Operations Management

1. Introduction
This coursework is written to investigate the operations management utilized in Charnwood Museum, by analyzing characteristics of its operations and comparing with the operations management in London Zoo in terms of similar operations management terms.

All information, data and supporting materials are collected through the authors observation, interview with the operations manager, introduction leaflets, report from newspaper and museums website.

2 Study on Charnwood Museums Operations 2.1 Description of Charnwood Museum and Its Facilities
Charnwood Museum is a small but comprehensive museum, as it features a wide range of exhibits reflecting the history, geology, archaeology and industries of Charnwood and the surrounding area (Charnwood Museum, 2010).

2.1.1 Layout
Layout concerns decisions about where to put all the facilities, equipments

and staff in the operations (Johnston et al.1997).

Charnwood Museums layout is mainly a functional layout, as the permanent exhibitions of the museum are grouped into four areas: Coming to Charnwood, The natural World, Living off the Land and Earning a Living (Charnwood Museum, 2010). The equipments and items for display are put together according to theme which they belong to(see in Appendix 1). The visitors can choose different routes from exhibition to exhibition as what they prefer. The other facilities like temporary exhibition galleries, enquiry desk, gift shop, cafe and toilets are also parts of the operations. Visitors are free to use them depending on their individual needs.

However, we may also see the cafe as a cell layout, for there is a lot of people directly go the cafes large sunny patio to enjoy the beautiful scenery of the park.

In this case, the layout of the museum is a mixed type of functional layout and cell layout.

2.1.2 Process
Charnwood Museum privides various kinds of services. For the four permanent exhibition areas, different showing methods like interactive displays, computers show and audio-visuals are utilized, which allow visitors to touch rocks from Charnwoods volcanic past, walk beneath the giant oak tree, investigate the 4,000 year old burial of the Cossington Boy, visit the Victorian grocers shop or zoom-in on a flys eye with the video microscope (Charnwood Museum, 2010). . Besides, up to 20 temporary displays are held all through the year, concerning

key local themes as well as national and international subjects (Charnwood Museum, 2010). Temporary exhibitions ensure there are always something new to see. To satisfy various needs of people with different age levels, the museum prepares special events, family fun days, art & crafts workshops for children and young people to learn from professional artists, and school holiday activities for school students to experience science technology.

Another special process of the operations is that the museum can give hiring services. Customers can rent the museum to hold school activities, personal exhibition or workshops.

At the enquiry desk, information such as customers requests complains and other feedbacks are collected by the staff. And information such as activity notice, leaflets, and advertisements for hiring services will be handed out. Customers can buy gifts on the gift shop if they want, and the cafe provides nice food and drinks.

2.2 Analysis on Characteristics of Charnwood Museums Operations in Operations Management Terms 2.2.1 Input and Output
Inputs in operations model include transformed resources and transforming resources. Transformed resources refer to resources that are changed, through the processes. Usually transformed resources are mixtures of materials, information and customers. And transforming resources are

resources which help to change the transformed resources. There are generally two types of transforming resources- facilities (buildings, equipment, plant and process technology of the operation) and staff (people who operates, maintain, plan and manage the operation)(Slack et al.2004).

For Charnwood Museum, the transformed resources are customers and information. The processes of the Charnwood Museum provide individual customer with various exhibitions and workshops, through which the customers are satisfied. Thus, customers who go through the operations of the museum are changed and should be the transformed resources. Moreover, the staff in charnwood museum also collects the requests of customers and those information is later transformed into the museums operation missions. Seeing this, the information is also transformed resources. The transforming resources in the museums operations should be facilities like the building, exhibition equipments, art works, specific knowledge of curator, and all stuffs on display. Staff is another type of transforming resources, as they help the whole operations run regularly.

Outputs refer to goods and services which come out from the processes. Services, such as the exhibitions, interactive displays, art & craft workshops, special event, special hiring services and school holiday activities which cater to various demands of its visitors are the outputs in this case. Whats more, the cafe can provide food and drinks which are outputs of the operations within operations.

