Operation Management Analysis: A Report on The Ladbury Restaurant

This report provides a detailed analysis of operation management within The Ladbury Restaurant. It begins with an introduction to operation management, emphasizing its importance in business efficiency and customer satisfaction. Task 1 explores the significance of operation management within the restaurant, examining various operational functions like kitchen systems, dining room systems, and inventory control. Task 2 delves into the 'Three Es' of effectiveness, efficiency, and economy, and assesses the tension between cost and quality. The report also evaluates the significance of performance objectives. Task 3 focuses on operational planning, including linear programming, critical path analysis, and quality management techniques such as Six-Sigma, to improve operations and outcomes. The report concludes with a summary of findings and recommendations for optimizing the restaurant's operational processes.

Operation Management in Business
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Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ...............................................................................................................................5
TASK 1.................................................................................................................................................5
Importance of operation management in The Ladbury Restaurant.................................................5
Analysis of operation function in The Ladbury Restaurant ............................................................6
M2 and Evaluation of current process model that use by The Ladbury Restaurant operations .....7
TASK 2 ................................................................................................................................................8
2a) M1 and M3................................................................................................................................8
Importance of the Three Es .............................................................................................................8
Assess the impact of the tension between cost minimization and quality maximization in The
Ladbury Restaurant..........................................................................................................................9
2b) and M3 Evaluation of significance of the five performance objectives..................................10
TASK 3...............................................................................................................................................11
3a) & D1 Justification of the need for operational planning and control of production process and
set of clearly defined operational outcomes for The Ledbury restaurant......................................11
3b) & D3 Assessing how linear programming adds value to a given production process and
evaluation of critical path analysis and network planning.............................................................13
3c) & D2 Network plan for operations in your chosen organisation indicating the resultant
critical path....................................................................................................................................15
3d) & D3 Role of quality management techniques are applied to improve operations in the
Ledbury restaurant.........................................................................................................................18
CONCLUSIONS................................................................................................................................19
REFERENCES...................................................................................................................................20
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Illustration Index
Illustration 1: Gantt chart....................................................................................................................16
Illustration 2: Network plan................................................................................................................17
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Index of Tables
Table 1: Linear programming.............................................................................................................14
Table 2: Network plan for growth and expansion of the Ledbury restaurant in UK..........................15
Table 3: Critical path calculation........................................................................................................17
Table 4: Six-Sigma analysis for quality control and management.....................................................18
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INTRODUCTION
Operation Management is a kind of business practice that creates high level of efficiency
within the firm. It is related to the transformation of material and labour efforts into services and
goods so that maximum profit can be earned (Dhoul, 2014). It is also concerned with planning,
organizing and monitoring of the manufacturing and development process of services. It includes
responsibility to ensure that business operations should be efficient in context of using limited
resources and preparing goods that can make business able to meet the requirement of customers .
With the help of operation management, a process to produce and distribute commodities can be
carefully managed. Major focus of it is on to improve efficiency and effectiveness of business
procedures (McNamara, 2016). The present study is related to operation management and to
understand its importance within the organization. For that, The Ledbury Restaurant is taken into
consideration. It serves British Cuisine to the customers at Notting Hill, London. During completion
of present study, various objectives will be achieved such as nature and importance of operation
management, link between operation management and strategic planning, method to organize
production process etc (Kriz, Gummesson and Quazi, 2013).
TASK 1
Importance of operation management in The Ladbury Restaurant
Importance of operation management in an organization cannot be underestimated. When
operations of a business are properly managed then entire functions of all the departments work
smoothly and effectively. The idea of effectiveness and efficiency of a company rotates around
operation management (Rao, 2010). To run the process more effectively, it requires high degree of
integration of resources so that product can supply at the right place and on the right time. For The
Ladbury Restaurant, operation management plays an important role to manage its day to day
operations and run its business in a right direction. There are various operations performed in the
restaurant’s workplace like kitchen systems, facilities systems, dining room systems, inventory
control, purchasing and receiving, waste control, preparation and production, recipe control etc
(Melville, Kenneth and Gurbaxani, 2004). Along with this, calculation and control of food,
beverage and labour cost are also the part of The Ladbury Restaurant’s operations. From the
evidence, it has been found that entire operations are managed by cited restaurant with the help of
operation management techniques.
