Evaluating the Strategic Role of Operations Management at Nandos

Evaluating the Strategic Role of Operations Management at NandosNandos peck be described as a casual dining eating place, which originated in S egressh Africa with a Mozambique/ Portuguese theme. Nandos got its summons from one of its fo down the stairss Fernando who had Nandos in the subsequent part of his name. The Restaurant chain was founded in 1987 and has grown to operate in over thirty countries in over quint continents. (www.nandos.co.uk) Most commonly, Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, India, Malaysia, Mauritius , Pakistan, Singapore, Zimbabwe, the united States of America and The united kingdom in which Nandos is trying to build a finger licking tradition. They received the proudest accolade for excellence ( three stars) in the best companies annual accreditation awards. It is important to amply light here that amongst both told the large companies which entered for this award , Nandos was the only one who received the award. (www.nandos.co.uk)Nandos is specialized in serving s dejectiondalmongering and chips , sift or mashed potatoes. They specialize in selling flames peri peri yellowed and from a personal bear witness of view I c completely(prenominal) that they do no only specialize in the selling flamed scandalmongering grills , I think that they puzzle revolutionarised the focusing in which we eat chicken and chips in the united kingdom. Chicken and chips in the united kingdom atomic number 50 to an extent be con human facered staple regimen, and with the establishment of Nandos in the agricultural , its presentation and serving has been wedded a total over hall. The name peri peri is a south Afri lot Swahili word for what is cal direct in Africa the birds eye cayenne.. This chilli is exclusively indigenous to Africa. The chicken in Nandos is served in either quarters, halves or a beat chicken. (www.nandos.co.uk)There atomic number 18 also stillterfly breast which be sold exclusively to the Nandos eating places in th e united Kingdom. Added to chicken, Nandos also serves pitas, burgers, salads, wings and raps in their eating places. In some otherwise countries, Nandos sells, a large stand with a spit of chicken breast and large peppers , chicken livers and a chicken and rice dish served in a traditional Portuguese copper dish. Nandos serves a wide range of drinks, but they argon well up k in a flashn for their conceit of serving bottomless drinks, which gives the guest the opportunity to drink and endless as much soft drink as they want, as long as they understructure handle it and nobody is allowed to take any(prenominal) a counseling from the premise of the eatery. (www.nandos.co.uk)Nandos thrives on excellence, this is embedded in the our promise section of the card. In the promise, Nando says that vigour is more important that keeping a promise, and the symbol of the escudo is a sign of integrity, passion, pride and courage. (www.nandos.com)This is a promise by Nandos to give you the guest the excellent flavor and lineament that you would expect. It is important to add her that ein truth operate heavens phoner should strive to attain excellence. The survival of this type of problem depends on tribe opinions as such(prenominal) it is very very inborn that these anatomy of companies try their utmost best to keep node merriment levels high. This could either be in the way of producing the best quality dwelling house of food that a customer has ordered in the shortest quantify practic open. (www.nandos.co.uk)This impart reduce the waiting propagation by the customers, but still desert the customer with the excellent feeling of satis concomitantion of consuming your darling or serviceAccording to accounts filed at companies house in 2009 , the financial crisis at Nandos worsened as they made a loss of about(predicate) 23 million pounds. As a impression of the financial crisis, consumer spending lessen and thither was a rise in the cost of ra w materials to the industry. This led to a rise in cost to the company and a chance upon in sale. It is important to non that the company made sales during the layover of about one hundred and sixty s pull down million but due to other factors out of their control, they were still competent to make a loss. Management also confirmed that they were happy with the performance of the company even though they did worse that the previous financial year. (www.nandos.co.uk)Operations management is amenable for designing, redesigning and overseeing business trading trading cognitive operations. It focuses on the work at of producing and distributing goods and services goodly. Operations management makes trust expenditurey that business operations use as little resources as possible to produce the post resources as possible, it also has to be as efficient in the sense that it has to make sure that the customers requirements ar met. Other activities that atomic number 18 associate d with this process include inventory control, quality control, managing processes, storage , logistics and evaluation of processes. substantial measurement and management of internal processes is therefore embedded in the operations management concept. Important to note therefore is that fact that the ways by which operations management is carried out in an organization depends sole or wholly n the goods and services that thisThe idea of the parting operations plays in business is very important , as similarly as man beings, we draw a role I our everyday existence. In the morning judgment of conviction, we could be p arnts the our kids, later in the day colleagues at work, and later in the even we could be friends to other people. The point which should be made here, is that we retain