Chapter 5: Service Delivery Process
Chapter 5: Service Delivery Process
Stage 1: Available for Service
- operations are a "necessary evil"
- operations are "reactive
Stage 2: Journeyman
- prompted by the arrival of competition
- operations become outward-looking
- investment in technology is linked to long- term costs savings
- processes are developed, implemented, and monitored
- operations still viewed as a secondary function
Stage 3: Distinctive Competencies Achieved
- the firm has mastered the core service - understands complexity of making
changes
- operations are now viewed equal with other departments
- view of technology changes from "cost
savings" to "enhancing the customers
experience
Stage 4: World Class Service Delivery
- company's name is synonymous with service
excellence
- become a fast learner and innovator
- technology provides a means to accomplish tasks that the competition cannot duplicate
Thompson's Perfect-World Model
To operate efficiently, a firm must be able to operate "as if the market will absorb the single kind of product at a continuous rate and as if the inputs flowed continuously at a steady rate and with specified quality
The Focused-Factory Concept
� An operation that concentrates on performing one particular task in one
particular part of the plant
� Used for promoting experience and effectiveness through repetition and concentration on one task necessary for success
� The focused factory can meet
The Plant within a Plant Concept
- An operation that that breaks up large, unfocused plants into smaller units buffered from
one another so that they can each be focused separately
- Organizations buffer environmental influences by surrounding their technical core with input and output c
Servuction system is an operations nightmare
- impossible to use inventories
- problems with decoupling production from the customer
- system is directly linked to the market
� demand varies day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute
- massive problems in capacity planning and utilization
Isolate the technical core
- Different management philosophies should be adopted for each unit of operation
- technical core should be subjected to production- ling approaches
- decouple: disassociating the technical core from
Possible Solutions to Service Operation Problems
1. Production-lining the whole system
2. Creating flexible capacity
3. Increasing customer participation
4. Moving the time of demand
Service Blueprints
Blueprints provide a means of communication between operations and marketing and can highlight potential problems on paper before they occur.
- essentially a flowchart that shows lines visibility
Complexity--the number and intricacy of steps
Specialization and Penetration
Specialization strategy
� decreases complexity
- by reducing the number of steps in the process
- it unbundles the service offering
Penetration strategy
� increases complexity
- by increasing the number of steps
Divergence--degrees of freedom in decision making
Volume-oriented (production-line) and Niche positioning
Volume-oriented strategy (production-line)
� decreases divergence
- produces standardized output and reduces costs
- but does so at the expense of increasing conformity and inflexibility
Niche positioning strategy
� increases divergence
- Tailor the service experience to each customer