Report: Analyzing Operations Management Challenges in Restaurants

This report provides an in-depth analysis of the challenges faced by operations managers in the restaurant industry. It begins with an executive summary and a literature review, focusing on the restaurant business and its growth. The report identifies key challenges such as changing technologies, globalization, changing customer expectations, job design changes, quality management, and global manufacturing. It then discusses the impact of these challenges on the restaurant business. Furthermore, the report delves into three critical areas of operations management that significantly affect restaurant success: supply chain design, inventory management, and the need for managers to adapt to changing market dynamics. The report emphasizes the importance of efficient operations management in ensuring profitability, customer satisfaction, and long-term survival in the competitive restaurant industry. This assignment, contributed by a student, is available on Desklib, a platform offering AI-based study tools for students.

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Executive Summary
This following assignment is a report on a business challenges for the operational managers and
management. With the advancement of technology, there has been a severe increase in the
complexity of different issues that are keeping neck to neck with the advancement. In today’s
world where every manager is highly trained and expert of his relevant field, there are number of
issues that they face while performing their jobs. In this assignment we are going to discuss
about the operations manager and the issues that affects the successful working of the operations
management. An operation manager is a senior authority who supervise or keeps an eye on the
process of production of goods and services, and his another main duty is to make sure that the
organization is running smoothly and efficiently and the organization is meeting the expectations
of its consumer and its client (Render 2015). The meaning or the definition of the operation
management is as same as operations manager; operation management is that department or part
of the organization that works on increasing the efficiency of the organization by reducing
wastage and by using the raw material and labor in best possible manner to convert them into
goods and services (Enderson 2013).
Literature Review
In this report we are require to choose a business for further analysis. So we choose the business
of restaurant. A restaurant is a place where people go for best dining experiences and
entertainment in return they have to pay a certain amount for such entertainment and experience
(Jeo Bastinich 2017). With the advancement of technology this industry has came out as one of
the fastest growing industry in the world’s economy. United States is on number one with having
the market size of restaurant industry of around 782$ billion dollars, on the second spot it is
China with having 482$ billion dollars following to China there are a number of other countries
like Japan, India, Brazil, United Kingdom with having more than 150$ billion dollar market size
of restaurant industry (Bourdian 2015). By the year 2019 the revenue of this industry is expected
to surpass 141$ billion dollars mark globally (Meyer 2010). A restaurant is place that provides
high quality food and drink services to its customers. In this era of throat cutting competition
every restaurant is working on the ways and techniques of improving the quality of the food and
the ways in which they can perform different functions efficiently and effectively. Every
restaurant around the world has to face different issues at different time; these issues can be
menu issues, location issue, competition issue, price issues etc (Benjamin 2012). Every
restaurant has operations manager that tries their best to minimize the waste and increase the
efficiency of the organization so that it ultimately increases the profitability of the organization
(Slack 2011). These operations managers have to face many challenges, some of these
challenges are as under:
 Changing Technologies: This is the first most challengeable issue that has to face by the
operations manager. Changing technologies are increasing the competition at such a fast
pace that if the organization is not adapting such changes then they will certainly end up

losing all their profits (Mceffe 2016). Changing technology is not only increasing
competition but it is also increasing the confusion in the minds of the employees. As new
technology is coming up with newer and newer hardware’s and software’s, this
soft/hardware are not easy to understand hence it creates a lots of confusion in the minds
of the employees. Another issue of changing technology is the increase in the expenditure
of the restaurant, installing newer technology means new expense for the organization.
Now opening up a restaurant is not limited to foods and drinks only but only those
restaurants are going to be successful that are having a strong financial back up plus those
restaurants who are willing to change their structure and way of doing business as per the
demand of the industry as this industry works in a dynamic environment that means
which is constantly changing (Gr 2016).
 Continued Globalization: Globalization is process that enables a domestic organization
to stretch its legs internationally; globalization has made it possible for every country no
matter if it is 1rst world or the 2nd world to perform business operation internationally
(Baghwat 2011). This process has emerged as a biggest threat for the Restaurant industry
as there are no restrictions on the entrants in this industry. Globalization has increased the
competition in terms of newer and newer cuisines, machinery & equipments, efficient
and effectiveness of doing business. In this industry only those players are going to rule
and to stay, who are capable of surviving all these challenges (D'suza 2017).
 Changing Customer Expectations: Another issue or a challenge that is faced by the
operations manager are is to cope up with the customers’ expectations. In this fast
changing world where nothing is constant, the operation managers need to identity
wastage area to eliminate them so that with that saved cost they can invent or introduce
something as per the expectations of the consumers (Rodrik 2015). Customer
expectations never remains constant, there are only 20 out of 100 customers that remains
loyal to their brand and to their specific taste. All other keep on changing as per the
fashion or the trend, so it is a major challenge that is faced by the operations manager of
the restaurant to keep meeting the expectations of the customers to keep them happy and
to maintain the profitability of the restaurant. Restaurant industry is the only industry that
needs to keep on inventing new dishes, because the humans of 21rst century are way
more habitual of changing their preferences and tastes. So in this industry only that player
will make a room for itself that is capable of inventing newer and newer dishes.
 Changing Job Designs: Job designs means the structure of the work to meet the physical
and behavioral needs of the employees, job designs are constantly changing with the
increase in competition, earlier employees were trained to perform only the tasks that
were relevant to their fields but now each and every employee whether they are in
restaurant industry or in any other industry is multi trained for performing multi-tasking
(G 2014). This constantly changing job designs has made the operations manager more
concerned about efficiency and affectivity of the employees and the work done.
 Quality management: The operation manager in a restaurant business will have to
continuously work upon the quality of the food and services provided. Quality

