Unit 4 Operation and Management Assignment

Program	Diploma in Business
Unit Number and Title	Unit 4 Operation and Management
QFC Level	Level 5

Introduction

Operation management is the heart of every organisation. It involves activities that transform input into usable output that generates value to the organisation and to customers. Operation management discuss about the operation activities which are similar to characteristics i.e. planning, designing, locations, layouts, managing and coordinating and operational strategy which is linked with the business strategy. It would also explain about the call out services along with factors affecting the poor communication that affects the RAC quality, productivity and capacity. Risk analysis procedures are properly detailed in vertical integration by applying the probability matrix in the report. At last, quality improvements techniques have been analysed and recommended to RAC to improve their problem of price and speed.

Task 1

Operational characteristics and operations strategy of RAC Motoring Services

Operation management is the process of designing and monitoring, controlling the process of production and redesigning business operations in the production of goods and services. The key characteristics of operation in RAC Motoring services are:

• Designing: RAC design of motors start with the product development and it includes various features and characteristics of the product or services it offers. Designing is closely related to the customer satisfaction (Wirtz, 2010).
• Planning: It refers to how management of RAC use the available resources at full capacity. Planning process is the initial phase and helps to survive in diverse environment. For example: if the demand for automobiles of RAC increases or decreases according to the seasons then the plan help to maintain this situation.
• Managing: Operation management itself says about the management of the operations. In RAC team work is important characteristics and the success of the team work is necessary for operations. This can be managed by encouraging and motivating the employees for better performance through training, leadership and ethical culture.
• Coordinating: coordinate the activities of every level with the associated work. Coordination can be for the roles and responsibilities with the staff of RAC and operational team. Coordination takes place in two forms vertical or horizontal that depends on the strategy of the organisation.

Operational strategy refers to the same pattern of decision for the operational functions that support the overall business strategy. The RAC operational strategy focuses on capacity, quality and productivity to be maintained in competitive environment. The strategy clearly defines the strategy mission and vision statements (Baines.et.al. 2009). It matches with the market needs and enables interaction between the other functions, avoids errors between process characteristics and products and services, ensure that the quality meets the corporate and market requirement. Operational strategy which includes decision making for product design, process, capacity, location, layout, quality, production planning, inventory and supply chain which supports the business strategy of RAC that are cost, time, quality and variety.

Task 2

Call out services at RAC and factors contributing to poor customer satisfaction

The call out services at RAC is basically refers to the customer services challenges faced by the organisation. The organisations now outsource their call out services which provide them the benefits for customer satisfaction. The callout services are sales and customer acquisition, answering services, car rental reservations, customer relation and loyalty management, reservation sales, warranty support, maintenance and repairs reminder, roadside assistance program, customer care and service. However this call out services faces numerous challenges like scalability, customer expectations, data based decision making, best fit technology etc which can have both positive and negative impacts. RAC can improve their customer services by facing these challenges like first call resolution, 24 hours multi channel customer services, automatic call distributor and many more (Zettner.et.al. 2012).

The factors contributing to poor satisfaction are:

• Employees are not trained- The organisation needs to spend their time and resources to train the staff and employees properly. This can be done involving the employees in decision making and informing the common goals and objectives and providing them proper tools at the right time.
• People don’t care- Correct employees should be recruited to the RAC business. Self centred personality has no place in the organisation. Because in automobile industry to provide the customer services are an important element and the employees who has the ability to change the perspectives of customer about the particular product is the key employee relation to the organisation. For appointing correct employees selection and evaluation process should be applied and if wrong people are appointed they should be immediately removed (Jahanshani.et.al. 2014).
• Employees don’t believe in the products/services of RAC- The organisation promotion and advertisement activity should reflect the same condition and looks the products have in reality. If it not so then the employees will not able to sustain the positive attitude toward the products and if they are not able to adapt the product then how they can convince to the customer. To overcome RAC need to be honest and identify the real problem and fix them.

The other factors affecting the poor customer satisfaction may be personal issues of employees, not providing correct solution to the customer, incentives and salary not connected with the results and many more.

