Operations and Service Management - Essay Example

Management as a role is an art that requires skills and knowledge to execute efficiently and as per the standards required. In this paper quality management and operations management will take prominence and thereafter the management of quality in a service operation. All over the world there has been a notable trend for businesses in the manufacturing and service sectors alike trying to incorporate quality management as a key management role. This has primarily been driven by the ever increasing demand of better quality goods as well as services. Therefore, competition is on the rise and to fight it an organisation needs to emerge as a market leader in provision of good quality goods and or services. This is a process that requires a company to engage funds in purchasing that which is needed to ensure quality control. The company may be in need of better skilled and experienced personnel, better equipments and facilities, product diversification and development etc. All these call for the management to develop policies and strategies aimed at improving the quality level of the services and or goods it is involved with. Introduction A company’s market always requires that it be provided with quality goods and services in a rather consistent manner. Therefore, the company should endeavour to meet the required specifications and also aim higher than that. In order to do this the company should come up with an operational strategy that will involve the management in designing and planning on how the product shall be improved to meet the needs of the customer quality wise (Comité euro-international du béton 1998). For the purposes of this paper quality shall be taken to mean the ability of a product to be in line with the required standards in relation to its purpose or use. This product should be having all the characteristics that the user requires and that which will make them derive maximum satisfaction from its use or consumption (McCarthy and Keefe 1999). The need to produce or offer quality products comes from the urge to increase performance, need to reduce chances of defects in products, need to have faster development of a product as well as the levels of technology being high. Production of high quality goods results in a significant reduction in costs of operation and subsequent increase in revenue. The reason for this is that the company’s image will improve resulting into huge sales volume. This in turn will lead to a substantial increase in revenue which will make the company reduce prices of the products resulting to more revenue. This ultimately brings more profit to the firm. Improvement in quality production on the other hand reduces capital costs, complaint costs, inspection costs and operation costs thereby leaving room for more profit generation (Sureshchandar et al 2001). In cases where the organisation is having problems with production of good quality products it clearly indicates that there is a gap between that which is provided and the customers’ expectations. The bigger the perception - expectation gap, the more the problems the management has in handling quality issues. The main difficulties in handling quality issues in an organisation relate mostly to the aforementioned gap. This gap requires the management to involve the company in intensive marketing campaigns for the product as well as making changes that aim at enhancing product or service development (Zain 2001). Through this the organisation shall ensure that the product meets customer expectations in terms of quality, design, purpose, internationally recognised or set standards of the product as well as ensuring that the product meets the promises directed to the customers. The organisation needs to establish quality planning strategies and that which involve quality control. The product should be well evaluated to ensure conformity to the customers’ required quality characteristics (Kannan et al 2000). The products should also be reliable in their use or purpose and they should hold all the required attributes and variables. At this juncture, it is important to describe or outline the attributes that a perceived good quality product should exhibit. Among them is the role of functionality in respect to the intended purpose. Managing quality – McDonald’s Poor quality complaints together with related to customer service are a universal phenomenon that many firms face. In this paper the service industry shall be focused into and a case in point will be the McDonald’s franchises in the USA. McDonald’s specialises in restaurant business world wide (Jimmy et al 2005). It was established in 1948 and by 1967 it had spread its interests outside the USA. The franchise in every three hours is said to open a new restaurant. Size of the firm does not determine the quality needs and problems or issues faced. Quality issues are therefore universal for all firms and the requirements are equally demanding to the organisation. The internationals standards organisation (ISO) has the guidelines in place for ensuring quality standard for small enterprises (International Standards Organization). As noted earlier provision of poor quality is quite costly affair for organisations. This cost is even of diverse nature to the service firms that stand to face legal charges and loss of customer base within a short period of time than their production counterparts like manufacturing firms. Quality system implementation McDonald’s has three areas that it concentrates on in solving its quality issues and implementing quality strategies. These are; employees, the foods it makes and lastly the state of the restaurants themselves. McDonald’s