Assessment item 3 – Final Research Report Due: XXXXXXXXXXSunday of Week 13, 11 pm AEST Length: XXXXXXXXXX-7,500 words Conditions: XXXXXXXXXXIndividual Weighting: XXXXXXXXXX% Requirements You are...

QUALITY MANAGEMENT ISSUES: MANAGING PRODUCTIVITY TO IMPROVE OVERALL EFFICIENCY OF THE COMPANY ‘Y’
Executive Summary
The customers who visit restaurants are often seen getting dissatisfied with the service and food quality and therefore there have been a lot of research conducted by researchers who have explored valuable aspects of restaurant business management. However, as new restaurants have limited number of employees and lacks much needed experience, increasing number of customers can also create rifts in the provided quality of food and services. The research therefore, explores the importance of service and quality management for newly opened restaurants.
In the current research deductive research approach and positivism research philosophy has been used. Qualitative data has also been used and the data collection method has been both primary and secondary, where the primary data is collected through online interview and the secondary data is collected from authentic journals, articles, books and websites. The collected data is analysed through thematic analysis.
Based on the assessment of aspects discussed in the literature review and the data collected through interview as well as meta-analysis it is found that customers are offended when the served food is either delayed in delivery or has undermining quality. It is also found that customers give negative feedback about restaurants that fail to satisfy the demands of the customers and the negative feedbacks have adverse influence on the flow of customers in the restaurants. It is also found that in order to motivate, distribute and refine the quality of services and foods in a restaurant the performance level of the management is responsible.
Considering the issues identified in the current research three suggestions have been provided. Firstly, a quality manager has been suggested to be included in the existing framework of the restaurant to manage the quality of the foods and the delivering speed of the orders. Secondly, the use of modern technological devices for culinary purposes has been suggested to reduce the pressure from the chef at the time of preparing food and make staffs more self-reliant in small tasks. Thirdly, coaching for all the staffs at the restaurant is suggested, so the staffs can become more efficient in working and use theoretical knowledge in the right way.
Table of Contents
1: Introduction    7
1.1 Introduction to Topic    7
1.2 Overview of Industry Partner    7
1.3 Research Problem    7
1.4 Research Rationale    8
1.5 Research Aim    8
1.6 Research Outline    8
2: Literature Review    10
2.1 Introduction    10
2.2 Research Questions    10
2.3 Management and Its Significance    10
2.4 Quality Management    10
2.5 Quality Assurance    11
2.5.1 Total Quality Management (TQM)    11
2.6 Service Management    12
2.6.1 Knowledge Management    12
2.6.2 Root Cause Analysis    12
2.6.3 Business Coaching    12
2.6.4 Business Ethics    13
2.7 Quality Management Methodologies    13
2.8 Role of Management in Restaurants    14
2.9 Quality Management Issues    14
2.10 Role of Managing Productivity for Improving Overall Efficiency of the Organisation    15
2.11 Conceptual Framework    16
2.12 Summary    17
3: Methodology    18
3.1 Introduction    18
3.2 Research Design    18
3.3 Research Approach    18
3.4 Population, Sample Size and Sampling Technique    18
3.5 Data Collection Method    19
3.6 Data Analysis    19
3.7 Ethical Considerations    19
3.8 Time frame    20
3.9 Summary    20
4: Data Findings    21
4.1 Sample Characteristics    21
4.2 Interview Questions    21
4.3 Meta-Analysis    24
5: Data Analysis and Discussion    26
5.1 Primary Qualitative Data Analysis    26
5.2 Secondary Meta-analysis    28
6: Recommendations    30
6.1 Hiring Quality Managers    30
6.2 Using Technological Innovation at the Workplace    30
6.3 Provide Coaching to Existing Staffs    31
7: Limitations and Conclusion    32
7.1 Limitations of the Recommendations    32
7.2 Conclusion    32
References    33
Appendix    38
List of Figures and Tables
Figure 1.1: Research Outline    8
Figure 2.1: Conceptual Framework    15
Table 4.1: Sample Characteristics    20
Table 4.2: Transcript of Interview Question 1    21
Table 4.3: Transcript of Interview Question 2    22
Table 4.4: Transcript of Interview Question 1    22
Figure 4.1: Quality Management Issues in Restaurants    24
Table 3.1: Gantt chart    37
1: Introduction
1.1 Introduction to Topic
The uniqueness of quality blended with proper pricing, gives new entrants in restaurant business sector unprecedented growth, which makes the organisational growth necessary within a short span of time. As more customers visit a newly set up restaurant, the capacity, quality and management skills are tested to their ultimate limits. A lack of proper management not only degrades the quality of the service, it also hampers the quality of the served food, resulting negative feedbacks from customers and slowdown in growth. Therefore, it is important to figure out ways to resolve and improve issues, relating to operation as well as quality management. The current research report aims to explore operation management and quality management issues to help restaurants to maintain their growth in the newly entered business sector.
