Operations Management Short Case Study Report

All players in the hospitality industry strive to satisfy all the needs and preferences of their customers. One of the components of this industry is the hotel sector which serves food and beverages throughout the day for customers of different calibers. The management has to organize the stakeholders to ensure that the end product and service in the hotel meets the laid standards and attract more consumers. Failure to manage quality, speed, hygiene and customer relations may cause loss to the hotel (Hadyn 165). This report unveils what an operations manager should do to keep the hotel he/she works for afloat in the market. The hospitality process to be reflected here is serving of breakfast: a thing that happens on a daily basis in any established hotel. There are bottle necks and variability that occur in the service and production delivery chain that needs to be managed.

The sources of variability in service delivery of breakfast serving include:

Staff Allocation

This aspect entails quite a number of issues that relate to the human resource given to breakfast serving in the hotels. The first element of staff allocation is the number of staff: understaffing overworks the employees, overstaffing increase cost of management unnecessarily (Erick 96). Staffing should, therefore, be well planned such that the number of employees can coincide with the need at hand (Abraham 16). There should be enough staff to attend to all the guests at breakfast time every day. I suggest that the operations department could liaise with the customer relations or booking departments for projection of expected number of customers at any particular time, and in this case; breakfast time (Robert, Sturman & Cherrill 486). My survey finding is that when customers are served with speed in the morning, they will always find that a reason enough to return (Charles, Joe and Carl 428).

Hotel staff should be trained on customer relations, friendly service and warm facial expression to ensure satisfaction (Salih 512). It is a human trait to love back those who show love and appreciation to them. The staffs who serve breakfast should be friendly and understanding to all the personality traits they might encounter in the hotel. There should not be cases of ride talking or action at all costs. Some of the customers may behave in an unruly way; the staff must remain professional and calm (Michael & Denney 253). In addition, the speed of service should continuously be improved. Customers may be on their way to work, seminar or a business engagement: delay would be the most annoying thing for them. The way in which services and offers are managed determines how many of the customers return to the hotel the next day.

Table layout

There should be enough space on the tables for the customers to eat comfortably. The limitation about table layout in hotels many times is insufficient planning: not being able to expand with expanding demand on services (Darcy 44). Lack of space for movement or too much of it is not a good thing for hotels desiring to give quality service at breakfast time. The unified services theory demands that factors like capacity and excellence of services and infrastructure (Sampson & Froehle 331). I suggest that management should embrace aesthetics in arranging the eating space in hotels: the chairs and tables should be arranged well to allow access of staff and customer to every corner of the hotel. Proper spacing allows for privacy of the customer who may need the same. Some customers may need to discuss private matters over breakfast: allowing them their space may just be the reason they will return. The management should understand the capacity of the hotels and plans for enough tables (Mahadevan 54). Expansion should be planned if the number of customers begins to swell. An effective capacity should be determined so that there is no inconvenience even in the occurrence of bottlenecks and variability like unforeseen influx of guests. As suggested by the theory of constraints, limited space may restrain and restrict the working area and range as well as the number of employees taken up by the hotel (Peter & Andrew 30).

Speed of Service

As stated earlier, customers would not mind being served with speed in the morning, as opposed to the evenings when there is less business to rush to. The bottleneck that relates to speed of service is when a customer orders for a service that takes 15 minutes to be delivered. Sometimes, this may be a result of understaffing or competence level of the available staff. There are human errors that may also affect the speed of operation (James and Kevin 107). To counter this challenge, capacity building on competence should be done to the staff members who serve in the morning (Sudhir 2). There ought to be trainings on handling more than one staff within a short time, clear understanding of communication and accuracy of communication too.

Number of Guests

Different hotels handle different number of customers in different seasons. The bottleneck in this might be when there are more guests than expected and so a constraint in the services to be offered at breakfast time. When this happens, even the infrastructure like chairs and tables might be strained: a pity indeed. To correct this mistake, forecast should be done to allow the hotel plan for the number of guests to handle with the season and time of the month (Kaye & Thomas 19). Sometimes, there may be more guests in a particular season and fewer guests during another season. There may also be more guests at a particular time of the month and fewer during other days of the month (Estados 56). As an operations manager, I suggest that observations and proven data be used determine the possible behavior of customer bookings for breakfast. Causal relationships can also be determined and corrections undertaken as appropriate.

Equipment

The restaurant should be able to provide the needed services to its customers when the service is needed and at a relatively fast speed (Pat 207). The bottleneck may be if a restaurant is not well equipped to meet different needs and preferences of its customers. This may be because of the resources available or looming events such that a restaurant cannot give the needed services to the expected capacity (Print Alex &Terry 236). I suggest that the hotel should monitor the pattern of demands of the established customers: knowing whether the demands are increasing or reducing. Sometimes, customers may use for long, or prefer a particular provision in the menu, or even love a certain combination and quantity of food. The hotel should also service the restaurant with the needed equipment to continually the speed of production (Steven & Olsen 411).

Works Cited

Andrews, Sudhir. Hotel Housekeeping Training Manual. New York: Tata McGraw-Hill, 2006. Print

Chon, Kaye and Thomas Maier. Welcome to Hospitality: An Introduction. New York: CENGAGE Learning, 2010. Print

Correll, James and Kevin Herbert. Gaining Control: Managing Capacity and Priorities. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2007. Print

Devney, Darcy. Organizing Special Events and Conferences: A Practical Guide for Busy Volunteers and Staff. Sarasota: Pineapple Press, 2001. Print

Ford, Robert, Michael Sturman and Cherrill Heaton. Managing Quality Service In Hospitality: How Organizations Achieve Excellence in the Guest Experience. New York: Cengage Learning Publication, 2012. Print

Golden-Romero, Pat. Hotel Convention Sales, Services and Operations. New York: Routledge Publishing, 2007. Print

Hill, Alex and Terry Hill. Essential Operations Management. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

Ingram, Hadyn. Business of Hotels. New York: Routledge Publishing, 2007. Print

Jones, Peter and Andrew Lockwood. The Management of Hotel Operations. New York: Thomson, 2002. Print

Kusluvan, Salih. Managing Employee Attitudes and Behaviors in the Tourism and Hospitality industry. New York: Nova Science Publishers, 2003. Print

Lamb, Charles, Joe Hair and Carl McDaniel. Essentials of Marketing. Ohio: South-Western Cengage Learning, 2012. Print

Laws, Erick. Tourism Crises: Management Responses and Theoretical Insight. New York: Routledge Publishing, 2013. Print

Mahadevan, B. Operations Management: Theory and Practice. Upper Saddle River: Pearson, 2010. Print

Nahmias, Steven and Olsen Tava. Production and Operations Analysis: Seventh Edition. New York: Waveland Press, Inc., 2015.

O’Fallon, Michael and Denney Rutherford. Hotel Management and Operations. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2011. Print

Peach Report. Managing Capacity Properly. 30th December 2010. Retrieved from: http://www.peach-report.com/Operations/710728/managing_capacity_properly.html. Print

Pizam, Abraham. International Encyclopedia of Hospitality Management. Boston: Butterworth Heinemann, 2010. Print

Sampson, Scott and Froehle Craig. Foundations and Implications of a Proposed Unified Services Theory. New York: Production and Operations Management Society, 2006. Print.

Unidos, Estados. Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2000-01. New York: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2000. Print

Van Riel, Allard. Service innovation management. Bradford: Emerald Group Publishers, 2005. Print 511.