operation management
TRANSCRIPT
Operations Management
1. Introduction
This coursework is written to investigate the operations management utilized
in Charnwood Museum, by analyzing characteristics of its operations and
comparing with the operations management in London Zoo in terms of similar
operations management terms.
All information, data and supporting materials are collected through the
author’s observation, interview with the operations manager, introduction
leaflets, report from newspaper and museum’s website.
2 Study on Charnwood Museum’s Operations
2.1 Description of Charnwood Museum and Its Facilities
Charnwood Museum is a small but comprehensive museum, as it features a
wide range of exhibits reflecting the history, geology, archaeology and
industries of Charnwood and the surrounding area (Charnwood Museum,
2010).
2.1.1 Layout
Layout concerns decisions about where to put all the facilities, equipments
and staff in the operations (Johnston et al.1997).
Charnwood Museum’s layout is mainly a functional layout, as the permanent
exhibitions of the museum are grouped into four areas: Coming to
Charnwood, The natural World, Living off the Land and Earning a Living
(Charnwood Museum, 2010). The equipments and items for display are put
together according to theme which they belong to(see in Appendix 1). The
visitors can choose different routes from exhibition to exhibition as what they
prefer. The other facilities like temporary exhibition galleries, enquiry desk, gift
shop, cafe and toilets are also parts of the operations. Visitors are free to use
them depending on their individual needs.
However, we may also see the cafe as a cell layout, for there is a lot of people
directly go the cafe’s large sunny patio to enjoy the beautiful scenery of the
park.
In this case, the layout of the museum is a mixed type of functional layout and
cell layout.
2.1.2 Process
Charnwood Museum privides various kinds of services. For the four
permanent exhibition areas, different showing methods like interactive
displays, computers show and audio-visuals are utilized, which allow visitors
to touch rocks from Charnwood’s volcanic past, walk beneath the giant oak
tree, investigate the 4,000 year old burial of the Cossington Boy, visit the
Victorian grocers shop or zoom-in on a fly’s eye with the video microscope
(Charnwood Museum, 2010).
.
Besides, up to 20 temporary displays are held all through the year, concerning
key local themes as well as national and international subjects (Charnwood
Museum, 2010). Temporary exhibitions ensure there are always something
new to see. To satisfy various needs of people with different age levels, the
museum prepares special events, family fun days, art & crafts workshops for
children and young people to learn from professional artists, and school
holiday activities for school students to experience science technology.
Another special process of the operations is that the museum can give hiring
services. Customers can rent the museum to hold school activities, personal
exhibition or workshops.
At the enquiry desk, information such as customers’ requests complains and
other feedbacks are collected by the staff. And information such as activity
notice, leaflets, and advertisements for hiring services will be handed out.
Customers can buy gifts on the gift shop if they want, and the cafe provides
nice food and drinks.
2.2 Analysis on Characteristics of Charnwood Museum’s
Operations in Operations Management Terms
2.2.1 Input and Output
Inputs in operations model include transformed resources and transforming
resources. Transformed resources refer to resources that are changed,
through the processes. Usually transformed resources are mixtures of
materials, information and customers. And transforming resources are
resources which help to change the transformed resources. There are
generally two types of transforming resources- facilities (buildings, equipment,
plant and process technology of the operation) and staff (people who
operates, maintain, plan and manage the operation)(Slack et al.2004).
For Charnwood Museum, the transformed resources are customers and
information. The processes of the Charnwood Museum provide individual
customer with various exhibitions and workshops, through which the
customers are satisfied. Thus, customers who go through the operations of
the museum are changed and should be the transformed resources.
Moreover, the staff in charnwood museum also collects the requests of
customers’ and those information is later transformed into the museum’s
operation missions. Seeing this, the information is also transformed
resources. The transforming resources in the museum’s operations should be
facilities like the building, exhibition equipments, art works, specific knowledge
of curator, and all stuffs on display. Staff is another type of transforming
resources, as they help the whole operations run regularly.
Outputs refer to goods and services which come out from the processes.
Services, such as the exhibitions, interactive displays, art & craft workshops,
special event, special hiring services and school holiday activities which cater
to various demands of its visitors are the outputs in this case. What’s more,
the cafe can provide food and drinks which are outputs of the operations
within operations.
