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Zara Fashion
Strategic Operation Management Assignment

Zara fashion

Zara is a clothing and accessories retailer selling stylish apparel at affordable prices, and it is also the most profitable brand of the Spanish clothing retail group Inditex SA. Ortega planned for this new Zara outlet, located near his factory in La Coruna in northern Spain, to sell this overstock merchandise himself. Since then, Zara has expanded into 500 stores in 68 countries as of January 2007 and has become a leader in customized fashion retailing. This assignment presents core competencies to help Zara achieve competitive advantages in fashion industry. Besides, we also offer five competitive objectives about quality, speed, flexibility, dependability and cost to evaluate efficiency in business operation of Zara. Then analyzing supply chain management to consider how Zara maintain, improve and develop its strategies and business. Finally, the assignment will discuss about Zara’s quality not only in operation system but also in human management.
Firstly, the essays will discuss about Zara’s core competencies. An important content in the internal environment analysis of business to strategy planning is to analyze the resources, capabilities and core competencies of the business, competitive advantage and competitiveness of enterprises. The purpose of internal analysis of the enterprise is to identify and evaluate potential resources as well as existing that create sustainable competitive advantage of enterprises; identify obstacles in maintaining the sustainable advantages competitive. This analysis is important basis in the selection of the business strategy. Core competence is unique strength that permits the company to achieve the superiority comparing rivals in strategy, business operation, quality, innovation and customer responsiveness.
Zara's success derives from core competencies of the company in design, manufacturing, warehousing, distribution and retail. Its capabilities link functions



References: Capell, K. 2008. Zara thrives by breaking all the rules. Bloomberg Businessweek. CNN, 2001, Zara – a Spanish success story, CNN, Available at: http://edition.cnn.com/BUSINESS/programs/yourbusiness/stories2001/zara/ [Accessed June 15 2001] Craig, A., Jones, C Deming, W.E. 1982, Out of the Crisis, MIT Press. Ferdows, K., Lewis, M.A Gallaugher, J. 2008, Zara Case: Fast Fashion from Savvy System, p.3. Gereffi, G. 1999. International Trade and Industrial Upgrading in the Apparel Commodity Chain, Journal of International Economics 48, 37-70 Ghemawat, P Greasley, A., 2009. Operations Management, 2th Edition, Wiley. Mcafee, A. Dessain, V. and Sjoman, A., 2004, “Zara: IT for fast fashion”, HBS: No.9-604-081. McFarlan, W.F., and Young, F. 2000. Li & Fung: Internet Issues. No.9-301-309 (Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing), p.3. Roy, S. 2010. Fast fashion: Zara in India. Forbes online, Available at: http://www.forbes.com/2010/07/29/forbes-india-zara-business-model-tweak.html [Accessed 29 July 2010] Scheffer, M Slack, N., Chambers, S. & Johnston, R. (2007) Operations Mgt, 5th ed, Prentice Hall.

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