For The Ladbury Restaurant, because of two major reasons, operation management is
important. First is to improve productivity that leads to enhance restaurant’s financial health. For
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instance, with the help of application of the operation management, if operation manager of cited
restaurant can be able to minimize waste during preparation of food and beverages or keep control
on effective use of existing inventory then it will save huge amount of cost (Li, Zhao and Chen,
2012). It will also increase wealth of The Ladbury Restaurant and save funds can be invested in
other business operations. So, it can be said that operation management helps in enhancing
productivity of the restaurant that brings improvements in financial health of the firm. On the other
hand, second reason which shows importance of operation management in the organization is that it
helps in meeting service user’s competitive priorities. Here, competitive priorities mean quality,
time, cost and flexibility (Bettley and et.al, 2005). These four have various dimensions that consider
during serving to the customers. For example, in case of The Ladbury Restaurant, when a guest
places an order of food then restaurant considers his or her priorities i.e. quality, cost, time and
flexibility. During ordering food, customers expect that restaurant will render quality food that will
deliver value against his money. Along with this, he or she will also expect that frequency of
serving food will be quick that will reduce his waiting time (Boer, 2003). To meet all these
competitive priorities of end users, operation management practice helps The Ladbury Restaurant.
Therefore, it can be said operation management is an important part of cited organization.
Analysis of operation function in The Ladbury Restaurant
There are various operation functions that are performed in The Ladbury Restaurant and
their analysis is as follows:
Kitchen system: Activities that are tagged in kitchen system of The Ladbury Restaurant are
pre labour cost tracking, daily scheduling, waste tracking, place purchasing orders, manage recipe
manual etc. From the analysis of kitchen system function of cited restaurant, it has been found that
food products are properly stocked and cooked at the right temperature. It has also been determined
that it assists in knowing about labour cost that incurs whole producing food items. Along with this,
kitchen system analyses significant impact of waste volume on restaurant cost. On the basis of this,
some actions to reduce waste has been taken by the firm (Restaurant Systems – Operations, 2016).
Dining room system: This operation function of The Ladbury Restaurant includes three
major activities such as rendering services to the guests, customer service standards and telephone
answering process (Craighead and Meredith, 2008). Analysis of the operation function shows that
all sub tasks are effectively managed. As per the requirements of customers, different types of food
service styles such as dining, casual table-service and small town dinner are used. Along with this,
with the application of consumer service, standards are followed to meet their expectations related
to the services of The Ladbury Restaurant.
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Facilities maintenance: Investigation of facilities maintenance of The Ladbury Restaurant
shows that restaurant has prepared a separate budget and scheduled for repairing and maintenance
of equipment, machines as well as other objects (Creswell, 2013). With the help of proactive
maintenance approach, it has increased prolong equipment’s life and reduced probability of
equipment’s failure.
Purchasing and receiving: To keep excellent control on financial aspects, The Ladbury
Restaurant ensures that all the purchasing should be authorized and invoiced with right pricing.
Analysis of this operation function shows that restaurant has prepared a check list of receiving
materials. For this, some basic procedures and policies have also been formulated. Along with this,
purchasing and receiving operation have helped the cited restaurant to keep control on inventory
level and tracking of consumption of different items.
Inventory control: In The Ladbury Restaurant, management has sufficient stock of raw goods
and other materials so that whenever, there is a need generate, these can be transformed into value
added services and products (Garner and Scott, 2013). From investigation of the following
operation function, it has been identified that for keeping control on inventory, cited restaurant has
to analyse availability of materials time to time present in current inventory level so that in case if
any product is at safety stock level or below the level then order can be placed to increase level of
that good in the stock.