offers services to people directly a situation that is unique in that the customer and the organisation are engaged in the course of service delivery. This therefore makes it even harder to ensure quality as opposed to where the customer was not physically present. This therefore leaves the firm relying so much on performance of the employees towards customer satisfaction. The employees in this respect need to be able to make sound judgments, be well trained and above all have the required skills and knowledge to execute their duties. Employees’ disposition is of huge significance as the saying goes that, ‘happy customers are from happy employees’. McDonald’s in this respect has seen loss of customers to its competitors due to the perceived experience where service with a sneer has come to replace service with a smile (Godfrey 2002). The employees are required to be on time in reporting while neatly dressed as well as being clean. The employees of each restaurant must make sure that only safe food is served to the customers while requires them to be clean at all times while performing their duties. They are also required to be in line with the set operational procedures to ensure that the customers are offered the exceptional services they deserve. They are also required to work together as a team to ensure that they keep smiles up while serving customers. In the case of food the management must ensure that it is well cooked and its taste meets those of the tastes and preferences of individual customers; one of the most difficult tasks in the food industry (Singh and Deshmukh 1999). The ingredients to these foods should also have been well washed while those that are bought in packs ensured that they have been kept clean until they are used for cooking. The restaurants themselves need to be clean and have an appealing look in order to attract customers. They should be kept tidy at all times and be spotlessly clean. The service should be friendly and the food should be delivered within the shortest time possible to the customers after an order is made. Therefore, the restaurant must have in place efficiency mechanisms that allow for fast delivery. This requires even the restaurant to have been built in a design that facilitates this. McDonald’s with its 47,000,000 customers therefore is left with daunting task of ensuring that each and every customer in the 47 million is fully satisfied and that the service meets their expectations and purpose. The franchise has come up with a slogan that reads Quality, Service and Cleanliness (QSC) being their pledge and later Value was added to it to become (QSC&V). McDonald’s depends heavily on customer feedback in enhancing the quality of their service. This is through ensuring that the products are of the required quality at the source, continuous staff training as well as those that supply them and maintaining a link with the new developments in food safety and processing (Godfrey 2002). The supply chain is also of huge importance to look into to ensure that it complies with slogan’s sentiments. McDonald’s therefore must have a dedicated work force that has mastered the art of teamwork since all systems and processes must run smoothly at all times and in all restaurants. It also calls for the McDonald’s to be aware of how its products are prepared and handled. McDonald’s employees undergo intense training on food preparation and presentation and the procedures of doing this are strictly enforced in all its restaurants. An example of this is the 10 minute holding time in respect to sandwiches which ensures that every customer receives the expected quality as well as freshness (Donna 2008). McDonald’s goes further to propose its restaurant designs to ensure proper hygiene and safety. Conclusion It is a common phenomenon that quality is everybody’s wish and it has been seen that a great deal should be invested in terms of time and resources in ensuring that customers of a certain service receive the service in the form they expect. Therefore, quality determination is a subjective affair in that it is the customer who determines whether it has been met. It is the duty of the management in a service industry to endeavour in provision on quality services to the customers or clients consequently heightening the degree of satisfaction derived from the service offered. References Comité euro-international du béton, 1998, Quality management: Guidelines, Thomas Telford. Donna, CS 2008, Quality management: Creating and sustaining organizational effectiveness, Pearson/Prentice Hall. Godfrey, AB 2002, “Service Quality: Still an Oxymoron?” Quality Digest. 22, no.7, 16. International Standards Organization. “ISO 9001 for Small Businesses: What to do”, viewed 22 April 2010 . Jimmy, C, Reggie, K &Eric, W 2005, Quality management: A new era, World Scientific. Kannan, VR, Tan, K, Handfield, RB and Ghosh, S 2000, “Quality in the Boardroom and on the Shop Floor: A Survey of Contemporary Quality Practice”, Production and Inventory Management Journal, 41, no. 4, 1-7. McCarthy, PM and Keefe TJ 1999, “A Measure of Staff Perceptions of Quality-oriented Organizational Performance: Initial Development and Internal Consistency”, Journal of Quality Management, 4, no. 2, 185-206. Singh, S and Deshmukh, SG 1999, “Quality Initiatives in the Service Sector”, Total Quality Management, 10, no. 1, 5-16. Sureshchandar, GS, Rajendran, C and Anantharaman, RN 2001, “A Conceptual Model for Total Quality Management in Service Organizations”, Total Quality Management. 12, no. 3, 343-363. Zain, Z.M., B.G. Dale, and F. Kehoe, 2001, “Doctoral TQM Research: A Study of Theses, Directions and Trends”, Total Quality Management, 12, no. 5, 599-609. Read More