Operation Management

Operation Management Coursework

1. a) Manufacturing environment

In order to measure quality in a manufacturing environment, we will need to focus on measuring some characteristics of the product such as the product attributes to when a high quality status is given to products that enable customers to do what they could not do with other, inferior products.

There are eight dimension of product quality for manufactured goods that I would like to consider in order to measure quality such as the performance of a good its primary operating characteristics of a product. Secondly, the features of the goods and its basic functioning. Next it is the reliability of a good and whether it does meet the stated period of time before it starts failing and have retailers set a conformance of the degree to which a product's design and operating characteristics match preestablished standards. When measuring quality for goods it is also important to measure the durability in other words the ability of a product to function when subjected to hard and frequent use.

Serviceability this can measure the service of the manufacturing environment judgment of the speed and courtesy that customer's are served and competence of repair. Aesthetics, this is the way customers judge the looks, how the product feels sounds, tastes or smells. Perceived quality, this involves customer's decisions for buying certain products they may be picked because of the image, advertisement, the attractiveness of its brand name. Furthermore, the last three dimensions include various aspects of service quality but overall through the dimensions of quality for manufactures goods are much more concrete and quantifiable than those of services.

b) Retail Operation

Considering the academic work that I have studied and discussing how this might be applied in practice to measure quality in a retail operation this would first involve measuring consumers' service quality performance perceptions using a scale that taps whatever pertinent dimensions have been identified for the given service context and measuring consumers' perceptions of the importance of each attribute.

The dimensions use to define service quality in a retail operation. The specific items used to capture these dimensions of service quality are the physical aspects of the store include its appearance and the convenience of its physical layout. Reliability is the extent to which the retail service provides what is promised when it is promised Personal interaction relates to the behavior of the store's employees. Problem solving refers to the store's ability to make service recoveries and policy refers to the extent to which the policies a store has adopted meet customers' needs

c) Hospital

* Reliability- patients judgements of quality with reliability being at the core of customer evaluation of service. This is simply the ability to perform the promised service dependably and accurately. Under this dimension there are questions to help measure quality such as: Was the operation successfully carried out? . This question is measuring whether the hospital is meeting customer's expectation and what they consider being good service and are these services being carried out by hospital staff. Once approved by a patient that quality service is being practiced at the hospital they tend to trust the hospital to look after them.

* Responsiveness- by this dimension we can also measure quality, as it is considered the second most important because it measures the willingness to help customers and provide prompt service. Does the nurse check on a patient on a regular basis to see if it needs special requirements such as tablets to ease the pain?

* Assurance is yet another way of measuring quality from an external point of view, this method measures service quality to the extend of internal patients asking a variety of question regarding staff's abilities and courtesy to convey trust and confidence. Questions under this dimension may vary accordingly for example: Can the hospital receptionist inform a patient on the facilities available for patients.

* Empathy - in a hospital it is very essential that nurses/doctors individualized attention to patients as well as the provision of caring. In order to measure quality under this dimension there area set of questions that need to be thought about to ensure that patient's expectations are being met and that the perceptions on the judgement of quality are correct. The following questions will tend to measure quality from patient's perceptive: Is the doctor willing to take necessary time to explain everything that the patient needs to know about a procedure? .

* Tangibles - the fifth and last dimension in patient's judgement of quality are tangibles in other words this is the appearance of the physical facilities it may be equipment, personnel or communication material. Questions to measure quality in this case it will be: Does the hospital bed appear to be clean?

2. This is how the roles of the marketing and operations departments overlap, the marketing function is responsible for investigating demand for services and goods and for establishment a distribution chain that delivers these products to customers. The operations function is responsible for producing these services and goods and managing the supply chain that provides the incoming resources. The operations manager's role is essential because without product (output), the organization has no means of achieving its purpose. Market research, which is an effort to measure customers' needs and preferences. The goals of market research are to determine new markets for existing products and to discover demand for new products. Market research leads to product designs that can satisfy consumers' needs at a reasonable cost and a high level of quality. As the product is being designed, the process for making the product should also be designed. After the process has been designed, it is necessary to acquire resources-material, trained people, and equipment. The production of the product includes concern for quality, cost, and on-time completion. Finally, marketing and distribution of the product take place. At this point, the customer's reaction to the product is measured, and another round of market research to monitor changing needs should occur.

Marketing and operations are important and it is essential that they work effectively for the betterment of their