2.2.2 4Vs
4Vs mean four particularly important characteristics of operations, namely,
volume of their output, variety of their output, the variation in the demand for
their output and the degree of visibility which customers have of the
production of the product or service (Slack et al.2004).
The volume of output in Charnwood Museum’s operation is high. This can be
proved by a news report in Appendix 2. As is reported, Charnwood Museum
was set to break 480,000 visitors after its 10 th anniversary. In the year 2008,
2009, the average number of visitors was more than 53,000. And the Museum
was the first museum in Leicestershire to achieve the Visitor Attraction Quality
Award - a mark of excellence little Museum that always has something new.
Considering Charnwood Museum is only a community mueseum, such a
customer volume is quite high.
The variety of the output is also high, as visitors come to the museum can not
only enjoy the permanent exhibitions but also the temporary exhibitions.
Besides the common service of exhibitions, it has special events, workshops,
school activities, and hiring services. A good evidence to support this is the
leaflet of the museum, with the brief introduction of many kinds of services. All
these services are the outputs, so we can easily see that the variety of output
is high.
The variation in demand for the output is high as well. Seeing the figures in
Appendix 3, the highest number of visitors reached 7938 in August, and the
lowest number appeared in December with only 1755 visitors. August was the
school holiday month so that there are a lot of students who came to visit the
museum. However, December was in winter, cold and windy outside, and the
Christmas season was the December, which all dedicates to the low number.
Moreover, the number of visitors in a week scope reflects that Mondays
usually attract fewer visitors, and Saturdays are always busy days.
The visibility of the services is high, since visitors can see what’s going on
clearly and directly feel whether they are satisfied or not, when they flow
through the operations.
4Vs analysis for Charnwood Museum can be seen clearly in Appendix 4.
2.2.3 Effects on Quality Performance
Quality can be broadly defined as the consistent conformance to the customer
expectation, and for each operation, the definition varies. In Charnwood
Museum’s operations, the author holds that the quality can be the satisfaction
of the visitors.
Firstly, the layout can affect the quality performance, since the functional
layout in Charnwood Museum may make people miss some parts of the
museum when there are lots of visitors making the museum blocked. Visitors
have a full freedom to choose which exhibition to see and can stay there as
long as they like. This situation often occurs in some popular exhibitions,
which leads to a long queue in the popular exhibitions, while some others left
empty. Visitors are likely to complain, if they want to see the exhibition but fail.
Processes in the operations are essential, as it is the processes that produce
services to customers. In the museum, the processes should be designed
according to the needs of different age levels’ customers, and operate with the
specification made by the curator. The fluency of the processes can affect
visitors’ satisfaction, thus have effects on the quality performance.
Input and output certainly have great effects on quality performance. For
customers, if the customers’ expectation is very high as they want to see a
national great museum like The British Museum, Charnwood Museum
certainly cannot satisfy these customers. And the information like the requests
and complains from the visitors can help the museum to diagnose its quality
performance. Transforming resources like equipments, and stuffs on display
or utilized to display are the basis of efficient operations of the museum. Any
transforming resources that does not work or cooperate well will break the
processes and consequently arouse visitors’ dissatisfaction. Professional staff
is also very important to the quality performance. Outputs of all kinds’ services
and advertising information can also cause customers’ dissatisfaction, if the
advertising information exaggerates the actual quality of the outputs.
4Vs analysis is valuable to the future decision making of an organization since
it can reveal a lot of information, affecting quality performance. Charnwood
Museum is a free museum with a limitation of investment, a low unit cost is
important to the museum. Only when the museum has the enough money can
they improve the facilities to provide a better quality performance. High variety
of output indicates that the services provided by the museum are flexible,
complex, which can cater to kinds of customers’ needs. The hiring services
and special activities help to increase income to improve the operations and
gain the satisfaction from visitors. Thus, the high variety of output here in the
museum has a positive effect on the quality performance. However, a high
volume of visitors will make the museum over crowded, especially when there
is a school activity. Visitors may feel too noisy in the museum because of the
school visitors. This quality problem has been taken into consideration by the
operations manager of the museum. A solution to this problem is that the
museum tries to hand out leaflets to inform the will-come visitors about the
arrangement for school activities, so if you don’t want to be disturbed by the
crowds of children, you can avoid going there on the exact day.
