a) Operations management concepts can be applied to both manufacturing and servi
ID: 423423 • Letter: A
Question
a) Operations management concepts can be applied to both manufacturing and service operations. It can often be more challenging to apply them in a service operation. Briefly describe at least two of the challenges that a service operation presents for the application of operations management concepts that are not found in a manufacturing operations. Briefly describe a way to address one of the challenges that you have identified.
b) Six Sigma and TQM approach quality from different perspectives. For a customer service operation, explain how each of these two approaches could be used to address the complaints that are being received from the customers about the poor customer service.
Explanation / Answer
Answer: a
Operations management concepts can be applied to both manufacturing and service operations. It can often be more challenging to apply them in a service operation.
Two challenges that a service operation presents for the application of operations management concepts that are not found in manufacturing operations are as below
· Service events are at different locations and have high fluctuations:
· Service is not a synchronize flow like manufacturing operations:
· Service cannot be planned like manufacturing operations, as service do not have confirm schedule
Way to address the challenges – different locations and high fluctuations : This is a big challenge for the service industry that the service events are generally required at multiple locations, thus it is difficult to manage the service events at different location and at the same time the fluctuation in service events is very high and we are not sure when the service call may come and we need to be ready to support the service call.
We can address this challenge in developing a process for the service support of the business based on the data analysis of the previous events and come out with a recommended plan that will highlights the potential average demand for the service events and average locations. So based on this analysis, we can organize our service readiness, so that we can achieve better customer satisfaction at low cost to the company. We can keep analyzing the case on quarterly basis, so that we can keep continue in updating the service plan for the company.
Answer b:
Six Sigma and TQM approach quality from different perspectives.
For a customer service operation, each of these two approaches could be used to address the complaints that are being received from the customers about the poor customer service are as below
Six Sigma: This is the quality improvement approach which can be carried out by the organization for improving the customer service levels in the six sigma way. The six sigma way is to formulate a six sigma project for the customer complaints and the project will run as with the project stages as Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control and will finally improves the service process for the company. Thus it will follow the project approach for quality improvements.
TQM: TQM approaches uses the deployment of quality in each and every aspects of the process of services, so that the service levels are improved on each steps of the service process and overall quality levels of the service process will be improved. This will focus on quality improvement in the whole process, so that the process levels improves and meets customer requirements and resolve customer problems.
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