1.Synopsis of Case:
Jose’s Authentic Mexican Restaurant 58 seat restaurant provides a broad range of Mexican food in traditional Mexican style. The restaurant have a limited off street parking is situated in an established business district in New England. Interior decoration and background music creates fascinating atmospheres which cope with marvellous Mexican food. Sitting is available except Friday and Saturday nights. Customers need to wait as long as forty -five minutes. As because there is no separate waiting area for customers, so the guests mainly have to wait outside. On top up to the problem, Jose does not take reservation. The menu consists of twenty three main entries combination of eight basic stocks and variety of other ingredients. Typically, it takes 12 minutes to prepare a standard meal. In recent days the fall of business and customer satisfaction has become a concern for both the management and for the employees which has been resulted from some substantial reasons like inconsistent quality of supplies, discontented employees, inconsistency of services regarding delivery on time. Both the management and the employees are concerned about the declining customer satisfaction in recent days and both parties are pondering over the situation from their very own positions as the management decided to take some initiatives to improve their services to obtain maximum customer satisfaction and also the employees individually thinking about their roles to chip in overcoming the recent fall off and to retain and improve the quality of services. According to the recent customer surveys conducted by the management during the busy hours on Friday and Saturday nights, most of the people were satisfied with the overall dining experience. For example, 67 customers said that the dining experience was worth the money and only sixteen said that it was not. The survey also reveals customers seemed to be very unhappy about the waiting time for sitting food and the preparation and serving time to the table. So the restaurant running with a faulty service process which causes poor quality. As a result business is suffering.
2.Major Issues Discussed:
There is an ample description of the process to spark considerable discussion as to show the nature of the process (and the internal customer chain) interacts with the external customer’s perception of quality.
2.1Importance of supply process in business:
A firm cannot gain competitive advantage with faulty process. A process can be defined as "a logical series of related transactions that converts input to results or output" (Andersen 1999). Processes provide output to the customers. Customers can be external or internal. Here output means service or products. Service process is vital for restaurant business. Service processes generate value as the customer interacts with the process and, ultimately, it is the customer’s experience with the process that’s most important. In other words, it is the service process, itself, that constitutes the product. In order to provide a quality service a restaurant needs a constant supply of quality ingredients, and efficient staffs.
Process Analysis is the documentation and detailed understanding of how work is performed and how it can be redesigned. This is a six step measurement system.
In order to identify opportunities managers must pay attention to the four core process-Supplier relationship, New service/product development, Order fulfilment, Customer relationship. Three opportunities are relevant here-
2.1. ASupplier relationship process:
It is most important to make a good relationship between member of staff and supplier. Jose’s restaurant has problem about the quality of food the chef receives from the suppliers. The cook at Jose’s is stressed out and unhappy with the supply of ingredients that have been receiving from the supplier. Due to less quality inventory supply the Jose’s Authentic Mexican Restaurant might lose their business. Member of staff, in the supplier relationship process select the suppliers of services, materials and information and facilitate the timely and efficient flow of these items is the key issue for the Jose’s restaurant. Working efficiently with the supplier can add significant value to the services or products for the restaurant. For example: – negotiating for high standard of supply, scheduling on time deliveries and gaining ideas of quality food delivery difficulties etc.
2.1.B Order fulfilment process:
The order fulfilment process includes the activities required to produce and deliver the service or product to the purchaser. The customer order fulfilment is also essential for a successful restaurant business. Time maintaining is big issue at Jose’s Authentic Mexican Restaurant. The customers are not happy because cooking takes more time to make a meal. The purchaser will be happy if the cook hit back in their twelve minutes target time.
2.1.C Customer relationship process:
Customer relationship process sometimes referred to as customer relationship management. Employees involved in the customer relationship process identify, attract, and build relationships with consumers and facilitates the placement of orders by customers. Jose’s manager could be walk through the restaurant and talk to the customer in order to listen comments. Also more surveys could be help for getting better value to measure the circumstances at Jose’s. Each of these processes, and the sub-processes nested with them, are involved in value to external customers.
2.1.D Scope where to develop
A critical observation of the process of this restaurant reveals that they don’t have good supply of quality inventory. “Inventory is a list forgoodsandmaterials, or those goods and materials themselves, held available in stock by a business” (Wikipedia). They need to build a good external supplier relationship. The main focus should be on order fulfilment process.
