Solutions Manual - Discussion Questions 1. Explain how operations ...

Solutions Manual for OM 5 5 th Edition By David Alan Collier, James Evans (All Chapters 1-18, 100% Original Verified, A+ Grade) 1 / 4

OM 5 C1 IM

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OM5 Chapter 1: Goods, Services, and Operations Management

Discussion Questions

• Explain how operations management activities affect the customer experiences

described in the Museum of Science + Technology anecdote at the beginning of this chapter. What “moments of truth” would a customer at Chicago’s Museum of Science + Technology encounter?

The anecdote at Chicago’s Museum of Science + Technology focuses on the role of goods, services, and processes in creating customer experiences and satisfaction.Students will have many great examples of their museum experiences. Moments of truth might include (a) buying a ticket and the associated service encounters with a call center, web site and/or travel agency (b) getting to the (parking, subway, train, taxi, walk) museum site, (c) asking museum employees for directions, (d) waiting in line, (e) food service, rest rooms, handicap and discarding trash processes, (f) museum security (art, safety, etc.), (g) interactive museum and learning displays (biztainment, robotics, software), and so on.

Whatever the student describes make sure you lead them into a discussion of key lessons that focus on the role of OM such as (1) process and job design and customer flows, (2) service encounter design and employee training, (3) integrating goods and services into a comprehensive CBP, (4) the importance of service management skills in most museum processes, (5) how services differ from goods, (6) biztainment, (7) capacity and staff/show scheduling, (8) purchasing, (9) the role of data analytics in forecasting customer demand, improving performance, and making good management decisions, (10) facility layout and location, and (11) a continuous improvement orientation. Get the students participating – use their examples to illustrate key OM concepts in Chapter

• Help them “see OM” in their examples. Use “What Do OM Managers do?” box as a

basis for discussion.

• Explain why a bank teller, nurse, or flight attendant must have service management

skills. How do the required skills differ for someone working in a factory? What are the implications for hiring criteria and training?

Service-providers need technical/operations skills plus human interaction and marketing skills (i.e., service management skills). A bank teller, for example, must be able to complete many types of financial transactions and operate the computer and associated software. The teller must also interact with the customer in a pleasant way and market other financial services (cross-sell, up sell, etc.). A factory worker can focus on technical/operations/production skills since they have no or little interaction with customers. The training for front-room service-providers is more interdisciplinary compared to backroom factory employees.

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• Why is process thinking important in operations management? Thinking of yourself as

an “operations manager” for your education, how could process thinking improve your performance as a student?

Process thinking is important since processes describe “how work gets done and performance objectives are achieved” in all functional areas such as finance and human resource management, and industries such as government, health care, forestry, manufacturing, and education.

At this early point in the course students know only a little bit about primary, support, and general management processes so you may have to do a tutorial using the student’s example. However, students perform many processes, such as studying for an exam and managing multiple reading and homework assignments on a daily basis. Getting them to think of the process they use to accomplish such tasks helps them to understand the role of process thinking.

• Do you think you will be working in manufacturing or services when you graduate?

What do you think will be the role of manufacturing in the U.S. economy in the future?

This question is designed to get students to explore job opportunities and industries as documented in Exhibit 1.5. Use the exhibit of “where are the jobs in the USA?” to enhance this discussion. The location of your institution may have some bearing on the answers, as some schools might be located in a more manufacturing- or service- intensive locale than others. One topic that will come up is will there be jobs in the U.S.in manufacturing? Will all US manufacturing jobs be moved to other countries? Why?What new industries are developing? Are sustainability strategies going to create new industries and jobs? Business Week (Oct. 2009) has several issues that addressed the role of manufacturing in the US economy including the wisdom of outsourcing and off- shoring.

Another issue is that the average U.S. college graduate will change industries and/or jobs about seven times during their careers. Thus, it is very important to be flexible and develop a good set of skills including OM!! If the student is promoted in future jobs they will be managing resources and processes with many OM challenges regardless of functional area. Chapter 1 provides several examples of non-OM majors needing OM skills in the workforce especially as they are promoted and are responsible for more and more processes and associated resources. OM is useful in all functional areas if you have to design and manage a process.

• Select one of the OM challenges and investigate it in more detail. Be ready to present to

the class in a less than 10-minute class presentation what you found.

Students will focus on one of the following and hopefully go into more depth and understanding.

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OM 5 C1 IM

3 • Technology has been one of the most important influences on the growth and development of OM. Applications in design and manufacturing as well as the use of information technology in services have provided the ability to develop innovative products and more effectively manage and control extremely complex operations.As technology continues to evolve, OM needs to find ways to leverage and exploit it.• Globalization has changed the way companies do business and must manage their operations. With advances in communications and transportation, we have passed from the era of huge regional factories with large labor forces and tight community ties to an era of the “borderless marketplace.” Value chains now span across many continents. Operations managers must continue to find better ways to manage and improve global value chains to compete against those of competitors.• Consumers’ expectations continually rise. They demand an increasing variety of high-quality goods with new and improved features that are delivered faster than ever – along with outstanding service and support.. OM faces the challenge of ensuring that these multidimensional and often conflicting expectations are met.• Today’s workers demand increasing levels of empowerment and more meaningful work than in the past. This requires continual learning, new decision-making skills, more diversity, and better performance management. OM must be able to incorporate these new dimensions into job designs and daily management.• Despite more than a half-century of intense focus on quality, it continues to be a challenge, even for the best of companies, as we have recently witnessed with Toyota’s numerous recalls. Despite significant advances, organizations cannot take quality for granted and must continue to focus on it when designing goods and services, operations, and management systems.• To compete in today’s environment, manufacturers must stay ahead of consumers’ needs by increasing product innovation, speeding up time-to-market, and operating highly effective global supply chains. However, many emerging concepts, such as sustainability and green manufacturing, genetic engineering, nanotechnology, new methods of energy generation, and robotic medical equipment, provide new and exciting opportunities for revitalizing manufacturing through OM.10

Problems and Activities

• Describe a customer experience you have personally encountered where the good or

service or both were unsatisfactory (for example, defective product, errors, mistakes, poor service, service upsets, and so on). How might the organization have handled it better and how could operations management have helped?

The objective of this type of question is for the student to describe what they know and you, the instructor, help put it into the OM framework. This question is also designed to help students internalize the concept of customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction, and potential operations management activities and decisions that can influence their experiences. For undergraduates, these experiences focus on what they know best such as restaurants, airlines, bookstores, automobile sales or repair, retail stores, and university processes. Graduate students may also include their work and business

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