Operations Management

Identify the real, root problem of this case After realizing that the hotel industry grows in 10 years cycle, In the year 1994 Paul saw an opportunity to go towards a quality management company. Paul Stackhouse wanted to transform the corporate culture to build a competitive age with a sharp focus on customer service.   The first problem Paul faced was convincing corporate. Although he managed to obtain corporate approval it was for a one-year-long pilot program. And Paul felt senior management did not really understand or felt the same way about becoming a quality company. This meant Paul had limited time and skeptical management who would question any lack of progress in the initiatives, since things were going well with existing approach. The second problem was after the project was decided the teams had to spend 2 – 3 hours a week for 12 weeks. And we see many team members left or were replaced or took a transfer to another property. Junior staff felt intimidated abou...

Identifying the Cause After losing the job for the second time, Melodie figured out that the job would not provide her financial security. And she had the perfect idea to start her own business. We see she was really motivated ad-driven too. Although we notice that Melodie faced few challenges and made some teaks too. Melodie and Kim, as a young entrepreneur work really hard, and maintaining work-life balance was difficult.   Another issue was the male-dominated work environment. Another challenge we notice is, instead of expanding, Melodie and Kim started focusing on areas they considered to be their strengths. And I think they will have to decide if they want to continue training, and eventually how will they remain relevant in the long term. Diagnosing the Causes Melodie did not have prior experience. When she got into the business, she was not prepared for the effort that was required from her. After she lost her job, she had an idea about business, but when she actuall...

Sackville was the transition from being a manufacturing town to a service-based economy, and in the year 1988 the town in partnership with Ducks Unlimited Canada, the Canadian Wildlife Service, Mount Allison University and the New Brunswick government built the Sackville Waterfowl Park. This park had 55 acres of wet marshland, the main attraction became to observe birds and ducks in natural marshland habitat. And some events were planned to attract more crowd, as the founders wanted to offer artistic, cultural and waterfowl and marshland related outdoor activities.        Apparently, AWC had issues with finances but when we dig deep, we can see there are many issues related to management.   In 1989, the organization got government funding worth $45,000, $43,000 from corporate sponsors and earned $99,000 as revenue. The company had to spend $61,000 in marketing and promotion. The organization remained heavily dependant on government grants till 1994, t...

Identify the problem Historically the hospitality industry did not have the best of HR practices, so retaining the good employees was a challenge (Lucas, 2002). Many employees usually have some complaints about employers. The high turnover rate among employees due to low compensations, inadequate benefits, and poor working conditions. Low retention and high turnover rate are not good for the company, as finding good employees is difficult and training and transition costs money. Diagnose the cause(s) Hospitality sector witnesses’ high number of employee turnover. The employee retention rate is low mainly because the HR policy is very weak in this service sector. Employees do not have much job satisfaction; hence they do not have a big reason to stick around in the same organization. The high employee attrition rate is bad for any company, as recruiting new talent and training them involves time and money. It should be a priority to retain good employees. In order to retain ...

  Identify the problem Valio faced few problems. They had lot of stakeholders and they were a matured business that did not face much competition. There were 17 dairies and the company was founded in 1908. They were bloated with people, after they started change in the organization, we see that they had to downsize. That shows, the company had more people that it needed. It also shows that the company was not efficient. They were not innovating either. As we see, they started R&D only after they decided to undergo the change. They were not innovating either. As we see, they started R&D only after they decided to undergo the change. One external challenge they faced, and I believe this forced them to change, was Finland was joining EU, and that meant the Finland market was being opened to EU members. Diagnose the cause(s) Valio was established in 1908 with 17 dairies, they were manufacturing butter, cheese etc. Being a 80 years old organizations, they got used ...

At the end of the project, there are few parameters the project team has to meet – 1.      Successfully contract closure – essentially delivering what was promising 2.      Releasing a project team – reallocating team members to new projects 3.      Final payment – receiving or making the final payment based on the role 4.      Post project evaluation or lessons learned – understand what could be improved and taking the knowledge forward for future projects 5.      Trust and alignment effectiveness – management evaluates the role of trust or result of lack of it and tries to understand what could have been done better. 6.      Schedule and budget management review of schedule and budget is done and areas of improvements are identified 7.      Risk mitigation – before the start of the project risks are identified, and the end of t...

    I see merit in allocating 20% of employee time on anything they want. As it might lead to optimization, innovation. We often get busy following existing defined processes that we do not consider optimizing it or changing it. I think, having 20% time allocated to do whatever employees want will provide employees to think over processes they follow. Or design something new and come up with some concepts which might work better. Saying that I also think to give 20% time to every employee in the company will increase costs. And might not be effective. There are some positions such as customer service representatives, if they get 20% to do whatever they like, that time will have to be covered by a different person that might increase the employee expense for the organization without adding much value. Likewise, in factories also, I think it might increase the employee cost, as management needs to hire more people who will work to cover the people who chose not to work d...

  I have seen the problems in my projects too. The first problem is converting everyone in the team to follow one process. I work in an IT Service Company. And when the industry was the transition from the waterfall model to an agile scrum, I saw this over and over. People would come out without any experience in the agile scrum and faced a huge problem. They did not want to change or learn and adopt a new way of doing things. So, first, the managers had to learn scrum, get certified and then they started training tea members. The second hurdle is also something I experienced in a project. In a few projects, customers could not give us clear requirements and the team did not really know what to deliver. Higher management actually came and joined the team, observed how we worked and what impediments we faced. This worked better than just our emails to management stating the challenges we were facing. In IT services, people are the main resources, and we often see that the crit...

Keeping in mind that every product has a launch date and companies rush to push out products by that date, they could not do enough quality control of every part. Actually, recalls because these companies way too much, so I think if these companies were aware of the faults, they would not have sold those products in the first place. But in the supply chain when someone fails in quality control that impacts the end product. And that is exactly what happened in each of these cases. More important we can see the recalls happened in Ford, GM, Chrysler and they were QA9000 certified ( The Greatest Quality Management System Failures in History, n.d.).   And we see other examples like that, this shows getting certified of processes does not guarantee that those processes are precisely being followed. So, if every supplier in the supply chain would establish quality control and auditors to make sure that quality control is doing their job accurately then the risk would go down significan...

    I work in IT consulting. And oftentimes when we start a project we get some resources who are on the bench, that means they are being released from other projects and they are available, so they get pulled in for this project, and if we need specific skill which is not available in bench pool, then external hires come and join the team. Being a manager if I am familiar with the team members then factoring in EI becomes easier. When I have worked with someone before I would know the self-efficacy and cognitive ability of that person. But in case the person is new to me and I am meeting them for the first time, I do not think it is easy to know their EI. While if I am interviewing someone I will get an idea of their EI, but once the person comes in and joins the team, it becomes clearer whether or not my understanding was correct. As a project manager, it might not be possible to factor in emotional intelligence. As in a project selecting a resource/team member is no...

  I work in IT consulting, so everything I am going to share will be solely based on what I have experienced in the last 12 years in the industry. Saying that I do agree with the author. We often start estimating without having much information in the hand. And asking the client for clarification might not be an option. Because different consulting firms are given the same bullet points in the name of requirements, which are really high levels, and most probably clients also do not know much about the solution. They are expecting the consulting firm to propose the solution and quote a price that will be within budget. And if the competing firms do not have any prior relationship, then the price would be the primary differentiator. And often in this kind of situations, conservative estimation is the way to go, so that the firm gets the project and get the foot inside the door. And another reason is, due to lack of information firms often underestimate. After the project st...