Ikea Management Style

IKEA is a world famous furnishing company known for selling Scandinavian-style furniture and other home-based goods. The company has over 230 stores, with operations carried out in over 42 countries with well over 70 000 employees. The stores themselves can occupy 410 million shoppers per year. It is a Swedish based company built on the idea of offering a wide range of well-designed, functional home furnishing products such low prices, that a majority of people will be able to afford them. The IKEA group is currently solely owned by the INGKA Foundation through a holding company, unlisted on any stock exchange.

This assignment had to be written for the class of Management and Organizations at Stenden University, course IBMS, first year. We had a group of 6 and had to work it out together. We were enjoying getting into the world of IKEA, the world’s most furniture store on the market.

IKEA is a global furniture retailer, which is established on the concept of contributing wide range of well designed, functional, and low cost home furnishing products in 40 countries, with 330 stores and 154,000 workers (The IKEA concept, 2012). IKEA was founded in 1943 by Ingvar Kampar and has turned in an international furniture retailer that specialized in stylish but inexpensive furniture designs.

Home Depot had an enormous growth of achieving $40 billion in revenue in 20 years. However its sales started to stagnate, unable to cope up with the fast growth. Mr Nardelli identified some of the problems, key being appropriate structure and systems to support a strategic growth

IKEA Company was founded in 1943 by Ingvar Kamprad. The name of IKEA is originally formed from the first letter of the founder’s name and the names of the property and the village where he grew up. At the beginning, IKEA produced and sold simple things (such as pens, wallets, table, pictures frame, watches and jewellery) in the base of low price. The production of furniture in IKEA began during 1947 and in 1955 IKEA Company started to design its own furniture. Based on the company’s motto “Well designed and affordable quality furniture for everybody,” IKEA has been able to grow into fame company

IKEA is one of the largest multinational companies in the world dealing with several products. The company sells and designs furniture appliances and home accessories at an affordable price. Ikea has over three hundred stores worldwide enjoying the good name it has created for itself. While they are one of the most profitable furniture companies in the world there are significant challenges and threats that have been overcome and are still needed to be tackled.

IKEA is an international company which designs house products and sells them in the form of ready to assemble furniture. It is one of the world’s largest furniture companies. It is founded by17 years old Ingvar Kamprad in Sweden in 1943. The most important fact about the company is the attention to control the cost of the products, which allows them to lower the prices. Even today they are continuing to expand in the world by looking forward to new product developments. The number of stores of IKEA in the United States is 14 at the moment and they aim to have 50 stores by 2013.

Although several barriers I identified many factors and opportunities for IKEA to enter the chinese market when they did, and from my research, under the PESTLE environments, uncovered how with strategic marketing and development IKEA overcame these obstacles.

An objective of writing this report is to identity and analyzes operation system applied in IKEA, the well-known low cost yet high quality home of furnishing. Function, process and strategy of IKEA operation system will be accessed to identity the core competency that lead to the successfulness of IKEA in the world. Besides, other purpose in complete this report is to analyze the strength and weakness of operation system in IKEA. Operation management is procedure where processes of production or deliver goods and services is being monitoring and managing. Operations management is the activity of managing the resources which produce and deliver products and services (Slack, Chambers and Johnston, 2010). Operations

It all started in 1943, when Ingvar Kamprad opened his first commercial business in the name of IKEA, which derives from his initials and of Elmtaryd and Agunnaryd, the names of his family farm and the parish he grew up in. At first, it was just a “mail-order business selling pencils, postcards, and other merchandise” (“Milestones”). The company first introduced furniture as a complement to the general merchandise in 1948, and it was an immediate success. As a result, the company “started exploring innovating solutions such as furniture design, self-assembly, and advertising” (“Milestones”).

Ikea is a great company that starts from humble beginnings and has made an impact upon the world for almost a century. Ikea is a Swedish company that specializes in selling furniture and other housing products across a market of over 40 countries (IKEA history - how it all began, n.d.). The founder of the Swedish company was Ingvar Kamprad. Kamprad as a child would sell matches, pencils, and flower seeds to the people living around him. Even at a young age, it was evident that the young Kamprad was destined to become a great businessman. In the 1940’s, when Kamprad was just 17 years old, he founded Ikea and was able to create his new business through the money that was awarded to him by his father. What is interesting about Ikea’s name is that Kamprad combined his first two initials of his name with the first initials of the village and farm he grew up in in order to come up with the name, Ikea.

The main purpose of this paper is to focus on the how IKEA Company approached its operation management. Particularly, it covers the following: how the company establish and manage customer requirements, secondly how does these customers requirements used for the company’s product and services, then, third covers the operational systems and processes it used in its operation, fourth consists of capacity planning, process layout, and product services/scheduling, inventory and projects were managed in the organization. And, lastly is on why and how monitoring and evaluation of operation were carried out by the company. This paper also provides empirical findings and application of relevant theories that will help readers to really understand

The Case study displayed the History of the founder "Ingvar Kamprad", the Swedish Entrepreneur, billionaire, who considered one of the richest people in the world and how he began his career since he was five, selling matches until he made this successful venture and named it IKEA (I stands for Ingvar, K stands for Kampard, E stands for Elmtaryd "the name of the farm he grew up in" and A stands for Agunnaryd "The Swedish village he grew up in". Although, he was neither trained doing business nor he read books on the subject. But by his hard working and personal experience, he was the founder of one of the most successful furniture retailer in the world.

IKEA’s BUSINESS IDEA (www.ikea.com): “We shall offer a wide range of well-designed, functional home furnishing products at prices so low that as many people as possible will be able to afford them."

IKEA established itself as the largest furniture retailer in Sweden by the early 1970s by reinventing the wheel of furniture manufacturing at that time. Majority of furniture manufacturers in Sweden produced expensive products with designs that were basic or passed down generation to generation, additionally other manufacturers stores where located in downtown congested areas. IKEA’s strategies which consisted of low cost low priced furniture, brave intricate designs, self-assembly,