2.2.2 4Vs
4Vs mean four particularly important characteristics of operations, namely, volume of their output, variety of their output, the variation in the demand for their output and the degree of visibility which customers have of the

production of the product or service (Slack et al.2004).

The volume of output in Charnwood Museums operation is high. This can be proved by a news report in Appendix 2. As is reported, Charnwood Museum was set to break 480,000 visitors after its 10 th anniversary. In the year 2008, 2009, the average number of visitors was more than 53,000. And the Museum was the first museum in Leicestershire to achieve the Visitor Attraction Quality Award - a mark of excellence little Museum that always has something new. Considering Charnwood Museum is only a community mueseum, such a customer volume is quite high.

The variety of the output is also high, as visitors come to the museum can not only enjoy the permanent exhibitions but also the temporary exhibitions. Besides the common service of exhibitions, it has special events, workshops, school activities, and hiring services. A good evidence to support this is the leaflet of the museum, with the brief introduction of many kinds of services. All these services are the outputs, so we can easily see that the variety of output is high.

The variation in demand for the output is high as well. Seeing the figures in Appendix 3, the highest number of visitors reached 7938 in August, and the lowest number appeared in December with only 1755 visitors. August was the school holiday month so that there are a lot of students who came to visit the museum. However, December was in winter, cold and windy outside, and the Christmas season was the December, which all dedicates to the low number. Moreover, the number of visitors in a week scope reflects that Mondays usually attract fewer visitors, and Saturdays are always busy days.

The visibility of the services is high, since visitors can see whats going on

clearly and directly feel whether they are satisfied or not, when they flow through the operations.

4Vs analysis for Charnwood Museum can be seen clearly in Appendix 4.

2.2.3 Effects on Quality Performance

Quality can be broadly defined as the consistent conformance to the customer expectation, and for each operation, the definition varies. In Charnwood Museums operations, the author holds that the quality can be the satisfaction of the visitors.

Firstly, the layout can affect the quality performance, since the functional layout in Charnwood Museum may make people miss some parts of the museum when there are lots of visitors making the museum blocked. Visitors have a full freedom to choose which exhibition to see and can stay there as long as they like. This situation often occurs in some popular exhibitions, which leads to a long queue in the popular exhibitions, while some others left empty. Visitors are likely to complain, if they want to see the exhibition but fail. Processes in the operations are essential, as it is the processes that produce services to customers. In the museum, the processes should be designed according to the needs of different age levels customers, and operate with the specification made by the curator. The fluency of the processes can affect visitors satisfaction, thus have effects on the quality performance.

Input and output certainly have great effects on quality performance. For customers, if the customers expectation is very high as they want to see a national great museum like The British Museum, Charnwood Museum certainly cannot satisfy these customers. And the information like the requests and complains from the visitors can help the museum to diagnose its quality

performance. Transforming resources like equipments, and stuffs on display or utilized to display are the basis of efficient operations of the museum. Any transforming resources that does not work or cooperate well will break the processes and consequently arouse visitors dissatisfaction. Professional staff is also very important to the quality performance. Outputs of all kinds services and advertising information can also cause customers dissatisfaction, if the advertising information exaggerates the actual quality of the outputs.

4Vs analysis is valuable to the future decision making of an organization since it can reveal a lot of information, affecting quality performance. Charnwood Museum is a free museum with a limitation of investment, a low unit cost is important to the museum. Only when the museum has the enough money can they improve the facilities to provide a better quality performance. High variety of output indicates that the services provided by the museum are flexible, complex, which can cater to kinds of customers needs. The hiring services and special activities help to increase income to improve the operations and gain the satisfaction from visitors. Thus, the high variety of output here in the museum has a positive effect on the quality performance. However, a high volume of visitors will make the museum over crowded, especially when there is a school activity. Visitors may feel too noisy in the museum because of the school visitors. This quality problem has been taken into consideration by the operations manager of the museum. A solution to this problem is that the museum tries to hand out leaflets to inform the will-come visitors about the arrangement for school activities, so if you dont want to be disturbed by the crowds of children, you can avoid going there on the exact day.