management can be defined as an action of supervising all the activities so that the
quality of the products and services do not get compromised at any level. This is one of
the main and the biggest challenge that the operation manager has to face. As if at any
point the quality standards falls in future then this fall might result in a huge loss of the
profitability of the business organization (Karen Martin 2009). Restaurants operations
manager need to work upon this as if only for once, the customers get low quality food or
services they will never come back to that particular restaurant. Hence quality
management is an important aspect of this industry. In this industry mostly the main the
reason of the failure of many restaurants are the low quality, so in order to have a loyal
customer base and to ensure a long run survival the restaurant management must appoint
a quality manager or an operation manager that will keep an eagle eye on the quality of
the products and services of the business organization (Mauch 2016).
 Global manufacturing: In restaurant business global manufacturing is concerned with
the manufacturing of the machines and equipments that are used in the kitchens. In this
business of restaurants, in almost every corner around the world is manufacturing top
class machines and equipments. This has led to a severe increase in the competition
amongst the players of this industry (Thomas 2012). The operations manager need to
keep in his concern about the global manufacturing process so that they can timely make
an action to cope up with the competitors.
Above are the challenges that might face by the operations manager. These issues are so
complex that operation managers need to make proper action plan to cope up. These
challenges are capable of affecting the business in an adverse way that will result in the loss
of profitability; loss of loyal customers, employees will shift to more profitable and growing
organizations. Hence these issues must be resolved at their earliest, if the organization wants
to ensure its long run survival.
Now if we talk about operations management, then it is that department of the organization
which is concerned with performing each and every task of the organization in the most
efficient manner so that the organizations resources do not get waste or used unnecessarily.
The official definition of operations management is as follow: Operations management refers
to the administration of the business practices to create the highest level of efficiency
possible within an organization. We will now discuss three area of operation management
that is most likely to affect the success of the restaurant business.
 Supply chain design: Supply chain design involves the selection of the supply chain; in
simpler words it is to structure the supply chain, selecting partners, and location, and
warehouse, modes of transport and information systems (Christopher 2000). In the
restaurant business the operations management or the manager needs to design the supply
chain in such a manner that the organization do not suffer at any point because of the
loose supply chain. A supply chain can easily affect the restaurant business as if the
delivery of the raw material is not provided on time then the restaurant will suffer as they

will not have the fresh supplies of the raw material which will affect their quality, modes
of transportation is another factor that can affect the success of the restaurant, the
operation manager must choose such a mode of transport that is not costly and which is
capable of transporting maximum raw material on even a short notice. Supply chain is the
most important thing to be considered in a restaurant business. As in food industry a
restaurant or a café or a bar is only dependent on their supply chain. If the connection
between the restaurant or the supply chain gets break at any point then it will incurs huge
cost for the restaurant owners. So an operation manager must keep an eye on the supply
chain and make sure that everything in this chain is under control and working well in
advance so that if by chance any uncertainty occurs then it can be controlled by the
possible means (Greny 2012).
 Managing inventory: Inventory management is another factor that might affect the
success of a restaurant. Inventory management means keeping an eye on the process of
flow of inventory from the manufacturer to the warehouse and from the warehouse to the
points of sale. This is a very important aspect of operations management. Inventory
management must be performed by an expert operation manager who will not only make
sure about the efficiency but he will ensure that the goods are being transported safely
from the manufacturer to the ware house and from ware house to the point of sale
(Chopra 2014). It is very important for the management to keep safe and secure the
inventory as any damage to the inventory will result in increase of the expenditure which
is totally opposite to the objective of the operations management. Another thing in
managing inventory is that the operation manager works upon increasing the efficiency
and affectivity of the employees and the organization and if the organization is having
large inventories then that will result in huge wastage and in food industry it would not be
recommendable to have large inventories of stocks as it will not be a good practice to
serve food that has been stored from a long time (Barbasor 2012). Hence inventory
management is also an important factor that might affect the success of the restaurant
business (Kaminsky 2013).
 Quality management: The task of maintaining the quality of the products and services
falls under quality management. The main purpose of quality management is to work
upon maintaining or improving the quality of the products or services that are provided
by the organization (Hoyle 2014). Maintaining the quality sometimes becomes such a big
task for an organization that any little loophole ends up affecting the profitability of the
organization. In restaurant business the quality management holds lots more importance
because every human being around the world goes to the restaurant not only to eat food
but to eat quality food (Gitlow 2015). Hence if in the restaurant business the quality of
product or services falls then it will cost the restaurant a huge loss in terms of customers,
competition and ultimately in the profitability.
Conclusion

Above is a report prepared on a restaurant business and the issues that are faced by the
operations manager and about the factors of operation management that affects the success
of the business. Here is concise and a clear conclusion provided. Operation manager
indeed plays an important role in managing the operations of an organization that increases
the efficiency and reduces the wastage of the resources. There are several factors that the
operation managers need to take into their concern for the successful completion of the
tasks. A restaurant business can grow easily as it is one of those growing industries whom
revenue is expects to be doubled in next couple of years (The Uniform Systems for
Restaurants 2013). But this is only possible if operations manager performs his duty with
full dedication and make sure that no employee puts his efforts into the wasteful activities.
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