How to create calculations, flow charts, and analysis process charts (Fitzsimmons, Fitzsimmons, The thread has no unread message.Thread expanded. created by BHFSC & CCAPA WorkGroup (you)

Bonjour Bonjour!

Here in this post I display major points for discussion gathered from the readings for Week 3. 

I am truly exhausted, however it was a great experience and I have the audacity here to 

infuse so much copied information. Oh well, although we are only supposed to utilize 1 to 5 

sentences of borrowed information per citation reference with a fulfilling amount of in--text citations

utilizing paraphrasing as emphasis on years of publications, names of publications, and author surnames 

with first and middle initial this APA, 6th Edition can become a tad bit tricky. It was fun and exciting, and 

reading has never been more satisfying. My head hurts and it's now bed time for me. 

There is a wealth of irresistable information here I want you to checkout: 

"Supporting Facility and Process Flows" (Pp. 115) I have reviewed the objectives from our text and the following is the result: 

Describe the impact of the "servicescape" on the behavior of customers and employees. Identify and discuss the three environmental dimensions of servicescapes. Environmental Dimensions of Servicescapes The dimensions of the physical environment surroundings include all of the objective factors that can be controlled by the firm to enhance employee and customer actions and Page 119perceptions of the service. Although these dimensions will be discussed independently, it is important to realize that people respond to their environment holistically; that is, the total combined effect on all our senses defines our perception of the servicescape. Ambient Conditions The background of our environment, such as temperature, lighting, noise, music, and scent, affects all five of our senses. Music tempo, for example, can affect a customer's pace of shopping, length of stay, and amount of money spent. Consider a convenience store that played "elevator music" successfully to drive away teenagers who were loitering and discouraging paying customers from entering the store. A cookie shop in a busy mall can leave its doors open to invite customers with the fragrance of freshly baked cookies. All of these factors, including color of surroundings, also influence employee performance and job satisfaction. Spatial Layout and Functionality The arrangement of furnishings and equipment and the relationships among them create a visual and functional landscape for delivery of the service. This landscape can communicate order and efficiency (e.g., formal garden) or chaos and uncertainty for both employees and customers. For self-service activities, the functionality or ease of use of equipment is important to allow customers to perform unattended activities. Fast-food restaurants purposely design the facility to communicate visually the appropriate activities of diners. Menus are posted over the cash registers, self-serve drink machines are positioned between the counter and the tables, and waste containers are located near exits. Signs, Symbols, and Artifacts Many items in the physical environment serve as explicit or implicit signals that communicate acceptable norms of behavior. Explicit signs such as "no smoking" communicate rules of behavior, whereas "recycle bins" encourage responsible acts. The quality of the floor covering, artwork, and furnishings can create an overall aesthetic impression for the visitor and a pleasant workplace for the employee. Professional services can use interior decorating to communicate competence and enhance their professional image with the client. Restaurants communicate full service and high prices with signs such as pictures of famous diners, symbols such as tablecloths, and artifacts such as antiques or pottery. Studies of faculty offices indicate that desk placement, selection of wall pictures or posters, and tidiness of the office influence students' beliefs about the person who occupies the office. Our discussion of servicescapes suggests that the physical environment may assume a variety of strategic roles in support of the service concept. First, the servicescape provides a visual metaphor for an organization's offering. The environmental dimensions of the servicescape create a package, similar to the packaging of a product that conveys an image suggesting relative quality, potential usage, and target market segment. For example, consider a comparison of Home Depot and Lowe's. A visit to Home Depot with its orange colors, bare floors, industrial lighting, and generally cluttered look conveys a masculine image of the construction industry. However, Lowe's with soft blues, tidy aisles, and attractively displayed merchandise projects a more female friendly image for the home improvement customer. Second, the servicescape can facilitate customer orientation by incorporating "wayfinding" techniques that people use to navigate from place to place. Wayfinding, as used in