M2 and Evaluation of current process model that use by The Ladbury Restaurant operations
The flow structure of the process that used to produce a service or product may impact on
layout structures, technology decisions, resources, work practices etc (Melville, Kenneth and
Gurbaxani, 2004). in this context, a process can be categorized into four types which are as follows:
Job shop: It is a flexible operation which has included several activities via a task has to be passed.
Under this method, it is not important that all activities to be execute on all goods and the sequence
of preparation of all products can be different from the others. Under this, customization level is
relatively very high but volume of products are low (Olhager, Rudberg and Wikner, 2001).
Equipments used for development of the goods flexible in nature and for this, skilled workforce
use. Further, many of the companies have used job shop process for manufacturing of the goods.
They make commodities on the order because particular needs of next customer is completely
unknown and timing of repeat orders from the same consumers is unpredictable (Process flow
structure, 2016). Application area of job shop process is custom metal processing shop, hospital
emergency rooms, custom plastic injection molding shop, or making customized cabinets.
Batch process: The following process different from the job shop process in terms of volume,
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quantity and variety (Stevenson and Hojati, 2007). Here, a batch of one product is complete and
then production of next product start. Entire activities not performs in standard sequence and whole
process is less flexible. In this process, different production runs for different products. Volume in
batch process at moderate level but varieties of the products have in huge number. Application area
of batch process flow is scheduling air travel, manufacturing garments, furniture manufacturing,
making components that feed an assembly line, processing mortgage loans and manufacturing
heavy equipment (Process flow structure, 2016).
Line flow: A line flow process lies between the batch and continuous process method. Under this,
volumes of the good are high and products or services more standardized. It allows to organize
resources in proper manner to make the commodities more perfect and according to the set
standards (Toni, 2012). Sequence of performing the work is fixed and same process repeats over
and over with small variations in the end products. Manufacturing orders are not directly lined to
customers orders. Strategy that is used in line flow process is prepare and store it in warehouses so
that when end user place order, the product can be supply. In the case of auto-mobiles, appliances,
personal computers and toys development, the following process use (Van Mieghem, 2003). In
addition to this, in fast-food restaurants and cafeterias, line flow process is also apply.
Continuous flow: It is used in that case when products are highly customized and volume is too
high. For this, a strict set manufacturing process follows that tightly linked process segments. Along
with this, there is also decided that how materials move through the process where resources are
highly optimized (Stevenson and Hojati, 2007). Area where continuous flow can apply is petroleum
refineries, chemical plants, and plants making beer, steel, electric generation plant and processed
food items.
In the context of The Ladbury Restaurant, organization has used line flow process to prepare
food and beverages. The reason of using this is similar process has repeated over and over with little
variations in the products.
TASK 2
2a) M1 and M3
Importance of the Three Es
The aim of The Ladbury Restaurant is to effectively utilize existing and limited resources by
maintaining quality of food and beverages (Olhager, Rudberg and Wikner, 2001). To achieve
effectiveness, efficiency and economy in business, restaurant has needed to optimized its present
resources by managing various operational activities. In this regards, the Three Es are as follows:
Effectiveness: It is used to measure whether the work achieve expected objectives or set standards
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or not. It is may be possible that employees not optimally efficient but may achieve perfect quality.
It is hard to measure effectiveness in numerical terms but from the attitude of the end users, it can
be easy to determine effectiveness of the work or a product (Harland, Brenchley and Walker, 2003).
The Ladbury Restaurant can use it to meet the objectives and aim of the business. For this, cited
restaurant can conduct a survey to measure how well end users expectations have been satisfied.
The design of questionnaire may be a good way to analyse that whether the cites restaurant is able
to meet the needs of consumers (Gadde, Håkansson, and Persson, 2010). Along with this, by giving
them a chance to mention their suggestions in questionnaire so that loopholes can be resolve.
