Operational Management

OPERATIONAL MANAGEMENT

Introduction

         Operation Management is a process that involves numerous of activities. Some of those activities are; products management, designing, services, supply chain and application of resources to provide goods and services that meet and exceeds customers’ needs (Brotherton, 2012). Operation management integrates the three levels of management to ensure efficiency and effectiveness in hospitality departments. The three management levels include; strategic, tactical and operational levels to ensure that an organisation achieve its goals more efficiently and effectively. The strategic level handles making major decisions such as determining the kind of supply chain methods and telecommunication techniques to be utilized. The operational level involves activities such as actual handling of materials, task scheduling, production to mention just but a few. Tactical level entails enforcing decisions made at a strategic level to ensure that organisations goals and objectives are (Kusluvan, Kusluvan, Ilhan, and Buyruk, 2010).
        There are a numerous process involved in hospitality departments that help to ensure that customers need and wants are achieved. For the purpose of this study, STEM process has been selected. The process has four major parts. Those parts include; Selecting, Teaching, Educating, and Managing (Hotel Mule, 2009).
 How the STEM process can be configured within a hospitality department achieve financial targets while satisfying customers
        Stem process may be set within hospitality departments to achieve customer satisfaction and financial objectives by ensuring that the four sections of Stem process are integrated to work together. The first part of STEM process in hospitality industry involves Selection. Selection entails matching human resource skills with the right job and choosing the best. The operation managers together with human resource managers should select the right person based on the job requirements and expertise required to execute a given task. For example, if they are to hire a Chef, they should consider whether the job applicants possess the qualifications required for one to be Chef. They should also evaluate whether the job applicant has relevant experience based on the position being applied for. On the other hand, if they are hiring a supervisor, they should take into consideration whether the candidate has the qualification, personal attributes, skills, experience, and competencies necessary to do the job. Such factors may help to minimise wastage, cost and maximize profits (Tarí, Claver-Cortés, Pereira-Moliner, and Molina-Azorín, 2010). Also, selecting qualified Chefs may contribute to ensuring that the food prepared meets customers’ expectations that in return enhance customers’ satisfaction. Further, selecting the right people who have proper communication skill is an imperative move to success (Hotel Mule, 2009).
        The operational manager may utilize STEM process to integrate all operations in the hospitality industry into one single platform. The integration enables the hotels to realize financial targets as well as provide goods and services that meet and exceeds customers’ satisfactions. Besides, selecting employees with proper public relations and communications skills may help to attract new customers and retain the existing ones. Furthermore, it may contribute to increasing sales and profitability (Brotherton, 2012).
        The second part of STEM process is training. After the human resource manager has selected the qualified job applicants to fill in a job need, it is imperative to train them. Proper training in hospitality departments helps employees to understand the organisation operation at ease. It addition, it provides selected employees with an opportunity to learn and readily adapt to their organisation culture. Proper training increases competencies and profitability because wastage of resources tends to be significant. Also, the operation and human resource managers should determine whether a particular training program was efficient and collects the feedback. In case, training outcomes were not met, managers responsible for training should adopt a different training strategy to ensure that employees understand the objectives of training a training program. New technological dynamism has revolutionized the manner in which hospitality departments execute their operations. Such dynamism has created a need for training. For example, the emergence of Customers relation management (CRM) system has entirely changed the entire operation management. Customer relation management system integrates every activity in an organisation. It integrates finance process, procurement, supply chain, and human resource department into one database Zwaal, and Otting, 2010). Such integration by CRM has enhanced operation and communication efficiency. It has made communication between the customers and organisation more efficient. Customers can easily obtain feedback at ease because the system helps to create a closer relationship between the hospitality departments. Therefore, there is a need to train employees in the hospitality industry on how they can utilize CRM systems to promote their relationship with customers. Such training may help to eliminate switching cost and ensure that hospitality departments gain a competitive advantage (O'Fallon, and Rutherford, 2011).
        The third Section of STEM process in hospitality industry evolves the employees. Proper education among the workers in the hospitality industry ensures that employees understand the operational management procedures. Moreover, education should be a continuous process because of the new dynamism of technology (Nieves and Segarra, 2015).  The production methods keep changing especially in the hospitality industry, such changes calls for continuous education and training. Through continued education, employees within the hospitality industry become empowered to cope with new technological dynamism. Managers should put in place proper teaching methodologies to help employees learn and increase organisation profitably (Chon, Barrows, and Bosselman, 2013)