2.1. E Process Documentation:
The processes
Inputs- inventory, cook, waiting staff, management
Supplier – supplier of inventory (external), cook (internal)
Outputs- food, service
Customers- cook, waiting staff (internal), customer/guest (external)
2.1. F Performance evaluation:
“It is important to have good performance measures to evaluate a process for clues on how to improve it. Metrics are performance measures for the process and the steps within it. Metrics may reveal a performance gap”. (Lee J Krajewski, et al, 2010). To identify Metrics management conducted a customer survey. The survey reveals that
the problem lies in not serving the customers in a reasonable time. This can be rectified if the cook able to prepare the food in desired 12 minutes time. He cannot do this because of poor supply. The supply process of this restaurant is not going well that is why they cannot provide quality service. They do not have a good supplier relationship, so they do not have the quality inventory to produce high quality food. As a result their customer relationship is very bad.
2.2 Quality should never be compromised:
It’s hard to establish quality control, in advance of the customer interaction, and quality checks must be designed to evaluate the quality of the customer’s experience.
When we talk about quality, degrees of excellence, capacity, skill, accomplishment, status, standing, positive or negative logics, distinctive features, overall control, those sorts of ideas occur to our mind. According to Bergman and Klefsjo (1994) “the quality of a product (article or service) is its ability to satisfy the needs and expectations of the customers”. At Jose’s restaurant the quality of the services are mainly based on its authenticity, its excellent unique features that represent true Mexican theme and style. The employees are skilful where they know their individual roles and the order of actions in the way of performing their roles to deliver optimal performance in the reasonably minimum time, the accomplishment of the environment including the set of the furniture and the background music which would give the customers the flair of True Mexico in New England. Here, apart from the recent days the quality of service at this restaurant could be said acceptable on the basis that this restaurant had been well able to satisfy the needs and expectations of the customers for which it is usually busy and too busy on particularly Fridays and Saturdays nights, even the customers would not mind standing outside and wait until their party is called inside. This restaurant used to be counted on for the consistent good quality foods in reasonably consistent time and for its adherence to its set traditions, its unique culture, theme and style.
W. Edwards Deming (1900-1993) known as the father of quality, and all his life he contributed his services in improving quality. He set 14 points principles which he believes are the foundations of achieving optimal quality improvement, and in achieving this optimal quality improvement he emphasised most on the role of the management in an organization. In his research on quality he found only 15% of poor quality is because of the employees and the major 85% of poor quality is because of the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of the management system and processes in an organization. At Jose restaurant the waiters can serve their best if they are given good quality foods to serve the customers, and the chef can make good quality food if he is provided with good quality supplies. And it has to be the management system for the restaurant to make sure the supplies are of acceptable quality and on time. And also it is the management system at this restaurant that has to make sure the other issues are being efficiently dealt with- like the seat management, waiting and reservation issues, and the pick times have to be considered as well to ensure consistent satisfactory quality services.
Joseph M. Juran (1904-*) known as the architect of quality, defines quality on the basis of fitness for use rather than submission to specifications. In his conception of quality the core point of his attention was customers’ needs, and so he is more concerned with quality planning, quality control and quality improvement, rather than following set standards of quality. Under the light of Juran’s conception of quality the management in Jose’s restaurant needs to plan and re-plan their processes as they are clearly failing to meet the consistency level of quality. The restaurant is busy and good but the bar of standard of the quality of their services is much below their actual potentials.
Armand V. Feigenbaum is more interested in working environment, and while referring to quality he seems to suggest that an organization has to focus on quality development more than anything else. And, to add with, the degree of commitment and motivation of the employees is crucial to ensure a sound and profitable working environment. At Jose’s restaurant the quality of environment is good and bad at the same time, as the atmosphere is more or less unique, but it’s being small and incapability to serve more customers due to insufficient number of seats, particularly on Fridays and Saturdays, and waiting facilities for the customers are almost disregarded. But taking the example of Karetski who is a member of the staff we get the impression that the employees are more or less committed and motivated from their part to offer the possible best quickest service. Having said that the example of the cook’s being irritated and impatient in recent time gives us the impression of the opposite extreme.
