Operations and Quality Management - Case Study Example

Running Head: Operations and Quality Management Operations and Quality Management The Transformation Process Model 4 V Profile Volume: Yo! Sushi would want to keep a high volume as it would be able to cater to as many customers as possible during the peak hours. Its volume would follow a time-demand pattern but would generally be high. Variety: The restaurant has a variety of dishes, colour-coded for ease of bill calculations. Thus, the restaurant should be offering a high variety of dishes so that its customers can choose from a larger set of dishes, essentially meaning that there will be a higher number of dishes ordered. Though this will result in high unit costs, it will be a necessary component for greater customer attractiveness. Visibility: It is perhaps not very necessary for the kitchen and preparation areas of the restaurant to be highly visible to the customers. Medium visibility would be an ideal option in this case. However, since the entire kitchen is "on display" to the customers, there is a high degree of visibility. Variation: There will be a fairly high variation in demand for the dishes at the restaurant. Thus, Yo! Sushi will have to establish corresponding operations to match the variations in demand. There should be a constant check on the demand and other factors should be adjusted accordingly. Yo! Sushi's operations signify that is has a "service shop" process type for the food production based on customer demand. Keeping into view the 4V Profile of the restaurant, this process type complements the profile more than contradicting it. The only setback is that there are a moderate number of transactions and thus the applicability of the service shop process type would be slightly off the mark. However, the other characteristics conform to the 4V profile and complement it. Manufacturing and Supply Overview Process Maps The restaurant houses a Stock-Operate-Stock supply model in which there is a pull effect by the customer causing the flow of the finished goods right from the kitchen. Transport Service and Overview Maps The transport service in the dining room where the customers would be pulling the dishes would be as follows: It would be a Stock-Queue-Operate cycle that would be prevalent in the customer den of Yo! Sushi. Location The combination of a cell layout, product and functional layout strategy at Yo! Sushi's makes it very efficient and resilient for change. It is quite optimized and there are few, if any, chances for a change that would make it more effective. For one, the cell layout strategy means that there are tables categorized into cells for each group of 4-6 people that the conveyor belt also caters to. Secondly the product-layout strategy is due to the fact that there is a conveyor belt mounted to the central zone of the restaurant running across it catering to the customers. There is a combination of an assembly line and a fixed-cell layout buffering concept in the kitchen and dining areas making the design suitable for flexible operations. The functional layout is overlapping the cell and product layouts and thus the existing layout of Yo! Sushi is quite comprehensively designed and is in no need of change for the better. The existing technology to process menus and automated handling of demand is a first-class example of how the layout is effective and that there are no changes needed at the moment. The job design is greatly affected by the 4V profile and the aspects of the layout implemented at Yo! Sushi. The fact that there is a great deal of emphasis on quality and flexibility, there is a corresponding effect on the job design: the menu attendants are expected to be flexible and carry out tasks beyond a specific well-defined horizon. They are expected to be aware of the processes in and out of the kitchen in order to make up for any absentees or to complement the short-comings of a particular process or person. The health and safety implications also rise due to this flexibility and thus this increases the cost of the flexible job design. Job enlargement is the primary facet of job that would be needed in order for the employees to be masters of more than one trade and display work flexibility. Furthermore, there has to be a degree of enrichment after an employee becomes trained enough in order to add value to the tasks they are doing and perform it in efficient manners. Yo! Sushi employs a forward scheduling procedure to prepare for its demands beforehand. There are various forecasting models that could be used by the restaurant but a time-series analysis is the easiest and most suitable model that can be used in the scenario that would not only explain causal demand growth but allow more easily for a forward scheduling plan to be followed. The quantitative model is also followed up with a qualitative one - the Delphi method that provides allowance for expert opinion about the future forecasts. Market surveys would not be part of the forecasting procedure however, there would be significant analysis of customers and their habits in order to make the time-series analysis predictions firmer. The key limiting resource in the situation would be the raw materials for the dishes - these cannot be stored in bulk for an unlimited period of time as they are perishable and thus the restaurant employs a forward scheduling procedure to keep up with the demand. Demand management is the capacity management technique employed at Yo! Sushi's as it enables the restaurant to keep up with the demand at all times establishing the fewest possible lags as possible. Further, it entails that there are minimal number of instances of low demand and high inventory piling so that there is a minimal loss for the restaurant by inventory shrinkage. The forward scheduling process is appropriate as it allows for adequate planning of the demand and complements the process map designed in the previous sections for the restaurants operations. The characteristics of Yo! Sushi's dish preparation process are as follows: Functionality: The operational task is to continue the assembly-like process of churning out dishes to the customers based on the demand. Appearance: The ambience, look and feel of the premises are very attractive and hence do not need attention for a change to be implemented there. Reliability: There is a high degree of reliability on the systems that have grown out dated. Thus, there is the need to go about re-doing the installation of these systems by upgrading them. Durability: The raw materials procured are part of the inventory but they are maintained at low levels in order to reduce the inventory management costs. Recovery: The flexibility incorporated within the process has made it highly recoverable - any mistakes in the process are easily rectified after identification either in the next stage of the value-chain or before sending the dish across to the customer - though the latter is more time consuming, it requires only a final check thus may reduce this side of the expenses. Contact: The interaction of the employees within the network would be central to identifying issues and collaboratively filtering them out of the system. There is no current quality management system formally implemented at the restaurant. Though there are regular quality checks performed on the taste of the dishes, a formal management system does not exist. I would propose a quality control mechanism that would cover all aspects of the restaurant process having the following attributes: There are currently no measures computed to assess the operational performance at the restaurant. The focus of Yo! Sushi is to cater to its customers as much as possible and thus there has not been any emphasis on carrying out operational performance assessment. However, a suitable recommendation would be to plan a Balanced Scorecard assessment of the performance at the restaurant (of its processes). Importance-Performance Matrix The following Importance-Performance matrix displays the Yo! Sushi position and emphasis on the various variables associated with the restaurant. The greater emphasis is on the delivery speed, specification flexibility and delivery dependability. This is important for both the customers and Yo! Sushi is able to do it better for its customers. However, there are a few variables that need re-working: technical solution and delivery flexibility. Though documentation is a relatively unimportant variable from the customers' perspective, the greater emphasis should be laid upon the improvement of communications and delivery flexibility at the restaurant. References Heizer J. & Render, B. (2008) Operations Management, 8th ed. New York: Pearson Inc. Slack, N., Chambe rs, S. & Johnson, R. (2007) Operations Management, 5th ed. New York: Prentice Hall. Read More