The variation of the demand is high, which will influence the quality
performance. High variation makes the museum especially busy on summer
school season. It is relatively difficult for museum to provide high quality
service during busy season, since the limitation of staff. But the operations
manager says temporary employees are brought in during the very busy days.
High visibility can monitor the quality performance. Charnwood Museum has
Customer Satisfaction Survey and a Notice Board which is for customers to
put in their requests and complains, as well as the solutions the manager did
to solve these problems. These all devote to the quality performance.
3. Comparison and Contrast
3.1 Outline of London Zoo’s Operations
3.1.1 Process and Layout
In London Zoo, different animals are housed in separate pavilions so that
customers can visit what they like easily. The zoo has a cafe, gift shop, activity
den, display lawn, picnic lawn and playground as well. A map of London Zoo
is in Appendix 5. The layout is also a functional layout; customers choose the
order of visiting animals by their individual preference.
The process for the animal pavilions is to provide animals for customers to
appreciate or animal performance to entertain the customers. For the cafe,
the process provides the customers with food and drink. The gift shop sells
souvenirs to customers. And to deal with the social perspective change
towards animal protection, London Zoo conducted processes focused on the
conversation of animals with breeding programmers for endangered species,
including children’s zoo and an education centre.
3.1.2 Input and Output
In London Zoo case, the transformed resources are customers and
transforming resources are pavillions, equipment, animals, and staff. The
output is various kinds of services like animal seeing, education services from
children’s zoo.
3.1.3 4Vs
A large number of visitors are attracted by the zoo, but the number fluctuates
a lot in terms of day or month. The busiest times are weekends and summer
holidays. During that period the average attendance level of the zoo was 4000
to 6000 per day. On the Easter and August Bank Holiday the number reached
10 000. However, the busiest day the zoo has ever had was the special “Save
Our Zoo “day when 18 000 visitors were attracted. The lowest attendance
figure reached on Christmas Eve, only 48 people came to visit the zoo.
Relatively speaking, London zoo has a large volume of outputs. Moreover, the
variation of demand is high, considering the highest number and the lowest
number.
The variety of output is also high, as not only animal seeing services are
provided, services like education, animal shows are also available. People
with a wide range of age levels can find what they want in the zoo.
London Zoo has a high visibility as well, as customers can see the animals
directly.
3.2 Compare and contrast the problems between two cases
The layout type in both Charnwood Museum and London Zoo are functional
layout and share the same problem that it is easy to miss some parts of the
processes as customers have too much freedom.
The volume of Charnwood Museum is high. In some busy days, the museum
seems to be too crowded. The variation of the both the museum and the zoo
are high. This can arouse an insufficient use of resources.
For London Zoo, there was a problem of the change of people’s attitude
towards zoo. People were concerning the feelings of animals and reject to the
opinion to run a zoo and were not willing to visit zoos.
And both Charnwood Museum and London Zoo are facing limitation of
investment.
4 Conclusions and Recommendations
Based on all the descriptions and analysis, we can see both Charnwood
Museum and London Zoo are successful in attracting customers with a wide
range of services.
However, both of them have a lot of problems as stated above. In author’s
opinion, it would be better, if Charnwood Museum can enlarge its display hall
so that they can handle the problems caused by large number of visitors. For
the problem of investment limitation, Charnwood Museum made out hiring
services to get funds from customers. Services like leaning animal training
from the professional trainers can be added to the outputs of the London Zoo,
to help them increase revenue.
References
Slack, N., Chamber, S. and Johnston, R., 2004, Operations management, 4th
Edition, FT/Prentice Hall.
Johnston, R., Chambers, S., Harland, C., Harrison, A. and Slack, N.,1997,
Cases In Operations Management, 2th Edition, PITMAN PUBLISHING
Website of Charnwood Museum
http://www.leics.gov.uk/charnwoodmuseum
Appendix 1
This map is given by the operations manager of Charnwood Museum
Appendix 2
This news report is from the internet
Appendix 3
Charnwood Museum Visitor Figures 2009/10
Appendix 4
Appendix 5
Map of London Zoo (from internet)
Low Volume High
High Variety Low
High Variation Low
High Visibility Low
London Zoo Charnwood Museum