Integral Logistics Management and Operations

Question: Discuss about the Integral Logistics Management and Operations. Answer: Introduction The study illustrates about the concept of service package in details in the perspective of service operations of a small medium enterprise in Australia. However, it can be said that for describing the service operations, a restaurant of Australia is chosen. Spice Temple is the restaurant chosen for the study in order to describe its service package while proposing required changes in its process of service operations. It is seen that operations managers of the companies often face difficulties in the active participation of the customer and other aspects of the services of the restaurant. The service package framework helps the operational managers in establishing the unique features of the service environment offered by the restaurant before they learn to cope up with the emerging challenges they face in the competitive environment. Apart from that, the strategies that are used by the restaurant while utilizing the service package framework is described in detail in the study. Spice Temple is a restaurant that serves modern Chinese cuisines that culinary focuses on the lesser known regions of China. The menus of the restaurant are designed in order to share and enjoy the banquet style in the seductive and intimate surroundings. The restaurant is driven by the philosophy of providing world-class service to the customers while conveying deep respect for the quality of the service and modern Chinese foods in Australia. Spice Temple claims that they are providing unique Chinese cuisines that are rarely seen in different parts of Australia. The restaurant is known for its optimum use of its service operations in its field of operations (Meng et al., 2015). Due to this, the restaurant is known for its excellent service and food quality in its two branches of Melbourne and Sydney in Australia. Regarding the service package of Spice Temple in Australia it can be categorised into five aspects such as supporting facility, facilitating goods, information, explicit services and implicit services. The physical resources of the restaurant in Melbourne and Sydney along with its technology and other physical assets are considered as the supporting facility. The service and the quality foods provided to the customers falls under facilitating goods. Information or operations data that are provided by the customer while enabling customized and efficient services (Schnsleben, 2016). The explicit services of Spice Temple are the benefits that Spice Temple is the intrinsic features or the service that is provided to the customers. On the other hand, the implicit services of the restaurant is defined as the psychological benefits of the restaurant that the customers can feel such as the ambience, sound, lighting, quality of foods, taste, aroma of the foods, parking lot, security of the re staurant, etc. This is the total service package that the operations department of the restaurant maintains in order to provide a good service to the customers while meeting their satisfaction (Lovelock Patterson, 2015). Characteristics of the service operations Restaurant falls under both products based and service based operations. The operational manager of Spice Temple is focused on providing quality foods and service to the customers. The characteristics of the service operations of the restaurant depend on the elements of service package in the restaurant. The service package of Spice Temple is defined as the bundle of implicit and explicit benefits that are performed within the supporting facility by using the facilitated goods of the restaurant. For instance, the customers come to eat in the restaurant (supporting facility), the customer purchase a dish (facilitating goods) from the restaurant (Gaiardelli et al., 2014). The cook of the hotel is cooking for the customer (service). The service concept of Spice Temple is defined as the expectations and perception of the service that comes on the minds of employers, customers, lenders and shareholders. The service operation of the Spice Temple in Australia is characterised as the open tr ansformation process that involves the process of converting input to the desired outputs through the different application of resources. Inputs refer to consumers, outputs refer to satisfied customers, and resources include material, family, information, consumer, labour as well (Alexander, 2013). The service system of the restaurant is referred to as the layout, procedures and equipment that are used by the restaurant while providing service and maintaining a delivery and quality standards. Te revolution in the service industry relates with the shift of service economy in the country with the proliferation in terms of service automation. The improved service operations of a restaurant can improve the psychological boost of the operations manager of the restaurant. The delicacy of the food and the ambience of the restaurant are good while attracting more customers towards it (Khanna, 2015). The characteristics of the service operations of Spice Temple lie in the fact that it is specialised in the different cuisines of China that are popular in the lesser regions of the country. The special aspect of the restaurant is that it provides delicacies to the Aussies that are not available in other Chinese restaurants in Melbourne and Sydney. It can be said that the explicit services of Spice Temple are characterised as the benefits that are readily observable and have different sensual benefits that are provided by the operational department of the restaurant to the customers of the company. The menu of Spice Temple and its ambience is the added factor that can improve the service package framework of Spice Temple (Maglio Spohrer, 2013). Relationship and challenges between operational productivity and services There has been always challenging area that organizations face in the expected services, and the actual operational productivity. As a company in the service sector, the productivity of the service is important for the increase in the profitability of the company. The relationship of the operational productivity and the services of the organization are inevitable. The operations of a restaurant include many processes that include technology implementation, innovation and different