Philip B. Crosby (1926-2001) is rather traditional in his way of approaching quality issues. He also focused mainly on customers’ needs and defines quality as the total submission to standards expected by the customers and also standards set by the organization itself. At Jose’s restaurant we get the impression that a few standards of quality are met by the management while a few are not. Even the survey conducted by the management clearly says that the customers are more or less happy with the services and they enjoy coming to this restaurant expecting quality foods and overall satisfactory services. But they are not happy when they have to wait for longer time and they do not have a reasonable arrangement to wait around the restaurant and no arrangement for reservations earlier either, which of course demeans the overall quality of the management.
The goal of services business is to achieve synergies between productivity and quality strategies so that value can be created for both customers and the firm. Service standards should reflect both productivity and quality goals. Redesign efforts typically focus on achieving: (1) reduced number of service failures, (2) reduced cycle time, (3) enhanced productivity, and (4) increased customer satisfaction.
3.Questions and answers:
3.1 Question 1: How should quality be defined at this restaurant?
According to Philip B Crosby (1979) Quality is “conformance to requirements”. In other words delighting customers by meeting fully their needs and expectations. These may include performance, appearance, availability, delivery, reliability, maintainability, cost effectiveness and price.
A restaurant provides product (food) and a service (waiting on the customer). The quality of the food and service is defined as meeting or exceeding the expectations of the customer as promised by the restaurant. The food should be delicately prepared and the service should be quick and friendly. The result of quality food and service is that customers will come back and will recommend the restaurant to friends.
Quality of a restaurant is measured by how they behave with customers. Customer service should be topmost priority. To meet the proper quality customers must be welcomed and greeted by smiling faces and to be seated promptly. The atmosphere and interior decoration have a big role for a good dining experience. The food in the restaurant should always fresh, prepared as described in the menu and customers choice, and delivered to the customers with great speed and correctly.
The staffs (waiters and the management) should be well dressed, comely, and sincere to the customers so that customers can have a pleasant and nice dining experience. In this regard as a busy restaurant Jose’s has limited off street parking if there is no parking place customer mainly have to park in a distance area. During Friday and Saturday nights after long wait customer seems dissatisfied but they didn’t complain about this as 70 customers says that they have seated promptly and the waiter is satisfactory. The interior decoration and conventional Mexican music creates a feel good mind for the customers. The main problem Jose’s is facing is with their delivery of food from the kitchen. As a result their internal customer (cook, Karetski) and external customers are not happy. It is clear from the survey out of 83 customers 25 says they have not served in a reasonable time. So the customers are giving a little amount of tips and in the long run Jose’s going to lose business. We can say that quality of this restaurant is poor regarding food preparation and delivery to the customers.
3.2 Question 2: What are the restaurant’s costs of poor quality?
As defined by Philip B. Crosby in his bookQuality Is Free, the cost of quality has two main components: the cost of good quality (or the cost of conformance) and the cost of poor quality (or the cost of non-conformance).The cost of poor quality affects internal and external costs resulting from failing to meet requirements.
Cost of poor quality: Internal Failure Costs
Internal failure costs are costs that are caused by products or services not conforming to requirements or customer needs and are found before delivery of products and services to external customers. They would have otherwise led to the customer not being satisfied. Deficiencies are caused both by errors in products and inefficiencies in processes.
In José’s, the external supply of inventory (tough chicken, wilted chicken) quality is poor. As a result, internal supplier (the cook) is not happy because it causes delays. He is not able to produce quality food in the right time. it takes extra time to prepare the food, like, which would take 12 minutes in an average now takes 20 minutes or so. So, mathematically, while with satisfactory supplies of goods they can serve 5 customers in an hour, but because of poor quality supplies they can serve only 3 customers in the same amount of time. So productivity is downgrading and service is delayed.
