Process and production improvement - Essay Example

Running Head: Process & Production Improvement Process & Production Improvement [Institute’s Process & Production Improvement Harvard has a community of around 3000 people including students, faculty, and administrative staff. Besides other venues for recreation and well-being, the most visited and availed is the Dining Hall, popularly known around the campus as DH, which can be best defined as the kitchen of the university. The cafeteria is a huge space with a wide seating area and spacious hygienic kitchen.

Besides three meals i.e. breakfast, lunch and dinner, DH recently introduced fast food counter, which provides snacks and burgers for 12 hours a day including the meal times. Besides main course, DH kitchen offers a variety of desserts, salads, side orders, and ice creams along with plenty of beverages like tea, coffee, cardamom tea, and drinks. The increased number of food and cash counters has eased the difficulties of increased student body and caters significantly more people than before.

However, there are many aspects of DH, which needs improvement. First, the temperature turns to discomforting degrees at times. Specifically during summers, it gets more suffocating with a huge number of people around and lesser ventilation. Second, the cash counters are located in one centre aisle, receiving people from five counters simultaneously. This results in huge crowd and delay leading to agonized public at both sides of the counter. In addition, DH has been one outlet, which is affordable for all classes: NOPs, janitors, middle-class, or elite rich, everyone can afford.

However, the recent 25% increase in prices of all food items have led to great hues and cry in the entire student body whose parents are already fighting with inflation to pay for the expensive tuition of their children. In addition, the quality and taste of the food has always been a great debate at Harvard. All the dishes are complained to be tasteless with a few exceptions and there have been reported cases of roaches and flies found in the soup, raising questions on the quality standard. These issues are simple and can be solved easily but they require some management expertise.

There are several lines of action, which will result into marked improvement in efficiency and public pleasure. First, the food should be cooked with more and better spices. This will reduce the frustration in students, especially from middle class, who have little option than to eat the same tasteless food repeatedly. The menu should be kept changing and new dishes should come under introduction. In addition, the ventilation system should be worked upon and improved. More outlets for air cleansing should come under introduction to keep the area light an airy.

There is also some space for extension in all four ways. Since the student body from the past two years have been doubled, it would be good to make more space for more people to eat at the same time. With these improvements, a lot is achievable (Dodds, 67, 2007). First, customer satisfaction will increase drastically since a more comfortable environment will be attained (Cochran, 34, 2003). In addition, if the food quality improves, people will not mind paying a little extra and this will resolve the everlasting conflicts between Harvard admin and students body (Tapper, 3, 2008).

With these procedures, the DH can increase its efficiency and improve the quality of services it provides (Beam, 108, 2001). References Cochran, Craig. 2003. Customer satisfaction: tools, techniques, and formulas for success. Paton Professional. Dodds, Simon. 2007. Three Wins: Service Improvement Using Value Stream Design. Lulu.com. George Beam 2001. Quality public management: what it is and how it can be improved and advanced. Rowman & Littlefield. Tapper, Thomas. 2008. Efficiency: Its Spiritual Source.

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