types of personnel who have a particular responsibility in providing excellent customer service to the customers. It will not only help in building a good rapport with the existing customers but also it will lead to attract new customers through word of mouth (WOM) promotion (Hallikas et al., 2014). It can be said that the managers of Spice Temple in Australia in many cases face difficulties in managing the operations of the restaurant in the two locations. The operational department of the company sometimes faces difficulties in order to meet the demands of the customers in the restaurant. When there is more rush in the restaurant in the evening time, then the manager of the restaurants is not able to provide the world class service to the customers. Therefore it can be said that the company can lose its reputation in the market that will lead to negative impression towards the customers (Wang et al., 2013). Finally, the restaurant will lose the customer. After that, the customers will not do any word of promotion for the restaurant. The service operations also face challenges due to the lack of skill of the officials and executives who are associated with the hotel operations. Lack of skill of the operations executive leads to poor customer service to the customers. The challe nges of the organization would finally relate to the different types of elements of the service package operations (Wiesner et al., 2015). The strategies that Spice Temple used in order to accomplish the organizational goals of the enterprise are manufactured as per the operations of the company. Since it is a restaurant, the organization is dependent both on its products and services. The products are the foods and delicacies of Spice Temple to the Aussies. Aussies are fond of trying delicacies of different parts of the world. It is already mentioned in the description of the organization that the restaurant is specialised in serving delicacies in Chinese cuisines that are popular in China but are very rare (de Blok et al., 2014). It is a competitive advantage to the restaurant in the region. The company have to increase its competitiveness by improving its internal strategies as well as to the external strategies while increasing the profitability of the company. The operational strategy includes the supply change management as well as the management of the employees that includes in the elements of the service packag e operations framework. Apart from that, there are other models such as SERVQUAL which is used in the operations in order to serve the customers in a fast way (Parida et al., 2014). The strategies are to be improved in a way so that it can make use of its resource in its optimum level. Recommendations are provided in order to improve the service operations. Operations of a restaurant are seen to have a number of characteristics that effect the customer satisfaction. In the study, it is seen that the concept of the service package facilities that the restaurant in Australia i.e. Spice Temple has been using to accomplish its organization goals. The organization goal of the restaurant is excellent customer satisfaction. The concept of the different elements of the service package framework facilitates the operation manager of Spice Temple while improving the efficiency of the operation. However, it can be said that the elements of service package will help in improving the performance objective of the different operational process in achieving customer expectations. Ultimately, it will lead to customer satisfaction. The business strategy of the Spice Temple is to provide value for money in terms of food and service through the operational efficiency. Apart from that, it is seen that the restaurant can improve their profit as well as the po pularity in the market while providing excellent customer satisfaction. In terms of implicit service, queue management is an important aspect while managing a long queue that enables the operations to create an effect in the customer satisfaction. Spice Temple can maintain a single queue for the customers in terms of breakfast and dinner. The restaurant manager can maintain a proper communication with the customers if there is a long queue at time of dinner for booking a table and make them sit in the bar or in the waiting area (Gilmour et al., 2013). Lighting and decoration could be improved by adding more spot lighting and prop lighting that will change the mood of the ambience in the restaurant. Flowers can be added in the table at the time of dinner service. Conclusion In terms of explicit services, procedures should be adopted in order to decrease the through put time. It will help in the increase the speed of the service delivery. The decrease in the process of service delivery will eventually simplify many activities in the service operations. The manager of Spice Temple must analyze the process map while finding the ways of improving its efficiency (Lee Lee, 2014). Skill development among the service staffs of the Spice Temple is a vital aspect that can increase the speed of service delivery as well as maintaining the quality of the service provided to the customers. It is to be recommended that the operations manager of Spice Temple must include the service staffs while designing the work of the restaurant. A buddy system should be created in the job trainings for the staff (Rushton, Croucher Baker, 2014). In terms of facilitating goods, a good inventory management will always help the restaurant in achieving its performance objective in the restaurant. A good quality of the inventory ingredients will eventually improve the quality of holding enough inventories and facilitating goods. It is responsible for substantial increase in the flexibility and speed of the service. In the process of supply chain management, Spice Temple can involve into bulk purchasing that will reduce the cost of operations and advantage of dependability in the organization. The restaurant can adopt a synchronization strategy that will help in achieving flawless supply of right products in correct time at right place (Christopher, 2016). References Alexander, K., (2013).Facilities management: theory and practice. Routledge. Christopher, M., (2016).Logistics supply chain management. Pearson UK. de Blok, C., Meijboom, B., Luijkx, K., Schols, J. Schroeder, R., (2014). 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