategy for the organization

The company has repeatedly adopted the policy of partnership sourcing for the betterment of the company. The partnership sourcing of the company is carried out at places the company is unable to reach, and the world knows HPE. HPE has partner suppliers in many parts of Australia itself, and the same is deeming fit for the company. The partner suppliers are due worth and are of different categories, namely platinum partner or gold partner depending on the different services provided by the partner. Being a worldwide organization, it is prudent on the company’s part to assure the services till the customer are duly provided by the partner organizations (Dubey et al. 2017). The in house shipment of all products will not only be cumbersome but also will cause huge employee strength. On the other hand, a lean working strength to suffice the production line and to be utilized during the business tie-ups and solution-finding for particular organizations will be beneficial towards the company management.  

Figure 6: The potential partnership with suppliers improves the supply chain for the company

(Source: Dubey et al. 2017)

Although HPE has its own stores in different parts of the world and the same does not apply to those as the regulatory authority over the HP stores at different parts of the world are only partner firms or franchisees. The HPE supplier diversity program enables all and every person to register themselves as a probable supplier of HPE products and services. The HPE representatives adjudge the ability of the company or firm registered to the HPE Supplier Diversity program, and then commercial solutions do start (Fu, 2019). However, HPE is of the opinion that supplier diversity creates ingenuity and liberalization of the system along with an innovative approach and diversified requirement base. All these are a preemptive procedure to understand the motive of the supplier and the ability with which the firm or business will handle the brand name of the company. 

Aspects salient to the supplier program are also taken into consideration, and the value of the firm or supplier of the company is designate on the services the supplier provides. HPE has a part of the after-sales service, which was inborn into the system to ensure the top quality maintenance. The suppliers well equipped with after-sales service are prioritized. More value is levied on the firms providing door to door maintenance and service of equipment of the company. 

All these aspects are prevalent for every known company who has the motive to invite supplier partner for their products. However, considering the stringent and cautious supervision of the company directly on the supplier partners to ensure the prolonged brand goodwill of the company it is difficult to presume whether the in-house supply of the goods by the company itself will be better or the present supplier partner system is better (Skender et al. 2016). On the other hand, it is quintessential to state that the system has, for long, depending on the supplier partners for supplying the goods and services to customers and has until now retained the brand goodwill. Bearing otherwise might also pose trouble considering the huge market captured by the company. 

The supplier partner system of the company was most efficacious when the US government, led by President Bill Clinton issued an order for all trading to Iran to stop. However, the supplier partner company who was not a part of the corporation and is native to Denmark rather than the USA did not have to conform to the norms issued by US authorities (Lanza et al. 2019). Hence, the supplier partner made a thumping trade in Iran during the injunction period, when no other corporation from the US territory was able to provide goods to the country. This, in turn, favoured HPE financially but the government did not like this and hence started an enquiry about the same. The enquiry was duly concluded favouring the HPE, and therefore HPE was not implicated. However, on the conclusion of the enquiry, HPE had to renounce the supplier partner and sever ties with them on government instructions.

The partnership sourcing strategies recently developed by the company with more initiative towards the networking and cyber cloud aspects have also eased the scene. Most of the partners are now the customers too and enhance the workmanship of the company by allowing them venues to venture and explore newer pathways towards innovation (Storey et al. 2018). Each partner-customer is a new company with a different set of rules and the working environment. However, the staff of HPE has their HP Way to go on. They definitely find solutions of the problems being faced by their customer partner and calibrate the solutions in tune with the existing system of the company and enhancing a few features to ensure the proper functioning of the customer partner as well as increased benefit. All these new supplier partnership ventures are new, and with the exhaustive knowledge of cloud computing of HPE the companies that are customer partners, do benefit a lot.  An instance of revamping the Danfoss HQ can be taken into account wherein the HQ got a bright new look alongside an energy efficiency of 50 % to gain.

A different aspect of the partnership program has also been initiated by HPE, which is akin to supplier partnership. HPE Technomics is the partnership between any customer companies directly with the HPE to ensure proper and regular updating of the offices and software of the company to ensure success and better profitability (Obicci, 2017). HPE also ensures that the systems of the old, which are useless, will be recycled and converted into profitable and usable goods utilized for the office itself, thereby recycling the products. 

The IDC is a sub-program initiated by HPE to reduce e-Waste with a Circular Economy initiative. These aspects notwithstanding the HPE financial services will also ensure that new opportunities are created through the thorough assimilation of the technologies, technological equipment and the final business objective. All these together make the customer partner program a perfect example of today’s supplier partnership (Brogaard & Petersen, 2018). The necessity of the supplier itself has been abolished when cloud computing is at play, and the innovation aspect of the supplier is being provided to the company from the customer partner. 

