The assignment covers service concept (marketing), research design, operations management and quality management. This is an application assignment so do not explain the theory/definitions.

  For this assignment (part A, B & C), please choose a luxurious hotel and make the
assignment according to the instruction below.
A. Service concept
Service Design
1. Present a quick overview to introduce your company (max 1 A4):
– Give the name.
– Describe the basic characteristics: in a short summary, describe these things which
are essential to understand what kind of company it is, the message or image it
projects and what it sells.
– Give a few key numbers which give an impression of size and pricing.
2. Present one market segment of the company (max 1 A4):
Create a persona for one target group of the chosen company. You can choose any
target group that you want.
– Give the title of the target group.
– Show one fictional character that is representative of the chosen target group.
Give this character a name.
– The persona can be presented by combining textual and visual elements together.
It means the persona is more visually oriented.
– The persona is based on a relevant selection of demographic, psychographic and
behavioral segmentation variables.
3. Create a value proposition for the target group above. The value proposition is a
statement of 1 or 2 sentences of what experience the hotel offers to the target group
based on their wish and needs.
Service Blueprint
4. Create a Service Blueprint for the chosen target group which is described previously:
– Draw a service blueprint based on the value proposition above. This blueprint
follows the standards set by Zeithaml & Bitner (2009) / Lovelock (2010).
– Required are 4 lines (customer action, front-stage contact employee, back-stage
contact employee & support process) and line of visibility. It is optional to add an
IT line, a second support process line or tangibles / physical aspects line.
B. Operations Management & Quality Management
The PDCA cycle (Deming cycle) is a never-ending cycle which is used to improve a process.
PDCA stands for:
Plan: includes an examination, evaluation and assessment of the current situation by
collecting and analysing data in order to create a plan to improve the process.
Do: includes execution and implementation of the plan.
Check: includes an evaluation of the implementation in “do” stage to see if the performance
is improved as expected.
Act: includes consolidation or standardization of the plan if it successes. If not, this stage
will collect what has been learned in this cycle before starting the cycle again.
This part of the assignment focuses on what happens in the Plan stage. Here, you analyse
and improve one operational issue, and create a quality management system to ensure the
issue is addressed.
Operations Improvement
Choose 1 operational department for this part of the assignment. The chosen department
must be operational departments such as rooms division, F&B, meetings, spa, etc.
5. From the chosen department, identify an operational issue based upon (online)
reviews:
– Check (online) reviews and make an inventory of what issues are mentioned and
how often they are mentioned.
– Present the findings in a Pareto chart and give a small description of what can be
learned from this chart.
– Identify an issue from the Pareto chart for improvement.
Note: It is possible to focus on other operational issues which have improvement potential.
6. Analyze the issue:
– Draw a fishbone (cause-effect diagram) to analyze the chosen issue.
– Give a small description of what can be concluded from the fishbone (cause-effect
diagram).
7. Based on the improvement techniques above:
– Give ONE recommendation/solution to solve the issue. This
recommendation/solution needs to be about process improvement.
– Motivate how the recommendation/solution links/relates/supports to the service
concept and/or the chosen target group of this organization.
Process Design & Management
8. Give the name of the process that relates to / is relevant to the operational issue and
the recommendation in the previous part.
9. Apply the input – output model for the chosen process:
– Output: identify the output and the requirements/qualifications for the desired
output.
– Process (transformation process):
o Flowchart of the chosen process: Draw a flow chart for this process by
using the symbols given in Slack, Brandon Jones & Johnston (2019),
chapter 6, symbols derived from system analysis.
o Based on the flowchart, describe:
▪ The most important performance objective(s) and how they relate
to the desired output.
▪ Where this process locates on the volume/variety axis and process
type.
▪ Layout type
▪ Possible activity(ies) in the flowchart may cause bottle
necks/delays.
– Input:
o Identify the main transforming and transformed resources with a brief
indication of their qualifications.
o Capacity plans: based on the main transforming resources above, discuss
capacity decisions (level capacity plan vs chase demand capacity plan,
long term vs short term decisions).
o Forecasting: Identify the main demand number (dependent variable) for
forecasting for this process. Choose ONE forecasting method (moving
averages, seasonality or regression analysis) to forecast the main demand
number and motivate the choice. Briefly explain how this method can be
applied (moving averages: identify the periods for calculation, seasonality:
identify high/low seasons, regression analysis: dependent and independent
variables).
10. Apply job design principle:
– Identify who is working in the process which is discussed above and what the
main tasks of this person in this process are. Link this to the flowchart.
– From the 4 behavioral approaches of job design (job rotation, job enrichment, job
enlargement, empowerment), choose critically which approach can be applied to
this job, supported by examples.
Quality Management
In order to make sure that the suggestions described above are implemented, a quality
management system is created to control and monitor.
11. Create a check list for this process. Briefly motivate how you came to this checklist
and how it can be used.
12. Sketch how the results of this check list can be presented in a run chart. Briefly
explain how over time this chart can help in monitoring quality.