Task 3

Risk analysis for vertical integration option by creating a probability impact matrix in RAC

RAC has supposed that its organisation is under performing from its competitors in terms of speed and prices. By vertical integration, the organisation can be benefited or it may have negative impacts too depend on the risk the organisation is bearing. It’s a risky strategy that includes complex and expensive operations yet organisation prefer for this integration without analysing the risk factor. The organisation has to analysis the risk and transaction cost by probability matrix which involves heavy set up cost and its result are also doubtful (Rothaermel, 2015). In RAC the risk is analysed on the basis of transaction matrix:

The reason why RAC has adopted vertical integration is market is risky; integration would explore the business opportunities and removes barrier to entry in international markets and allows price discrimination.

Market structure also helps in vertical integration by analysing the risk in RAC:

The vertical integration fails if there is small number of buyers and sellers there would be high trading risk in the transaction. And if there are few buyers for the automobiles with many seller then buyer dominate and the risk still exist for RAC organisations because buyer has many options for the similar product. In both the cases the organisation is having high risk for vertical integration. On the other hand if the buyers are many and the sellers are few then sellers dominate and this would benefit the RAC for vertical integration. So it depend on the probability matrix that the organisation would have the advantage for going for vertical integration by analysing the risk factors (Novak and Stern, 2009).

Task 4

Recommendations for improving quality at RAC

For improving quality at RAC there are different steps which need to be recommended:

• Make a commitment-  The top management need to committed and enforce to the lower level for quality commitment. The quality should remain same during the life time it not that it is committed for the limited period. So if the RAC is ready for the commitment it should convey its messages to the staff and ready for the first and future conflicts.
• Track mistakes-  If RAC is committing quality then it should first define the quality. As RAC is manufacturing organisation it should define the production and operation process based on product specification and after that compare with the desired outcome and if too much difference is reflected then the process should be altered. This would help in tracking the quality as well (Govindan.et.al. 2010).
• Invest in training-  The RAC should invest their time and resources by providing quality improvement tools for training to the employees of their organisation. Proper training with innovative and technical tool would automatically improve the quality and productivity too.
• Organise quality circle- The RAC should put the quality circle. It means teams of employees who are given authority and responsibility for making business better. The participation of employees in this circle should be voluntary and it should cover the people from whole part of the organisation and should set their own goals.
• Have the right attitude- The management should have right attitude towards the employees and also toward the external business environment. Rather discouraging the staff the managers should always try to motivate the employees for improving their work quality at the business. Right attitude toward everyone would lead to increase in capacity, quality and productivity of the employee’s and greater customer satisfaction which would generate positive financial profits in long run(Chao.et.al. 2009).

Conclusion

The report explains about the operation management, its characteristics that involves designing, planning etc and how the operation strategy had help the RAC in decision pattern that are directly linked with the business strategy to achieve the competitive advantage in terms of cost and time. RAC call out services and the problem in meeting the customer services is detailed with the factors affecting poor customer satisfaction. The report further concludes about the risk analysis in vertical integration by using market structure matrix and transaction matrix. At the end, it recommends the quality improvements steps that should be considered by RAC for providing better customer services.

References

Books and Journals

Baines, T., Lightfoot, H., Peppard, J., Johnson, M., Tiwari, A., Shehab, E. and Swink, M., 2009. Towards an operations strategy for product-centric servitization. International Journal of Operations & Production Management, 29(5), pp.494-519.
Chao, G.H., Iravani, S.M. and Savaskan, R.C., 2009. Quality improvement incentives and product recall cost sharing contracts. Management Science, 55(7), pp.1122-1138.
Govindan, K., Kannan, D. and Noorul Haq, A., 2010. Analyzing supplier development criteria for an automobile industry. Industrial Management & Data Systems, 110(1), pp.43-62.
Jahanshani, A.A., Hajizadeh, G.M.A., Mirdhamadi, S.A., Nawaser, K. and Khaksar, S.M.S., 2014. Study the effects of customer service and product quality on customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Novak, S. and Stern, S., 2009. Complementarity among vertical integration decisions: personal professional development. Management Science, 55(2), pp.311-332.
Rothaermel, F.T., 2015. Strategy management. McGraw-Hill.
Wirtz, B.W., 2010. Business model management. Gabler, Wiesbaden.
Zettner, S.D., United Services Automobile Association (Usaa), 2012. Member-initiated outbound call. U.S. Patent 8,233,611.