Operations and System Management of a Car Garage

OBSM Coursework sagaciousness Element One Powells Garage Report Introduction The following report pull up s captures be researching into a small store named Powells, located in Illogan, Cornwall. Powells garage is a family business that was realised in 1953. This make-up offers a range of benefits and products, including MOTs, tyre replacement and unspoiled car serving. Primary research will be intentd in order to gain data in order to examine specific factors in Powells garage. Slack et al. s five performance objectives will display which ways the organisation is thriving and in which ways they atomic number 18 failing.Looking at the programme cleverness, hard-hitting substance and actual outfits will give an oer assure of how well they ar using their resources deep down the organisation. Finally, by calculating the organisations capability index, a specific action mickle be explored in order to lastlight the reliability of the service and whether on that poi nt is any potential room for improvement. Five public presentation Objectives Slack et al (2004) states that there are five performance objectives that domiciliate evaluate performance of an surgical operation. The scratch line of these being cost, this is the ability to produce at a low cost.By pricing goods and serve fitly to the market, customers will always be attracted and it will allow for a good return to the company. Powells have a bun in the oven a few competitor garages surrounding them, therefore pricing is a precise(prenominal)(prenominal) important facet of the organisation as they must keep it low enough to rival other garages, unless high enough to ensure profit from their services. Quality is another performance objective and this is the ability to produce in accordance with the specifications without error. This will ensure full customer satisfaction and a high- persona reputation.It is essential that Powells interpret a premium service as not only does it guarantee rubber eraser for their customers, but it gives them an prefer over competitors. Dependability is the ability to produce goods and services in accordance to the promises made to the customer. This could include a term deadline that the service destinys to be completed by, therefore Powells must ensure that they take on any tasks given by customers and remain reliable or a bad reputation could circulate, yielding in less business. The ability to do things quickly in response to the customers demands is known as speed.This should to a fault reduce time between orders from the customer and when they receive it again. Being a busy garage direction that Powells must complete services as quickly as possible in order to keep up with the level of demand they receive. If this is not met, customers could use another organisation that can offer a quick service. Finally, the last performance objective from Slack et al. is flexibility. This is the ability to change the operat ion in a variety of ways. This therefore means that Powells must offer a grand variety of goods and services in order to fit with any customer needs and keep the nitty-gritty of business high.These five performance objectives can also be linked, and these links mean that an organisation can excel in certain operations and compete with other organisations. For example, quality reduces cost and increases dependability. High quality therefore means fewer mistakes made in the operation, this leads to a reduced amount of time mandatory to correct any errors, and less time spent on the operation means reduced cost. This results in the customer being satisfied with the service. It will also to a greater extent than likely mean they will finger confident using the organisation and will return for future business.From using primary research to prove Powells garage, it is noticeable that quality is the most vital objective to ensure its success in their marketplace. by dint of questionnai res, shown as Appendix 1, and interviews with customers and within the organisation it is quality that is the most prominent feature of Powells garage. This organisation deals with motor vehicles, which makes it crucial that the main priority of their services is to support high-quality results or else the customers safety is at risk.The following polar diagram demonstrates the customers view and the managers view on Powells services and products according to Slack et al. s five performance objectives theory. The customers view is an average calculated from 20 questionnaires that were completed by customers. The managers view is a combined result from the dickens managers that work at Powells. As shown above, the managers view is rather different to that of the customers. The customers did not rate the garage as high as the managers but there is an agreement on the speed of the operation.Powells garage has two major competitors in the region that offer similar services. In order to ensure that this organisation has the edge over them, it is essential to check into what is regarded as important by their customers and how each garage provides that service. Perceived user value (Bowman, 1998), is the best rule to show customers opinions on the services of the three garages and will also include objectives that are not included in Slack et al. s theory. The two garages that are geo interpretically closest to Powells are K W Autos and J K Motors.The customers were asked to rate the objectives of the garage from 0 to 10 on a questionnaire (Appendix 2), these figures were then made into an average and shown in the following table. Objective Powells K W Autos J K Motors Speed 8 8 7 Quality 8 7 7 cost 7 6 7 Dependability 7 8 6 Flexibility 7 7 7 Quality of Facilities 8 6 5 Courtesy of Staff 9 6 6 Working Hours 7 7 8 The data collected from the customers was then put into a graph to demonstrate the differences between the garages more clearly. From these figures, it is clear to see that Powells has an overall higher rating than its competitors.Although this is very positive, there are some objectives that Powells are bring low. These are the operations that need to be targeted and modify in order to guarantee that K W Autos and J K Motors do not overtake Powells in their sales. Capacity The definition of the capacity of an operation is the maximum level of value-added activity over a period of time that the process can achieve under normal operating conditions (Slack et al. 2001, p. 338). Regarding this report, there are two types of capacity that are useful to Powells garage design capacity and effective capacity.Design capacity is the capacity to which its technical designers had in mind when they commissi whizd the operation (Slack et al. 2001, p. 335). Effective capacity is simply design capacity minus planned loss. Therefore it is what the operation actually runs like. The capacity of Powells garage is simply the amount of motor veh icles that can