        The Final step of STEM process in hospitality department is, Management is an imperative part of every organisation. It involves many functions such as Planning, organizing, motivating and controlling. The planning function is vital in the hospitality industry because it shows the direction that each department should take. It also ensures that there is readily available budget in place that helps to show how resources will be. A proper budgetary planning helps to avoid under and over-utilization of scarce resources. Besides, it ensures resources are appropriate (Gannon, Roper & Doherty, 2015). Organizing is another important management function that helps to enhance operation efficiency operation in the hospitality department. Organizing function entail grouping related activities together so that they can work together and achieve organisation objectives. On the other hand, controlling is an imperative management function that verifies whether the plans are executed properly and confirm to the set requirements. Last but not least, Motivating is also a very indispensable function of management. Proper employee’s motivation may help the organisation to achieve its financial and customers satisfaction objectives within a short period. Motivated employees feel accountable and are ready to use their time and energy to implement organisation goals (Johnston, and Clark, 2005).
        Therefore, Operation and human resource managers in hospitality departments should motivate their employees. It is important to note that some employees may not be motivated by money but rather through words of appreciations. However, managers should use both monetary and non-monetary motivation strategies to motivate their workforce (Johnston, and Clark, 2005).
How we need to put together our products and services so that the desired outcomes can be.
        To ensure that customers in hospitality departments are satisfied, and at the same time ensures that financial targets are realized, STEM process should be in place. STEM process may be utilized both via the computerized systems as well as in real life as discussed. It is interesting to learn that the emergence of new technology has enabled software engineers to come up with integrated STEM Software. The software ensures that proper accounting records relating to the hospitality industry are recorded. It also provides services and operational flow charts that guide operational managers on the kind of decision to make. Also, it indicates the type of foods and services that are fascinating to customers. The process may help to ensure that goods and services rendered to clients are of high quality to ensures that customers are fully satisfied (Anupindi, Chopra, Deshmukh, Van Mieghem, and Zemel, 2011).
        On the other hand, STEM process is applied in real life within the context of the hospitality industry. For the STEM process to be good and efficient, it must be communicated and integrated within hospitality departments. Employees and stakeholders affected by the process should be in advance that the company will introduce STEM process at a given date. However, proper and timely communication should be made earlier to prevent resistance change among the employees. In addition, financial resources, time, materials and human resources are necessary for STEM process to be successful. The process may be introduced in phases to avoid resistance and unprecedented losses. For example, the process can be first introduced in operation and supply chain department to the hospitality company and later introduced to other organisational units. The introduction to other departments may be once the STEM process has proved successful in the initial hospitality departments (Lim, 2013).
Events that may impact the ability to provide the required performance
        Numerous events/factors may affect the capacity to provide the necessary performance. For instance, the ability to ensure customers in hospitality department are satisfied and at the same time ensure business achieves an of events may impact its financial targets. Some of those events include; Lack of proper skills to use STEM process, communication, process design, the complexity of the system, Network to mention just but a few. Lack of proper skills to run the process may adversely affect the achievement of the required performance. Communication is a critical factor that may impact performance both positively and negatively. When communication process is weak, it become difficult for coordination to take place and in return hinders the ability to provide required performance (Lim, 2013).
        Process design is also another significant event that may impact the capacity to provide required outcome. In situations where the process designed have been and the experts to run the system are not available on demand, it may impact the ability to provide the necessary performance. Design should be made in such a way that an available personnel’s can fix it in case there is a problem. The complexity of business application may impact the ability to provide the required performance. New technology has simplified the business process in the hospitality industry by providing application software that can be used to achieve the targeted performance. The distribution and logistics operation management software have positively impacted the ability to provide the required performance as discussed (Lim, 2013).
Factors that influences the cost/revenue in STEM process
        Some of the factors that influence cost/revenues in the STEM process include; market competition. In addition, availability of substitute, economic status, demand for products and services rendered to mention just but a few influences cost/revenues. Market competition can influence price and income if competition is very stiff. Companies operating under hospitality industry may lead to a decline in the cost of goods and services. Such reduction may detriment their profitability negatively. If there are other substitute products and services that can be purchased by customers elsewhere at a low cost, the profitability of hospitality departments may decline. On the contrary, if the economy under which the hospitality units is weak, operating cost may be high, and profitability may decline. If the demand of hospitality products and services is higher, the profits may increase significantly. Moreover, if the hospitality departments are producing unique and differentiated products it may attract more customers and in return increase organisation profits in the long run (Boella, 2000).