architectural design, includes signage and other graphic communications (e.g., colorcoded subway lines), clues inherent in a building's physical space (e.g., carpet and plantings), logical flow planning, audible assistance, and provision for special-needs users. Appropriate attention to wayfinding can reduce customer anxiety and improve the overall service experience. When Google maps are embedded in retail websites, wayfinding becomes a visual exercise rather than written directions that sometimes are hard to follow. In the virtual world, wayfinding facilitates navigation around a website and minimizes the number of keystrokes needed to reach a search topic. Page 120The American Institute for Graphic Arts (AIGA), the professional association for design, together with the U.S. Department of Transportation has produced a set of passenger/pedestrian symbols designed and used internationally at the crossroads of modern life (i.e., airports, train stations, Olympic Games). The complete set of 50 symbols can be found at http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/symbol-signs. Third, the servicescape also can encourage social interaction among customers. For example, the layout of a waiting room that has chairs grouped together around tables encourages social interaction and makes time pass more pleasantly. Finally, the physical environment can serve as a subtle method to focus employee behavior. The design of the Mid-Columbia Medical Center in Columbia River, Oregon, for example, gave much attention to the employee entrance. A special employee-only entrance was designed as an atrium that could grace a five star hotel. Employees were greeted with a breakfast buffet in an environment of overstuffed chairs, potted plants, paintings, and inspiring music. The design was a deliberate attempt to foster a good mood for the day's work and encourage employees to leave personal cares and troubles at the door (Pp. 119) Identify the six critical design features of a service supporting facility. Clearly, good design and layout enhance the service, from attracting customers to making them feel more comfortable to ensuring their safety (e.g., adequate lighting, fire exits, proper location of dangerous equipment). Facility design also has an impact on the implicit service component of the service package--in particular, on criteria like privacy and security, atmosphere, and sense of well-being. Several factors influence design: (1) the nature and objectives of the service organization, (2) land availability and space requirements, (3) flexibility, (4) security, (5) aesthetic factors, and (6) the community and environment (Pp. 120) Draw a swim lane flowchart, process flow diagram, and a Gantt chart of a service process. Swim Lane Flowchart:  "Swim lane flowcharts diagram organizational activities that cross functional lines (i.e., the swim lanes) highlighting the handoffs between lanes. The hardest task in developing a flowchart is getting everyone to agree on what the process looks like. However, the final diagram is useful for training, helping to coordinate activities between functions, and facilitating creative ideas for improvement" (Pp. 124) FIGURE 5.3 Swim Lane Flowchart of Graduate School Admissions The following standard symbols are used in flowcharting and illustrated in Figure 5.3: Process Flow Diagram:  Example 5.1 illustrates a simplified process flow for a mortgage service. Example 5.1 Mortgage Service (Pp. 125)  FIGURE 5.4 Process Flow Diagram of Mortgage Service (Pp. 125).  Gantt Chart of a Flow Process:   " Gantt Chart An activity-based schedule of the mortgage service process provides another visual representation for understanding and analysis. In Figure 5.5, we follow the progress of three applications through time. We see that "property survey" is an unusual activity because application 1 is immediately followed by application 2 and then by application 3 in unbroken procession. Because the "property survey" activity is never idle it is referred to as the bottleneck (an activity that constrains output) and its CT of 90 minutes defines the system output of one mortgage application completed every 90 minutes. Also, it can be observed that "credit report" and "title search" could be combined into one activity taking a total time of 75 minutes (45 min. + 30 min.) at no loss of system productivity because together these activities still have 15 minutes of idle time per each 90 minute cycle. The Gantt chart has many uses and will be seen again in Chapter 16, Managing Service Projects" (Pp. 125)  FIGURE 5.5 Gantt Chart of Mortgage Service Process Analysis Types of Processes Students of manufacturing long ago found it useful to categorize processes in order to derive general management principles that would apply across industries sharing the same process. For example, all manufacturing assembly operations be they automobiles or personal computers share characteristics of a "flow" process. Using the traditional manufacturing process types listed in Table 