Page 64 - DMGT206_PRODUCTION_AND_OPERATIONS_MANAGEMENT

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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