Theory of Constraints Applicable to Service

Identify the system’s constraint itself. Learning that the true constraint is often a lack of availability of a specific skill or piece of equipment is helpful in quickly identifying the constraint, and the manager is encouraged to continually ask “why” to diagnose the constraint.

13. Which of the following characteristics makes it EASIER to measure the quality of a service, relative to that of a product or facilitating good?

Managers of public agencies have complex issues to deal with, that is made more challenging due to a variety of constraints.

For example if Tesco’s was making a new product and they were given a limited amount of money to invest in this product, this would limit how advanced this product and how useful this product would end up to be. A constraint for tescos would be the price war, all supermarkets, retailers etc want the best prices for their customers and

Alex with great success utilizes the theory of constraints to come across Bottlenecks in the manufacturing plant. Jonah explained to Alex that bottlenecks are any resources whose capacity is equal to or less then the demand placed upon it. Alex has to identify the bottlenecks in the system and try to eliminate them, which will allow the control of the flow of materials in the system. This will lead to the decrease inventories, decrease operational expenses, and increase the throughput of the whole plant.

2. Using the Servuction model as a point of reference, categorize the factors that influenced this service encounter. (Typical responses should be similar to those provided in Exhibit I).

Procedures inherent in the Theory of Constraints include, but are not limited to the following: identify the weakest (rather than the strongest) link, do not place a greater strain on the system that the weakest link (rather than the strongest link) can handle, and concentrate improvement efforts on strengthening the weakest (rather than the strongest) link. As such, answers A, B, and C are incorrect. To be effective, improvement efforts must be focused on the constraint, as stated in answer D.

Effective service delivery (include: delivering service on time, delivering service on budject, dealing with difficult customers, handling and resolving complaints)

As a Consultant service standards and physical evidence are used as an effective strategy for meeting customer needs and expectation within an organization. The

When considering operational constraints we looked at people, location, premises, equipment, money, materials, other related activities and services.

18.   The dimensions of product and service quality are too abstract to be applied to be applied operationally TRUE

Service Quality as described by (William G. Zikmund, 1993) “is the degree to which the performance of service provider’s matches customer expectations. It can also be defined as those essential characteristics of a service that measures its excellence”.

Service customer interaction can also be between the customer and technology. The customer may be required to interact with technology in a technology based service encounter to experience the service on offer. In such a service encounter the customer is in control and might be willing to participate but not possessing the necessary skills, knowledge and abilities to operate the machinery for example for a customer to purchase goods online or book a hotel reservations using the company’s website requires the customer to be computer literate hence when not and fails to place an order the service on offer would be deemed by the specific customers as of poor quality. Lovelock and Gummesson (2004) suggest that the service offer and encounter are less variable when machine-intensive technologies are utilised in service encounters since variability of the service encounter posses a great threat to the quality of service on offer. In a case where the customer successfully interacts with the technology in the service

Title: Discuss the four dimensions of customer service in a company. Give examples to illustrate your points.

Sureshchandra, Rajendran and Anantharaman (2002) identified five critical aspects of service quality from the customers point of view namely core service/service product, human element of service delivery, systematisation of service delivery, tangibles of service and lastly social responsibility in order to conceptualise service quality. Table 1 will further provide an explanation to the five critical aspects of service quality as outlined by Sureshchandra et al (2002).