a assorted function in every role we play. In the analogous way, operations in the business depending on what they are, perform a different function depending on what their overall objectiv e is. The most basic role of strategic operations is implementing business strategy. Other important roles of operations are to act as support for the business strategy and to act as a driver for business strategy.The objectivesOperation management objectives are by and large every broad. However, it is important to note that operation management affect 5 different groups or stakeholders in the organization. (Micheal and McCathie ,2005) The outset obvious group of people that are going to be affected by operations are the customers. The second group of people going to be affected are the providers who have to change or adapt to the changes in any operations so that the end results can be achieved. The share holders are decidedly other group that are going to be affected by changes in operations. The erupt the operation performs, the more business allow be driven to the company which in make additions sales and in turn increases returns on shares. (Micheal and McCathie ,2005 ) Generally, employees implement operations processes, therefore it is important that the employees understand the objectives of this operation and are allow for and able to do everything possible to achieve this goal. in any case there is a chance like with many companies, that if the employees perform well and this generates positive returns for the company, then they pass on be in turn correct off as the company may be in the commit to offer bonuses to them or maybe increase their employee benefits or salaries.Findings And AnalysisThis write up is going to analyze the strategic role of operations and operations objectives, layout , issue , process, and capa city management of Nandos high cross Leicester. It finds that Nando is a high mickle mass service restaurant operating with a low process variety levelThis report impart examine and describe the briny characteristics of Nandos service operations in the high cross in Leicester which was visited on the evening of Friday the first of April 2011.After making the necessary analysis, this report give end with a recommendation on how Nandos can improve their process.It is worth noting here that Nandos has be make love or is gradually becoming a fellowship name in the United Kingdom. Demand for the products and services is so high in the Leicester area that they are operating two restaurants in the city center, one about four hundred yards from the other (Micheal and McCathie ,2005)Variation.Nandos can be said to have a fairly predictable variation in the daily, weekly and seasonal take in for its goods and services. Because of the type of food they sell, it is very representative for a Nandos restaurant to be virtually empty in the morning hours of the day. Generally , the most busy periods for the restaurant are evenings, weekend, launch time, and various holiday periods. Periods such as Easter, Christmas and the New year.As a result therefore, management of Nandos varies the number of supply in the shop at any one period of time so that they can be able to meet up with and adapt with changes in demand. Nandos also employs a good number of part time and temporal rung as such they can be called in at short notice so that unexpected variations in demand can be dealt with efficiently and time lags are avoided.VisibilityVisibility can be said to be the level of exposure to operations that the customer envisions. Using this definition, Nandos can be said to have very high levels of visibility as they are exposed to all the front end operations of the business. In a typical Nandos restaurant , the customer is able to take a opinion at how his chicken is grilled. Basically take a look at how his/her meal is being prepared.However, if visibility is considered in terms of the extent to which customers can customize their meals, then visibility can be said to be surrounded by medium and low. Nandos, on most of the days and in the evenings can be considered to be a high volume re staurant. This means that you have a lot of people coming into the restaurant to eat. Customizing meals will not be very feasible as it will totally decelerate down operations. At some times of the day, say probably prior on in the day, it is easier to probably try an customize meals. But id that is through with(p) then they will have to try to practice that through out the day and it will be virtually impossible to do during throwaway times. As such it can be said that due to its high volume nature, low to medium levels of visibility are necessary in order that the business can operate efficiently.Since customer satisfactions is greatly think to quality of service, overtime Nandos has act to increase visibility by increase the options available to customers. they have brought in vegetarian options to their meals, increases they side dishes that they offer with their meal as well. Nandos use to only offer chips and rice as a side dish to your ordered chicken, now they have oth er additional options such as mashed potatoes. They have also introduced salads, burgers , pittas , wings and wraps. Also, overtime, they introduce the serving of desserts and now have a great variety of things you can have as desserts after you eat your meal. Hornets are a great example of something subverter that they have got in their starter lineup. And because a lot of the stuff in the menu is unique cant be gotten from any other restaurant in the kindred way that it is served in Nandos, people keep on coming back.Variety.In my opinion, Nandos does not supply a lot in terms of variety on their menus. It is true that feel at the menu