Operations Management

Authors Avatar

OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT 4BIM502 - THE RAJA RESTAURANT

BY SABINA ISMAIL AND PAULA WAGNER

Assignment 1 – Semester 1

Wafi Al-Karagouli

Sabina Ismail                                        W

Paula Wagner                                        W0217021

Word count                                                

1. How should quality be defined at this restaurant? Outline which quality tools you would use to assess the situation at The Raja’s restaurant.

Quality of service is the most important aspect to a customer. The concept of quality can be defined in various ways. By definition “Quality is consistent conformance to customers’ expectations” (Slack, Chambers and Johnston, 2004). Each customer has expectations of different quality standards and quality service.

In The Raja Tandoori restaurant quality has been declining recently. An example of this is patrons have to wait as long as 45 minutes to be seated, in addition to this it can up to 40 minutes more to get a good meal served to the table.

The dimensions of service quality are reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy and tangible factors (James A. Fitzsimmons et al, 2004). The customer survey results indicate that 87% of customers believe the quality of food at the restaurant is excellent. Also, the dining experience is very good; being represented by 81% of customers. However, 78% of customers have expressed that they found the waiter to be only at satisfactory standards, this is likely to be due by the lack of staff experience. 70% of customer responses showed that they were served within a reasonable time. The 30% could be justified due to the poor quality of ingredients being delivered; restricting the chef in meal preparations. (See appendix 1 for workings).

However, there are some good aspects such as the variety of food, waiters are always available and on the look for any requests, there is also the additional service of hot flannels are being brought to refresh diners.

Many quality tools can be used to assess the situation at The Raja’s restaurant. Total Quality Management (TQM) is a way to approach “the organisation of quality improvements” (Slack, Chambers and Johnston, 2004). TQM is a process of involving everyone in an organisation in continuously improving products and processes to achieve on every occasion; quality that satisfies customers needs (John Naylor, 2002).

Join now!

“It seeks to integrate all organizational functions…to focus on meeting customer needs” (http://www.isixsigma.com/library/content/c031008a.asp).

TQM was introduced by Feigenbaum (1957) and developed further by Deming, Ishikawa, Taguchi and Crosby.

W. Edwards Deming (1950’s) introduced 14 points for quality improvement. He wanted to focus on the product instead of the process. Continuous Improvement (CI) emphasises quality and reduces cost. The Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle (see appendix 2) is important in inspecting quality in one stage of the quality improvement process. The owner of The Raja restaurant can emphasise the importance of quality by having better teamwork skills and more employee involvement ...

This is a preview of the whole essay