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

author’s observation, interview with the operations manager, introduction

leaflets, report from newspaper and museum’s website.

2 Study on Charnwood Museum’s 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 Museum’s 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 cafe’s 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 Charnwood’s 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 fly’s 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 Museum’s

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 museum’s

operation missions. Seeing this, the information is also transformed

resources. The transforming resources in the museum’s 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. What’s 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 Museum’s 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 what’s 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

Museum’s 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 don’t 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 Zoo’s 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 children’s 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

children’s 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 people’s 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 author’s

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

Appendix 5

Map of London Zoo (from internet)

Low Volume High

High Variety Low

High Variation Low

High Visibility Low

London Zoo Charnwood Museum