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Managing Operations and Improvement of Productive Systems

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Introduction
(Russell & Taylor, 2011) define operations management (OM) as the design, operation and improvement of productive systems. In other words, OM is concerned with certain processes that aim to monitor and manage tasks to achieve a desired outcome. OM is crucial to the success of companies as it aims to increase productivity and quality. By increasing productivity, the profit margin of a company will increase; and increased quality leads to customer satisfaction and in turn, increased market share. This report will aim to analyse what actually happened in carrying out the operational changes in the Little Chef case study. This will be done by using ‘Quality Management’ and ‘Information Technology’ frameworks of OM to identify …show more content…

This was blatant in the Little Chef menu which contained copious dishes in the attempt of bringing the world to UK. Furthermore, this was evident in Heston’s high-class trial menu; his new menu surprised customers as it did not meet with their expectations.
Satisfying customers’ wants better than the competition is widely recognised today as a key to success in the marketplace (Simonson, 1993). Peters and Waterman (1982), adds to this by saying companies must ably identify what their customers require in order to satisfy their expectations. These customer requirements should be used to mould the development of the firm’s strategies. This can be accomplished by implementing processes such as surveys, focus groups and even acting on customer complaints to assists companies better understand their customers.
The sections to follow will dive into quality management and technology procedures to assist in identifying the exact wants and needs of customers’ and to add value to them in the attempt to reduce the gaps in Little Chef’s CBP.
Quality Management
Feigenbaum (1983), defines quality as: "the total composite product and service characteristics of marketing, engineering, manufacture and maintenance through which the product and service in use will meet the expectation by the customer". Quite simply this translates to quality as being a measure of

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