5.1, we show that services also can be categorized by process type to identify management challenges. For example, any service that has a "batch" process shares the challenge of managing a perishable asset (unused capacity) such as an empty seat on an airplane, an unused hotel room, or an empty cabin on a cruise ship. After identifying the type of process, we then diagram the operations in a flowchart as the first step in process analysis. Flowcharting The ability to diagram a process, identify the bottleneck operation, and determine the system capacity are fundamental skills in managing service operations and making improvements. An acknowledged axiom is, "If you can't draw it, then you don't really understand it." Our discussion begins with Figure 5.3, an example of a swim lane flowchart of a typical graduate school admissions process. Swim lane flowcharts diagram organizational activities that cross functional lines (i.e., the swim lanes) highlighting the handoffs between lanes. The hardest task in developing a flowchart is getting everyone to agree on what the process looks like. However, the final diagram is useful for training, helping to coordinate activities between functions, and facilitating creative ideas for improvement. For example, from an applicant's viewpoint, how could the process be improved? Perhaps an online inquiry system would allow the applicant to follow the process and thus reduce the need for the admissions clerk to "contact applicant" when a folder is incomplete. Calculate performance metrics such as throughput time and direct labor utilization. Identify the bottleneck operation in a product layout, and regroup activities to create new jobs that will increase the overall service capacity. Use operations sequence analysis to determine the relative locations of departments in a process layout that minimize total flow-distance. Example 5.2 Automobile Driver's License Office The state automobile driver's license office is under pressure to increase its productivity to accommodate 120 applicants per hour with the addition of only one clerk to its present staff. The license renewal process currently is designed as a service line, with customers being processed in the fixed sequence listed in Table 5.2. Activity 1 (i.e., review application for correctness) must be performed first, and activity 6 (i.e., issue temporary license) must be the last step and, by state policy, be handled by a uniformed officer. Activity 5 (i.e., photograph applicant) requires an expensive digital camera and color printer. The process flow diagram for the current arrangement, as shown in Figure 5.6a, identifies the bottleneck activity (i.e., the activity with the slowest flow rate per hour) as activity 3 Page 128(i.e., check for violations and restrictions), which limits the current capacity to 60 applicants per hour. By focusing only on the bottleneck, one might think that assigning an additional clerk to perform activity 3 would double the flow through the bottleneck and achieve the goal of 120 applicants per hour. However, the flow for this system would be limited to 90 applicants per hour, because the bottleneck would shift to activity  (Pp. 128)  TABLE 5.2 License Renewal Process Times Key Terms and Definitions Bottleneck the activity in a product layout that takes the most time to perform and thus defines the maximum flow rate for the entire process. p. 125 Capacity a measure of output per unit of time when fully busy. p. 126 Capacity utilization a measure of how much output is actually achieved relative to the process capacity when fully busy. p. 126 CRAFT (Computerized Relative Allocation of Facilities Technique) a computer program that uses the departmental exchange logic of operations sequence analysis to solve the relative location problem of process layouts. p. 131 Cycle time the average time between completions of successive units. p. 125 Direct labor utilization a measure of the percentage of time that workers are actually contributing value to the service. p. 127 Flow process layout a standardized service performed in a fixed sequence of steps (e.g., cafeteria). p. 127 Job shop process layout a service permitting customization because customers determine their own sequence of activities (e.g., an amusement park). p. 127 Operations sequence analysis a procedure to improve the flow distance in a process layout by arranging the relative location of departments. p. 130 Rush order flow time the time it takes to go through the system from beginning to end without any wait time in queue. p. 126 Servicescape the physical environment of a service facility that influences the behavior and perceptions of the service for both the customers and the workers. p. 116 Throughput time the time it takes to get completely through a process from time of arrival to time of exit. p. 126 Total direct labor content the sum of all the operations times. p. 126  (Pp. 133) Service Management: Operations, Strategy, Information Technology (Fitzsimmons, Fitzsimmons, & Bordoloi, 2013).