superficially, you have the feeling that there is a lot on there and you probably have a wide range to chose from. But for sort loving customers, their choices are limited to chicken. On the evening of my observation, I see a family of five , two parents, mum and dad and their children who came into Nandos to have a meal. While kids and their dad seemed to be enjoying the meal, the mum who was a meat fan but didnt like chicken had to manage through the evening. Understandably, Nandos as a restaurant cant satisfy the wants of everybody who walk into or thinks about paseo into their restaurant, but a little bit of diversification in menu variety will do a lot of good and will definitely go a long way to increase consumer satisfaction.Layout, feed and process design.Nandos, high cross is kind of dress up in a new building which was open about three days ago. Nandos has what I will term a semi oval shape and the way the restaurant is set up, it gives easy access for movement around the restaurant even when it is at full capacity. It is important to note that customers have to go to the tills to place their orders, since bottomless drinks are very common in Nandos restaurants, customers have to be moving around as well to re fulfill their glasses and after placing orders, customer have to pick up their pinnace and sauc es by themselves. So with all of this in mind, the restaurant is set up in such a way that it can accommodate the hang up of customers at any given point in time. Just as you enter the restaurant, there is a sitting area which either leave behind accommodation for people who have placed take away orders and are waiting for it to be prepared or given a military position when the restaurant is so busy and at full capacity waiting customers can make use of this area to wait.It is important to note that besides being convenient to the customers, the existence of a functional layout in the restaurant improves and increases overall efficiency of the operation. For example drinks and refill facilities are all set up at one place, plates and sauces with cutlery are also all set up at one place. This makes it really easy for staff to restock in the event that the run out .The big returns of having a proper layout is that it allows customers for example to move directly to what they are looking for. It prevents people from wondering all around the restaurant in seem of what they are looking for.Strategic performance objectives.There are five performance objectives which are common to all operations, these include dependability, speed, flexibility and cost. theatrical roleCustomer satisfaction is directly tied to the quality of the goods and the service which is offered in a Nandos restaurant. If customers became dissatisfied service or quality of the food served in the Nandos restaurant, they efficiency decide to eat somewhere else or why not decide to start eat strictly home made food. This will inevitable lead to a fall in revenue for the restaurant and who knows, might have a knock on establish to other companies in the same line of business. If for example, customers caught a bug from eating in the Nandos restaurant, there is really no guarantee that this bug isnt present in other restaurants, as such risk adverse customers will discontinue totally from eat ing in restaurants, which brings on this knock on effect is spoke about .Due to the fact that this is a service sector industry and the food is prepared on the spot, it is hard to say that first piece of chick which blank outs the grill will be exactly the same like another piece which leaves the grill and taking into consideration the fact that this food is prepared by human being, level of quality is convincible to variations. Also the way the ay one staff treats a customer will not necessarily be the same way in which another staff will treat another customer. This will undoubtedly leave different customers at with different opinions about the quality of service at Nandos.Also public lecture to the manager at Nandos high cross, I was given the impression that student part time staff are a lot less committed and devote to their jobs as such they tends to let a lower quality of service when compared to may be full time adult staff.Sometimes, the levels of quality can be reduced by chance or intentionally as a result of balancing quality with cost and flexibility.DependabilityNandos has its regular opening and closing times so that customers are clearly aware of the times at which they can pay heed the restaurant to have a meal. At Nandos High Cross, Sunday to Thursday, Nandos opens between 1130 to 2300 oclock and on Fridays and Saturdays, between 1130 and 0000 hours. Customers in the area are fully aware of these opening times and they are guaranteed that if they walk into the door of this restaurant between these hours , they are guaranteed to have what ever they order. To the best of my knowledge from personal experience and from talking to staff in the restaurant, I have not yet come crossways a scenario in which a customers order could not be met because accredited things were out of stock. This therefore means that inventory in Nandos restaurants are by rights interpreted care of and refilled where and when the regard arises.SpeedSpeed is an iss ue broadly in the Nandos restaurants. Sometimes you have a long align at the till and you have only one of the tills being operated. This makes customers orders to be taken slowly and in turn makes the overall waiting experience really long. Also the waiting time for food sometimes ranged up to xv minutes. In the general perspective that is not a long time to wait for your food to be cooked and served, but say you dropped in for tiffin in on your lunch break, you take a few ins to