be held in the garage at hotshot time. Powells garage has a total of 7 vehicle ramps within the garage however, 2 of these ramps are designated specifically for MOT servicing. Therefore, altogether, Powells can have 8 cars in its premises at unity time.In terms of capacity processing, on average, Powells can see between 30 and 40 vehicles a week. Although, there are weeks in which it can exceed this and also weeks in which not as many vehicles pass through. Powells employ 6 full time mechanics however, there are always 2 mechanics on the MOT ramps as it always full. This therefore leaves 4 full time mechanics working on 5 ramps for servicing. Straight away, under staffing is the obvious main capacity constraint, as if the garage is completely full, they do not have enough staff to service the vehicles. This would therefore be a planned loss of the organisation.Other planned losses would be mostly time consuming, for example, time lag for vehicle parts to arrive, wo rking hours and waiting for customers to collect their car. As stated before, effective capacity is how the operation actually runs therefore the every twenty-four hours realities of a production line will contain something to slow it down. For example, staff breaks, power cuts and maintenance to tools and equipment. Powells design capacity (excluding the MOT services) in their garage would be for 5 vehicles to be serviced. However, there are only 4 mechanics visible(prenominal) at one time. This means that their effective capacity is 80% of its design capacity.These losses are unavoidable but it results in Powells output to be reduced by 20% of what it could have. actual output is simply effective capacity minus avoidable loss. This is essentially what is produced by the operation when the planned losses and avoidable are taken into account. Avoidable losses include mechanical failure, lighting failure or poorly trained staff. Actual output is therefore much less than the design capacity. It can only be predicted, but this would be estimated around 50%. The following diagram displays the losses against the design capacity and shows how the actual output is calculated.A bottleneck is a micro-operation or operations that cause a process to slow down and causes output to take longer. Powells main bottleneck is the fact that they are understaffed. However, there are more constraints that proscribe operations, these include the type of repair that the car will need, the availability of parts needed to complete the service and working hours. These all affect the processes in the organisation. Capability major power This measures the capability of an operation process within an organisation. This capability index will measure the time any operation can take regarding the services that Powells offers.The capability index should give the result as being greater than 1 as this will mean that Powells is reliable and capable. However, if the results show that the cap ability is less than 1, it will prove that Powells servicing is incapable and unreliable. The tables below show the amount of time spent servicing vehicles over one month in Powells garage. This was recorded from observation and from staff records. Weekly updates allowed a gradual condition up of data which could then be grouped to calculate the capability index. Servicing Times 30 minutes 1 hour 1 day 1 hr 30 mins 1 day 5 hours 45 minutes 3 long time 30 minutes hours 6 age 5 days 1 day 2 days 3 days 4 days 3 days 1 hour 4 hours 3 hours 5 days 2 days 1 day 2 hours 2 days 3 days 6 days 7 days 30 minutes 4 days Servicing Times Number of Customers 1 Hour 4 1 hour 1 day 8 1 2 days 4 2 3 days 3 3 4 days 4 4 5 days 2 5 6 days 2 6 days 3 Capability Index is calculated using the following formula Cp = USL LSL 6? Key Cp = Capability Index USL = Upper specification Limit LSL = Lower Specification Limit ? = Standard divagation From the data collected above, the USL will be 7 days and the LSL will be 0. 05 as it is in minutes. Cp = 7 0. 05 6?Standard Deviation was calculated using all the data collected. In this instance, 1 hour would be 0. 1 and 1 day would be 1. Standard Deviation = 2. 083849 Cp = 7 0. 05 6 x 2. 083849 Cp = 6. 95 12. 503094 Cp = 0. 5558624129 Cp = 0. 56 (two decimal fraction places) USL = 7 LSL = 0. 05 This figure and the graph shows that Powells garage is operating at a level begin than 1, which indicates that it is not operating at the potential capacity level. Although the capability index worked out to be lower than 1, there is a variety of different service times which suggests that Powells offer a unspecific range of services and at many different time scales.There are many causes for this sportswoman which includes the nature of the service. The bigger the problem in the vehicle will mean that the service will take longer, and therefore take space for a longer period of time in the garage. There is also the matter of ordering e xternal parts for the repair. This again, could take a long time as Powells must wait for the parts to arrive before the repair can begin. All of these variants are time costly in some way but there could be potential initiatives to reduce this.Powells could create more space for vehicles outside their garage, by expanding the car park from 1 to 4, this will provide an area to hold cars that require parts from an external source. This would then leave more room available in the garage for less time consuming services. This would see Powells garage gain more business and improve their timing for customers. An outside area would also offer a place where very small services are required, for example changing a tyre. This service takes on average 30 minutes to complete. Powells would save a lot of time as the car would not need to be taken into the garage or raised on the ramps.Another initiative could be to use the MOT ramps when there are no vehicles using them. This expands Powells c apacity to 7 full servicing ramps which would provide more business and a faster operation process. An initiative that would also be very effective would be increasing the number of staff this would allow vehicles to be serviced much quicker. Even if two mechanics worked on one vehicle, this could potentially half the time in which it takes to complete the service. This would then result in extra customer satisfaction, which in the long run would improve Powells reputation.It would also allow for more vehicles to be brought in to service as there would be space for that vehicle in a shorter amount of time. Word Count 2,271 References James, P. Rowland-Jones, R. OBrien, L. (eds) 2009. Operations and Business Systems Management. Harlow, Pearson. Slack, N. , Chambers, S. , Johnston, R. , 2004. Operations Management. 4th Ed. capital of the United Kingdom Pitman Publishing. Cengage (2007) Operations, Strategy and Operations Strategy Online Available from http//www. cengage. co. uk/barn es/students/sample_ch/ch2. pdf Accessed 26/11/2010