Efficiency: It is a simplest method to measure of the work and its progress. It helps in ensure the
utilization of the resources in such a way so that wastages can be minimize (Prahalad and Krishnan,
2002). In the other words, efficiency is a level of performance that can describe a process which
requires the lowest amount of the inputs to generate high volume of output. It relates to the use all
inputs to produce expected outcomes including personal time and energy (Frohlich and Westbrook,
2001). Efficiency is an essential element for The Ladbury Restaurant because organization has
limited resources. So, it makes sense to save them and transform into the right form so that expected
outcomes can be meet. It minimizes the overall costs of cited restaurant and maximize financial
health.
Economy: It deals with how the organization is working and at which extent it operation make
impacts on community and other aspects of country. The Ladbury Restaurant purchases resources
and raw materials in bulk quantity and because of this, the overall cost of purchasing material
becomes low. On the basis of this, restaurant able to achieve economic of scale and maintain
financial health (Norberg-Johnson, 2011).
Assess the impact of the tension between cost minimization and quality maximization in The
Ladbury Restaurant
There is a strong relation between cost minimization and quality maximization. The aim of
cost estimation is to achieve the most cost effective way to deliver goods and services according to
the set quality standards (Foss and Knudsen, 2013). There are various kinds of benefits of
minimizing cost. One is it lowers down per unit cost which saves more money of the organization.
Same concept applies on The Ladbury Restaurant where firm buys raw materials and other goods in
large quantity so that overall cost of the material become reduce (Plenert, 2002). It saves money of
restaurant which help in maintain cash flow within the firm. Another advantage of cost
minimization is achieve higher profit margin. By reducing overall cost of purchasing price of the
goods, it helps The Ladbury Restaurant to offer food and beverages at affordable prices. It brings
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increment in sales of services and which leads to increase profits margin of cited restaurant.
On the other hand, quality maximization means to deliver quality goods to the customers
which deliver value of their money (Jones and Graham, 2003). In the case of The Ladbury
Restaurant, it focuses on imporving quality of food and beverages and meet set quality standards so
that expectations of the consumers related to quality of products can be meet. Cited restaurant
adopts various quality management practices that assist in managing food and beverages quality.
Along with this, the organization also adopts some process by which quality of the products check
to ensure that prepare food or beverage is according to the set standard or not (Devaraj and Kohli,
2001). Maximizing and improving quality may be more time consuming as well as expensive. It
goes against cost minimization concept. Due to this, it becomes hard for The Ladbury Restaurant to
reduce cost instead of maximize quality of final product. Due to this, organization not able to
maintain balance between both cost minimization and quality maximization. It leads to create
difficulties for the firm to meet expectations of the customers and demand gap in the market (De
George, 2008). It may lead to unhappy end users and outcome of this may suffer by The Ladbury
Restaurant in terms of losses. But if, restaurant able to review and determine difficulties, bring
improvements in services, ensuring that demand as well as expectations of the consumers are
effectively meet and reduce and control over cost per unit than it will help in increase sales of
services as well as profit level with rapid growth.
2b) and M3 Evaluation of significance of the five performance objectives
There are five performance objectives of The Ladbury Restaurant which are as follows:
Cost: For the company, it is necessary that to make a balance between overall cost and the cost
price of per unit product. Assessment of this performance objective with respect to The Ladbury
Restaurant define that cited restaurant has effectively managed between overall cost and per unit
pricing. Because of this, the final prices of products has affordable and it has increased profit
margin (Norberg-Johnson, 2011).
Dependability: For an organization, it is important to stick on promises which has been made to
customers. A success of a business is completely depend on the consumers support. If the end users
becomes happy then they will show trust and loyalty towards the company (Bettley and et.al, 2005).
In the context of The Ladbury Restaurant, its business is highly depended on customers. Evaluation
of dependability performance objectives shows that cited restaurant has tried to deviated from its
promises and ensure that all the guest will get right quality of products on economic prices.