The variation of the demand is high, which will influence the quality performance. High variation makes the museum especially busy on summer school season. It is relatively difficult for museum to provide high quality

service during busy season, since the limitation of staff. But the operations manager says temporary employees are brought in during the very busy days.

High visibility can monitor the quality performance. Charnwood Museum has Customer Satisfaction Survey and a Notice Board which is for customers to put in their requests and complains, as well as the solutions the manager did to solve these problems. These all devote to the quality performance.

3. Comparison and Contrast 3.1 Outline of London Zoos Operations 3.1.1 Process and Layout
In London Zoo, different animals are housed in separate pavilions so that customers can visit what they like easily. The zoo has a cafe, gift shop, activity den, display lawn, picnic lawn and playground as well. A map of London Zoo is in Appendix 5. The layout is also a functional layout; customers choose the order of visiting animals by their individual preference.

The process for the animal pavilions is to provide animals for customers to appreciate or animal performance to entertain the customers. For the cafe, the process provides the customers with food and drink. The gift shop sells souvenirs to customers. And to deal with the social perspective change towards animal protection, London Zoo conducted processes focused on the conversation of animals with breeding programmers for endangered species, including childrens zoo and an education centre.

3.1.2 Input and Output

In London Zoo case, the transformed resources are customers and transforming resources are pavillions, equipment, animals, and staff. The output is various kinds of services like animal seeing, education services from childrens zoo.

3.1.3 4Vs
A large number of visitors are attracted by the zoo, but the number fluctuates a lot in terms of day or month. The busiest times are weekends and summer holidays. During that period the average attendance level of the zoo was 4000 to 6000 per day. On the Easter and August Bank Holiday the number reached 10 000. However, the busiest day the zoo has ever had was the special Save Our Zoo day when 18 000 visitors were attracted. The lowest attendance figure reached on Christmas Eve, only 48 people came to visit the zoo. Relatively speaking, London zoo has a large volume of outputs. Moreover, the variation of demand is high, considering the highest number and the lowest number.

The variety of output is also high, as not only animal seeing services are provided, services like education, animal shows are also available. People with a wide range of age levels can find what they want in the zoo.

London Zoo has a high visibility as well, as customers can see the animals directly.

3.2 Compare and contrast the problems between two cases

The layout type in both Charnwood Museum and London Zoo are functional layout and share the same problem that it is easy to miss some parts of the

processes as customers have too much freedom. The volume of Charnwood Museum is high. In some busy days, the museum seems to be too crowded. The variation of the both the museum and the zoo are high. This can arouse an insufficient use of resources.

For London Zoo, there was a problem of the change of peoples attitude towards zoo. People were concerning the feelings of animals and reject to the opinion to run a zoo and were not willing to visit zoos.

And both Charnwood Museum and London Zoo are facing limitation of investment.

4 Conclusions and Recommendations

Based on all the descriptions and analysis, we can see both Charnwood Museum and London Zoo are successful in attracting customers with a wide range of services.

However, both of them have a lot of problems as stated above. In authors opinion, it would be better, if Charnwood Museum can enlarge its display hall so that they can handle the problems caused by large number of visitors. For the problem of investment limitation, Charnwood Museum made out hiring services to get funds from customers. Services like leaning animal training from the professional trainers can be added to the outputs of the London Zoo, to help them increase revenue.

References

Slack, N., Chamber, S. and Johnston, R., 2004, Operations management, 4th Edition, FT/Prentice Hall.

Johnston, R., Chambers, S., Harland, C., Harrison, A. and Slack, N.,1997, Cases In Operations Management, 2th Edition, PITMAN PUBLISHING

Website of Charnwood Museum http://www.leics.gov.uk/charnwoodmuseum

Appendix 1
This map is given by the operations manager of Charnwood Museum

Appendix 2
This news report is from the internet

Appendix 3
Charnwood Museum Visitor Figures 2009/10

Appendix 4

Low

Volume

High

High

Variety

Low

High

Variation

Low

High

Visibility

Low

London Zoo

Charnwood Museum

Appendix 5
Map of London Zoo (from internet)