PART TWO Source: Pp. xi (Fitzsimmons, Fitzsimmons, & Bordoloi, 2013). 

Designing the Service Enterprise

  3   New Service Development

  4   The Service Encounter

  5   Supporting Facility and Process Flows

  6   Service Quality

  7   Process Improvement

Supplement: Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA)

  8   Service Facility Location

Chapter 5

1. Environmental Psychology and Orientation
2. Servicescapes
   1. Behaviors in Servicescapes
   2. Environmental Dimensions of Servicescapes
3. Facility Design
   1. Nature and Objectives of Service Organizations
   2. Land Availability and Space Requirements
   3. Flexibility
   4. Security
   5. Aesthetic Factors
   6. The Community and Environment
4. Process Analysis
   1. Types of Processes
   2. Flowcharting
   3. Gantt Chart
   4. Process Terminology
5. Facility Layout
   1. Flow Process Layout and the Work Allocation Problem
   2. Job Shop Process Layout and the Relative Location Problem

1. Exercises
2. Case 5.1: Health Maintenance Organization (A)
3. Case 5.2: Health Maintenance Organization (B)
4. Case 5.3: Esquire Department Store
5. Case 5.4: Central Market

Chapter 4 Case Studies and Discussion Topics Itinerary

1. Topics for Discussion
2. Interactive Exercise
3. Case 4.1: Amy's Ice Cream
4. Case 4.2: Enterprise Rent-A-Car
5. Selected Bibliography

Source: Judith Martin, "Complaint-Handling Requires a Deft 'Switcheroo,'" Associated Press as printed in Austin American Statesman, November 1, 1992, p. E14

THE CUSTOMER FOCUS:  (Pp. 103)

"Expectations and Attitudes

Service customers are motivated to look for a service much as they would for a product; similarly, their expectations govern their shopping attitudes. Gregory Stone developed a now-famous topology in which shopping-goods customers were classified into four groups.¹⁰ The definitions that follow have been modified for the service customer:

1. The economizing customer. This customer wants to maximize the value obtained for his or her expenditures of time, effort, and money. He or she is a demanding and sometimes fickle customer who looks for value that will test the competitive strength of the service firm in the market. Loss of these customers serves as an early warning of potential competitive threats.
2. The ethical customer. This customer feels a moral obligation to patronize socially responsible firms. Service firms that have developed a reputation for community service can create such a loyal customer base; for example, the Ronald McDonald House program for the families of hospitalized children has helped the image of McDonald's in just this way.
3. The personalizing customer. This customer wants interpersonal gratification, such as recognition and conversation, from the service experience. Greeting customers on a first-name basis always has been a staple of the neighborhood family restaurant, but Page 103computerized customer files can generate a similar personalized experience when used skillfully by frontline personnel in many other businesses.
4. The convenience customer. This customer has no interest in shopping for the service; convenience is the secret to attracting him or her. Convenience customers often are willing to pay extra for personalized or hassle-free service; for example, supermarkets that provide home delivery may appeal to these customers.

The attitude of customers regarding their need to control the service encounter was the subject of a study investigating customers' decision-making processes when they were confronted with the choice between a self-service option and the traditional full-service approach.¹¹ Customers who were interviewed appeared to be using the following dimensions in their selection: (1) amount of time involved, (2) customer's control of the situation, (3) efficiency of the process, (4) amount of human contact involved, (5) risk involved, (6) amount of effort involved, and (7) customer's need to depend on others" (Fitzsimmons, Fitzsimmons, & Bordoloi, 2013). 

Key Terms and Definitions

Abstract questioning an open-ended question used to screen potential employees by revealing a candidate's ability to adapt and use interpersonal skills. p. 99

Coproduction viewing the customer as a productive resource in the service delivery process, which requires roles to play (e.g., busing his or her lunch table) and scripts to follow (e.g., using an ATM). p. 103

Culture the shared beliefs and values of an organization that guide employee decision-making and behavior in the firm. p. 96

Empowerment providing contact personnel with the training and information to make decisions for the firm without close supervision. p. 97

Service encounter triad a triangle depicting the balance of goals among the service organization, the contact personnel, and the customer. p. 94

Situational vignette a service encounter situation that can test a candidate's ability to "think on her or his feet" and to use good judgment. p. 99

Learning Objectives

After completing this chapter, you should be able to:

1. Use the service encounter triad to describe a service firm's delivery process.
2. Describe the five roles of technology in the service encounter.
3. Differentiate four organizational control systems for employee empowerment.
4. Describe the classification of customers into four groups based on their attitudes and expectations.
5. Prepare abstract questions and write situational vignettes to screen service recruits.
6. Describe how the creation of an ethical climate leads to job satisfaction and service quality.
7. Discuss the role of scripts in customer coproduction.
8. Describe how the elements of the service profit chain lead to revenue growth and profitability.

Source: https://phoenix.vitalsource.com/books/1260090507/epubcfi/6/34[;vnd.vst.idref=body017]!/4/2/2[page115]@0:0

REFERENCES 

Fitzsimmons, James A.

     Service management : operations, strategy, information technology / James A. Fitzsimmons, Mona J.

  Fitzsimmons, Sanjeev Bordoloi.--8th ed.

        p. cm.--(The McGraw-Hill/Irwin series operations and decision sciences)

     ISBN 978-0-07-802407-8 (alk. paper)--ISBN 0-07-802407-2 1. Service industries--Management.

     I. Fitzsimmons, Mona J. II. Bordoloi, Sanjeev. III. Fitzsimmons, Mona J. IV. Bordoloi, Sanjeev. V. Title.

  HD9980.5.F549 2014

  658--dc23 www.mhhe.com