Operations Plan for Citybox Vending Machine

Product Vending Business Plan
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1 Operations Plan
Introduction
1.1 Products
The proposed business will sell products through automated vending machines directly sourced from the manufacturer. The company will deal with fresh food, fast food, healthy drinks, and urgently needed daily commodities, targeting young persons and office workers. The machines will largely be located in schools and office buildings where there is the target population. The vending machine will serve the common fast foods, healthy foods, and beverages to largely young and middle-aged people and will be directly sourced from the manufacturer. Packaging and replenishment will be done in-house. An automated vending machine will run business processes and operations.
1.2 Price
Price, one of the 4Ps, will be our competitive strength. The business will leverage product affordability to sell high-quality products. The company will use price advantage to beat the competition that 711 convenience stores largely dominate. The second competitive strength is technology. The business will leverage artificial intelligence (A.I.) and Machine Learning (ML) to learn consumer behavior. Data captured will be used to inform product and service improvement. Still, the company will use A.I. to capture and track consumer behavior. Also, Big data technology will track consumer online behavior to necessitate effectiveness in online targeted marketing. The data captured will be used to develop new marketing strategies. The business will rent modern vending machines from suppliers to reduce startup costs. Renting is cost-effective compared to purchasing since it offers the flexibility for sourcing the latest vending machines. From a cost-benefit analysis perspective, outsourcing the machines is cheaper when compared to the operational costs incurred by convenience stores. Reason being that with outsourcing, maintenance and replenishment will be done by the outsourced supplier.
We project high sales volume in the first year, largely driven by low prices and healthy food options. Our low pricing strategy will require that we get low-priced purchases from our suppliers; hence we shall leverage economies of scale to lower prices to sell slightly below market rates and still make a profit.
1.3 Overview of Operations
The operations plan comprises both short-term and long-term operational processes. Short-term operational goals include daily short-term operations that are task-oriented. The daily tasks involved in the business will consist of procurement, delivery, restocking, inventory management, and supply chain management (Lawrence et al., 2019). The daily goal-oriented operational activities encompass product restocking and machine replenishment. On the other hand, long-term processes include inventory and supply chain projections and management (Hua & & Ickovics, 2016).
In FY2021-2022, we hope to hire highly qualified, competent, and experienced employees who shall be the engine for our success. Our recruitment strategy is to hire personnel with experience in the automated product vending business. The company will start with four employees, who double as business partners. Stock re...