Flexibility: To deliver right services to the customers, organization needed to adopt flexibility
approach so that according to the needs and expectations of end users, services and products can be
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modified (Colina-Coca and et.al, 2014). With the respect of The Ladbury Restaurant, evaluation of
flexibility as a performance objective, it has identified that food preparation process of firm has
flexible and as per the consumer needs, food and beverages products have prepared without any
kind of delay.
Quality: It is main objective of The Ladbury Restaurant because it makes reputation of business in
the marketplace (Stevenson and Hojati, 2007). From evaluation of the following objective, it has
found that organization has set some quality standards to ensure that whether customers are
receiving right quality of food and beverages or not. Because of this reason, consumers like to visit
the restaurant again and again.
Speed: At the time of offering food and beverages services, The Ladbury Restaurant also focus on
speed of delivery of order to the customer table (Toni, 2012). Assessment of this objective defines
that organization has minimized the time duration between order preparing to its serve. For this,
some unnecessary steps and processes have removed so that order can be quickly deliver to the end
user place. It has reduced the waiting time of the customers to receive the food and beverages.
TASK 3
3a) & D1 Justification of the need for operational planning and control of production process and
set of clearly defined operational outcomes for The Ledbury restaurant
Operational planning can be defined as a systematic process of production of the different products
and services. This process comprise input, production system and final outcome (Gay, Mills and
Airasian, 2011). On the other hand operational control can be defined as a process of evaluation and
monitoring of the final outcomes and results of the Ledbury restaurant. It focuses on the progress of
the different projects of The Ledbury. There are lots of requirements behind the operational
planning and control which are described as under:
Need for operational planning:
 Operational planning is required to estimate demand of the products and services of The
Ledbury restaurant in coming future (Jones and Graham, 2003).
 Along with this, for assessing customer’s needs and requirements and expectation and
current trends of the whole restaurant industry is also one of the major requirement of the
company.
 The Ledbury restaurant needs to develop appropriate operational plan for managing sales
and inventory of the organization (Kriz, Gummesson and Quazi, 2013).
 For allocating roles and responsibilities to different personnel restaurant needs to develop
appropriate operational plan.
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 An appropriate operational and strategic plan is required for managing and distributing all
resources in effective manner.
 Operational planning is required for developing an appropriate framework which helps in
attaining aim and objectives of the organization in effective manner (Lacity and Leslie,
2000).
 For developing a network plan for achieving different aspects of all departments Ledbury
needs to develop a suitable operational plan.
Therefore, operational planning is needed for attaining aim and objectives of the Ledbury
restaurant in effective manner. Along with this operational control is also one of the important task
for each and every organization which is required for completing different others activities on
predefined time and cost. Control and monitoring is required for measuring the effectiveness and
progress of the final results of different projects of the restaurant (Li, Zhao and Chen, 2012). Along
with this, it is required for quality and inventory control in the organization. Further, operational
control is needed for managing and evaluating the final outcomes of the organization. Overall,
growth and development of The Ledbury are the major requirement of the operational planning and
control.
Operational outcomes:
Operational outcomes can be defined as a finished goods and services which are produced
by the organization for attaining long term and short term goals in effective manner (Gadde,
Håkansson, and Persson, 2010). Operational outcomes are based on organization objectives of the
Ledbury which include cost, quality, dependency, speed and flexibility. So, major objectives of this
restaurant are described as under: Low cost: Appropriate planning and control have helped reducing the cost of different
activities of the organization. Along with this, appropriate planning plays important role in
declining defects in final services and wastage in raw materials. All these helps in producing
low cost finished goods and services (Plenert, 2002). Overall, low cost if one of the major
operational outcomes of the restaurant which helps in attaining the cost objective of the
Ledbury. But on the other hand for attaining these objectives organization has invested huge
amount of money in technical machinery and equipments which affect the budget of the
company in negative manner it can raise the total cost of the restaurant (Gay, Mills and
Airasian, 2011). But, for maintaining low cost the Ledbury has been focused on improving
efficiency and reducing waste. Flexible: Flexibility in operational and production process is also one of the important
outcome of the Ledbury restaurant. As per the objectives of the organization, company
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