1.2 Overview of Industry Partner
Company Y has been a new entrant in the restaurant business. It has a tall organisational structure. The responsibility of quality management has been imposed on the top level managers only as the company has been expecting limited number of customers on daily basis and could perform well with a small service staff team. In terms of the service management there is no managerial post created for performance management. However, the ambience and the food quality coupled with budget pricing have made the customer flow exceed expectation. The company due to its offering of services to increased number of customers, without being prepared for the workload capacity management is failing to maintain the smoothness of the service and the top level manager is unable to check the quality, resulting in falling food quality and management issues. Company Y being relatively new in the restaurant business had very little idea about identifying the increase in customer demands, which has resulted in downfall of food quality and a lack of service management has further worsened the quality of service, which makes it evident that the company is in urgent need of operation and service management optimisation.
1.3 Research Problem
The issue is new restaurants are offering great value for money for its quality food items and fluent service to the customers, which are bringing in more customers to the restaurant, creating pressure for smaller and newly, set up restaurants. The concepts and issues relating to operation management and quality management is not a new topic of discussion and there have been plenty of researches conducted before. However, the issues that related to quality and operation management in the restaurant business has been explored less in comparison to retail, automobile and electronic business sectors (Daniels College of Business, 2005). In terms of assessing the same issues in the context of newly opened restaurants are the least, and therefore, the current research is significantly playing the role of an explorer, identifying and suggesting ways to resolve issues of operation and quality management, that has not been explored as per their relevance.
1.4 Research Rationale
It is an issue because, as the restaurant has limited human resource and simple organisational set up, he increased customer flow is causing the restaurant to lose its sharpness of quality and service efficiency (Press Book, 2018). It is an issue now, as globalisation has indulged cosmopolitan culture, which has directly influenced the hospitality business, making it a potentially profitable business. Considering the profit potential, new restaurants are being opened and facing similar issues of service and quality. The current research sheds light on the importance and ways of solving issues of quality and service management, making newer and less experienced organisations more efficient in growing its capacity without compromising on its unique selling points.
1.5 Research Aim
The aim of the current research is to identify and find solutions for quality and service management issues in newly opened organisations that have been facing these challenges due to the growing number of customers.
1.6 Research Outline
In the current research report the discussion has stated with a detailed introduction followed by a literature review. In the following section methodology is presented that has been used in the data collection and discussion sections, respectively. Based on discussion, recommendations are made. Lastly the limitations of the research are presented along with an apt conclusion.
Figure 1.1: Research Outline
(Source: Researcher)
2: Literature Review
2.1 Introduction
In literature review chapter, the literary sources that provide vital details about the variables present in the research topic, are evaluated meticulously, criticised argumentatively and interconnected logically. As mentioned by Miller, McAdam and McAdam (2018), literature review is the date base that makes a research authentically sanctioned.
2.2 Research Questions
· Which quality management principles can be implemented at the workplace?
· What are the services' issues faced by the employees in the organisation?
· What type of training should be provided to the staff to exceed the expectations of the customers?
· What recommendations on group-working approach can be provided to the staff to deliver as per the needs of the organisation?
2.3 Management and Its Significance
The monetary capital, human resource, business idea, technology cannot form a business, as business needs all the mentioned factors in complimentary functioning framework. As stated by Hallgren, Rouleau and De Rond (2018), management is the technique of interconnecting the internal functional components of organisational bodies to generate performance that meets the aims and objectives of organisations. All the internal factors of an organisation does not have the same nature or degree of work in generating the specified services or products, therefore, the determination of the ratio of internal factors is important, which is done by the management.
