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Unit 3: Services and their Characteristics




                              Table 2:  Service Capacity  of each  Department                   Notes
                             Department/Area      Capacity   Patients/Hr
                                                (People/Hr.)
                             Parking Area            1100        300
                             Registration Area          36        72
                             Seating Area            1000         409
                             Doctor                   396        180

             This calculation yields the system capacity, 72 patients per hour. The bottleneck department
             is the registration area. In spite of the fact that doctors are available, patients cannot see the
             doctors because they need to register. There is a justification to increase the number of
             people in the registration area so that the doctors are fully utilized. We can also see that if
             there is demand for the hospital’s services, the hospital could expand to cater to around
             400 patients without a major investment in assets.
             Question
             What are the challenges faced by the management in managing capacity at Apollo and
             what solution can you suggest?
             Source: Upendra Kachru, Production and Operations Management – Text and Cases, First Edition, Excel Books, New Delhi,
             2007.
          3.6 Summary


              Service is defined as any activity or benefit that one party can offer to another which is
               essentially intangible and does not result in ownership of anything.

              Pure services have distinct  characteristics of intangibility, inseparability,  perishability,
               variability and a lack of ownership.
              The Service Process Matrix is a categorization matrix of service industry firms based on
               the characteristics of the individual firm’s service processes.
              Service quality is an important issue in marketing of services due to the fact that both
               production and consumption of services occur at the same time.
              The various service quality dimensions include reliability, responsiveness, assurance and
               empathy. The quality of a service will delight a customer when it exceeds the service
               expectations of the customers.
              There are five types of service quality gaps that a service marketer should try to bridge
               through an effective service-marketing program.

              An effective quality management program should try to develop strategies to fill the gaps
               and create customer delight.

              Service sector is  one of the key contributing factors for growth of  our economy  and
               civilization.

          3.7 Keywords

          Consumer Services: These are aimed at individual consumers and are consumed for personal
          reasons.
          Functional Quality: It relates to ‘how’ technical quality is being delivered to the consumer. This
          aspect cannot be as accurately measured as technical quality.


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