Task 4 

Discussion on the logistics strategy leading to achieve the operation performance objectives of the organization

The logistics part of the organization is solely on the supplier partner who is intended to carry the items from the originating point to the destination. HPE does not have a logistics branch to export or ship any item from the point of origin. The supplier partners are entrusted to carry out this part of the delivery. The responsibilities of the supplier partner in terms of computers and printers along with other peripherals do encompass the following points:

Labor 

The supplier partner is to provide labour from the point of origin of the product, for conveying it to its desired destination and wherever required (Herhausen et al. 2020). The in-land transits where labour will be required and the skilled labour, which will be required for packaging the products will also be provided by the Supplier partner.

Figure 7: The logistics of the company creates new capabilities in the emerging market

(Source: Herhausen et al. 2020).

Packaging

 The supplier partner is to provide packaging required for the product while exporting the product. The initial packaging, however, is done by the HPE by the use of recyclable/eco-friendly packaging materials (Basole et al. 20170. The supplier partner is also to ensure that the norms for packaging are also maintained, and the carbon footprint is reduced. 

Loading / Unloading

The supplier partner will be completely responsible for all loading/ unloading from aircraft/ vessel or any other means of transport. HPE will not be a part of all this. The requirement of specialized vehicles and the charges thereof will be solely borne by the supplier partner. The supplier partner is to ensure that the cargo is specifically cleared by the respective government authorities both before loading and before unloading. Anti-dumping laws must be specifically checked before unloading any cargo.

In-land freight

 The supplier partner is to ensure the inland freight is charged with the partner and not to HPE. All the inland transits will be the sole responsibility of the supplier partner, and it is to be ensured that no law is violated.

Customs clearance

 The clearance of customs of the goods will be the responsibility of the supplier partner. The customs clearance of the goods will be in line with the laws of the country of origin or destination, and the customer partner is to ensure that no law or regulation is violated.  

Delivery to the final destination

The delivery to the final destination will be the sole responsibility of the supplier partner, and the HPE will not be responsible for any part of it. The delivery of the goods will also entail the final check of the products by the supplier partner before handing over to the customer. Any damage to the goods due to delivery will be levied upon the supplier partner (Khalifa et al. 2016). Any inbuilt damage to the goods although will be on HPE who will replace the product with a new product on receipt of the damaged goods and passing of inspection adjudging the goods damaged while at originators premises.

 After such stringent conditions for the supplier partner, it is evident why the logistics procedure of the company did not flourish. The logistics are fully operated by supplier partners at their discretion. However, the company does utilize the supply partners’ logistics procedures on the remittance of a decent partnership. 

 The other part of the huge HPE industry is software and solution-based. These elongated and prolonged transit regulations do not require a tiresome logistics procedure. The partner customers provide the problem and the team from HPE visits the work environment or premises of the customer partner where the solution is required (Ben-faress et al. 2019). The team then objectively analyses the problem while understanding the work ethics and working strategy of the installation. After this, they get on to finding a solution or apply an innovation, which is mostly cloud computing-based, thereby ensuring the most efficacious and dependable solution is provided. The solution is then again run through the quality checks and lean management programs and designed to fit the customer partner’s policies and work culture (Cohen & Rogers, 2020). Thereby the customer gets a solution he so desires and apt for gaining the pace of his business.

The objective of the company is to lead the world market in IT production and marketing. The same is the performance objective of the same. The in-housing of the logistics procedure as a change may degrade the already in-vogue pace of performance of the company (Zhang, 2016). The system, although needs to be revamped the same is already underway through the different partnerships the company has initiated, which are the customer partnership, IDC, HPE financial solutions, and so on.. All these together make the customer partner program a perfect example of today's supplier partnership. In this aspect of product delivery, the logistics procedure is not required to be conducted at all. All these projects are mostly turn on type projects. All these are incorporated in the customer partners system at the customer partner’s premises. 

 The logistics procedures being followed by the company are not only the best for the company but also will enable the company to perfect its product quality duly. The challenges faced by the company will not be overburdening of the company employee strength. The resourcefulness and company goodwill will always ensure the best supplier partner to negotiate terms with the company (Kliuiev et al. 2019). The introduction of the new customer partnership programs will also enable a new venture and will be a successful logistics procedure put to use by the company.