Cost of Poor Quality: External Failure Costs
External failure costs are costs that are caused by deficiencies found after delivery of products and services to external customers, which lead to customer dissatisfaction. In this restaurant they have external failure cost as well. The cost is customer complaints and bad will. External control failures include complaints, services, liabilities, recalls and most importantly reputation, particularly in case of Jose’s restaurant. Here the dissatisfaction of the customers is the main issue in focus. A restaurant business is a relationship business and it heavily relies on customer satisfaction and dissatisfied customer would not like to come back to the restaurant ever again and from this dissatisfied customer’s feedback about the restaurant other people would feel ignored to come and to be served in this restaurant. In recent days, the way customers are getting more or less dissatisfied with the services and with other facilities, Jose’s restaurant will have to pay heavily for the loss now and more in the long run as well.It is evident from the recent decline of Karetski’s tips.
3.3 Question 3: use some of the tools for improving quality to assess the situation at Jose’s-
For a company to remain competitive, quality must remain a priority. In the current competitive world most companies focus on Total Quality Management. The main focus of total quality management is customer satisfaction through continuous improvement. Customers, internal or external, are satisfied when their expectations regarding a service or product have been meeting or exceeded.
As discussed earlier in this case, because of the process’s inability to meet constant standards the service customers are getting now is not conformance to the specifications.
The management can expand the size of the restaurant. By including, more seating the waiting time of the customers will improve. Also, to provide a better service to the customers they may need to hire additional cooks, waiters, and hosts. Some may argue the cost will grow up but they are hiring more staff in order to serve extra customers. Here they are making extra profit from where they can pay them. To minimize the cost they can hire part time worker for busy days like Friday and Saturday nights. Although these improvements would primarily reduce waiting time, if the business succeed and grow, a substantial wait will gradually generate again. To solve this problem management can add a comfortable waiting lounge so that customers do not have to wait outside.
Jose’s could start offering take out service so that customers can collect the food from the hostess desk who does not like to wait outside.
To improve the level of quality at Jose restaurant all the employees and the management will have to be submitted and committed in the first place. They have to mark their very own contribution both individually and collectively to the improvement of quality.
Here, in this case, we have come to know that the supplier is not supplying quality goods consistently, without which the cook cannot prepare quality foods, and so the restaurant staffs are failing to provide the customers with best services and failing to gain desired customers’ satisfaction. So the suppliers will have to be maximally consistent in supplying quality goods consistently and they will have to realize their commitment showing required respect for the contracted services or whatever, the cook will have to try his level best to prepare possible best quality foods with whatever resources he gets, and the waiting staffs will have to carry out the rest of the serving responsibilities.The cook is really angry with the supply of the inventory he is receiving from the supplier. I think this is the main problem which creates many other problems. To resolve the problem manager should contact with the supplier and discuss the issue. Management should get someone who can go through a checklist make sure that they are getting best possible quality inventory. This would be their prevention cost and will keep expenses lower. However, if the delivery of raw ingredients keeps coming poor, Jose’s should seek a new supplier and strictly tell them to provide quality ingredients. The management cannot allow extra time to sort out the inventory which is satisfactory to make food and serve. Once the quality ingredients starts coming to Jose’s, the preparation time should be consistently hit in the twelve minutes goal and productivity will increase. Since the cooking time is the biggest customers complaint, and the major problem for the management, if they would be able to get back to the desired 12 minutes time the main issue will be solved.
Quality management is focused not only once obtaining quality, but also the means to achieve it for consistently. Quality management therefore uses quality assurance and control of processes as well as products to achieve more consistent quality. To maintain the standard it mainly focuses on the quality of the management and the focal point is customer satisfaction. Here the customers are the people and restaurant needs to make them satisfied by finding out the problems and solving them. They can do it by putting a complaint or suggestion box. When the problem can be find out then the next thing is to know why this is happening and solve the problem and continuously improve them by improving standard of the service of the staff by team building.
Once quality being established management should monitor the process to make sure that high performance level are maintained. Once again, data analysis tools such as Pareto charts, bar charts as well as statistical process control can be used to control the process.
4. Conclusion:
To conclude, it is worth to be pointing out that Jose used to be an excellent restaurant with its unique service and quality of food. They just momentarily fall off from their standard because of some problem in their supply chain and some other issues. However, if the restaurant management can successfully implement the changes as suggested above the internal supplier (the cook) and internal customers (Karetski and other staffs) will be happy. External customers will be happy as well and they will leave more tips. As a result business will gradually improve their quality and regain the previous position.