queue up to get your order started and wait fifteen minutes for your food to get ready, you end up discovering that when your food arrives you barely have overflowing time to eat properly before you get back t work. If Nandos can reduce the waiting times, I think customer experience is going to be a lot better. This is going to keep customer coming to the restaurant and in turn increase sales and income levels to the company.Flexibility.I personally do not think that Nandos is a very ductile restaura nt , ninety percent of their meals are chicken dependent and demand and supply in the particular chain can be laid by factors totally out of the control of the restaurant. For example if we took the case of a bird flu epidemic in the area, this is going to lead unspoilt fall in the supply of chickens to be prepared in the Nandos stores. This pandemic will not only affect the supply of chickens to the restaurant but it will affect customers perception. Customers will be wary about eating chicken at all and a sustained existence of this kind of pandemic will greatly affect sales at the restaurant. This will wholly be to the fact that Nandos sells only chicken do very little in the form of varying to other products. It might be nice for a change for Nandos to try and marinate beef or steak with their peri peri spices and serve with chips. This will and might increase their customer base and increase revenue.Cost.In todays economic climate, cost has become an increasingly become imp ortant. To the blend in that it almost acts as a winner for restaurants. Other companies in the country such as Tesco, highlight the importance of cost in the prudence by using slogans such as every little helps personally I think that the cost of food in Nandos is fairly low-priced and anybody who want to have a proper meal of chicken and chips can actually just walk into Nandos , buy a quarter of chicken and chips and have an unlimited centre of drink for themselves for a little under ten pounds.Quality ManagementGenerally speaking, quality management is a very recent concept which gives customers the opportunity to be able to lease goods which meet a higher quality in standard that other regular goods. (Greasley, 2009) Customers have come to the realization that the quality of the good or service is a very important attribute. And companies have also come to the realization that the quality in the good or service that they provide can make the difference as to whether a cus tomer chooses them or chooses their competitor. (Greasley, 2009) Quality management generally adopts a number of principle that cam be used by direct management to organize the institution towards better or improved performance. Some of these principles include being customer think at the heart of a business like Nandos the customer is everything about the business. As such the present and future needs of the customer should perpetually be looked at. Management should plan to tackle any needs that might be arising in the near future. (Greasley, 2009)Another aspect of quality management is leadership, the leaders in the organization are supposed to be able to adopt unity and direction of purpose and endeavor to stir the company in the direction of their target goals.Management has to try to involves the employees at all levels in the organization, this makes people to feel valued and it goes a long way to improve performance. A mutually honest relationship between supplier and bu siness has to be built and an effective and efficient systematic onward motion to business has to be developed. As a company they has to be the need to incessantly want to improve processes and work on customer beneficial approaches.Talking to the manager of Nandos, he told me that they keep quality at the top of their to do list. I can remember the first time I ate at Nandos I suffered from a bad after reaction, as the peri peri sauce that I used with my meal was stale. And I noticed this in a couple of other shops on different occasions. At the wink management has realized that they can no longer put sauces into a bottle and expect to refill it only when it is finished. Now the peri peri sauces are constantly renewed and refreshed to make sure that the customer enjoys the sauce when it is in its best state.Also over time, customer service in the restaurants has been greatly improved, customer focused training is given to all staff at the restaurant and they the staff are consta ntly being monitored by their supervisors to go through that they carry out their work well and they have the best pertain of the consumer at heart.On a negative not from a customers point of view, the sizes of the portions have constantly been reducing over time. They seem to be buying a lot smaller birds and they have even changed the bowls used to serve side dishes to smaller ones. This in effect has reduced the amount of food that is being served for exactly the same amount of money. This to the company is good, as they seem to make a lot more money for a comparatively smaller amount of good or service they are providing.In conclusion therefore, looking at the way operations are managed in Nandos, high cross Leicester, from talking to some customer and talking to staff and the manager in the shop, I think that they as a restaurant they have worked hard in the last three years to improve customer experience. They have tried to everything within their powers to reduce customer w aiting times, they have worked tirelessly with staff to improves customer service and tried to build a good relationship with supplier to ensure that all goods are supplied on time and they have a rota which permits them to have fitting staff to be able to deal with all customer queries and enquiries at peak periods.