2.4 Quality Management
Quality management is the process of striking the right balance between all the business activities of an organisation to generate as well as retain a satisfactory performance that aims at customer satisfaction. As affirmed by Cummings and Worley (2014), quality management incorporates the ideas of quality standard adaptation, policy of quality services, planning for better quality and quality control. Quality management places the customer satisfaction at the core of business success and therefore aims at achieving short term goals of business, which eventually contribute in long term business success. Quality management also makes use of documented data, which makes the application of the management processes easy and effective.
2.5 Quality Assurance
Quality assurance is a part of quality management that suggests that organisational management must plan then document and use rules to implement the documented plan to retain an agreed quality standard for its range of services or products. As emphasised by Ile et al. (2018), quality assurance tries to prevent the occurrence of an organisational issue by eliminating risk factors from the working internal working environment. Quality assurance evaluates and identifies the probable and potential areas that face risks by assessing a working plan; nevertheless, it does not provide effective solution for problems in a functionally active organisational system.
2.5.1 Total Quality Management (TQM)
Total quality management is a collective optimisation process, in which all the employees working under a single organisation dedicate time and effort to refine the quality, quantity, performance and ultimately the organisational culture. As mentioned by Thompson and Strickland (2003), TQM considers the customer satisfaction as the core competence of an organisation and implements plan that are long term based, far and wide in approach. There are eight principles that frame the core of TQM. The eight principles are customer focused actions, involvement of entire taskforce, emphasis on process planning, interconnecting of organisational departments, use of strategy and system based approach, consistent improvement, rational decision making and lastly internal-external communication.
As customers are the actual users of a product or service, they determine whether the quality and performance levels have been optimised, making the real world feedback. The involvement of the entire workforce make the quality management and improvement process larger, more consistent and effective. The process planning makes the system rigid, strong and predictable, which helps in measuring the quality standards against a timeframe. Interconnection between all the departments compliments the quality refinement actions and help in long term goal setting and achievement.
As mentioned by Gutierrez-Gutierrez, Barrales-Molina and Kaynak (2018), in order to improve the condition of an organisation’s performance specific strategies prove to be more effective that general use of techniques. Consistent quality improvement gradually covers areas of concern that were missed in the initial phases of TQM. Decisions made on documented data makes the process errorless and more accurate, reducing risk of uncertainty. The internal and external communication makes the assessment of business environment comprehensive and better.
2.6 Service Management
Service management is the process, through which business organisations not only provide their customers with effective services, but also generate and nurture a healthy customer relationship. As opined by Mullins (2010), service management uses information technology within the existing supply chain and service framework to offer more value to the customers. Service management also ensures the safety, security and ease of the customers at the time of using or offering information technology (IT) based tools or systems. As the customers value all IT based services, the service management is entirely focused on customers and their preferences.
2.6.1 Knowledge Management
The systematic managing technique that ensures that employees of an organisation develop their ability to meet organisational demands based on the assets that generate knowledge of the organisation, is termed knowledge management. As supported by Dzenopoljac et al (2018), knowledge management is a strategic approach that includes the aspects of strategy making, storing and sharing information, processing of data and assessment of ideas from the generated knowledge. As knowledge management uses the organisational database, it creates an effective complimentary relationship between the organisational goals and the developed strategies, aligning both to a similar level of function.
2.6.2 Root Cause Analysis
The occurrence of an issue mainly has one or more interdependent or independent factors that contribute in a specific manner. In case of interrelated factors of an issue, as stated by Soylemez and Tarhan (2018), there remains a root because based on which, all others factors contribute and removal of the root cause prevents the occurrence of the negative outcome. With the help of root cause analysis technique, all the causes of an issue are evaluated, examined and experimented to identify the root cause and suggest ways of removing the cause. Being more critical Beardsley and Lo (2014) argued that root because should be termed as the initial cause, as removal of the root cause cannot assure that the resolved issue would not arise again.
2.6.3 Business Coaching
Despite running and managing a business, an employee or manager can lack the theoretical and practical skills that hold the possibility of enhancing the business performance manifold. Therefore, business organisations hire coaches that trains, teaches and guides the workforce of an organisation to make them more skilled, efficient that capable of reaching organisation goals. As identified by Haas (2006), coaches teach employees about the behavioural learning that enhances professional and personal skills, generating satisfaction in the process. In most cases coaches use either democratic style or autocratic style. In democratic style of coaching learners are allowed to share their perspective along with the coach, while in case of autocratic, the coach directs and presents the guidance and learning in such a way that the learners have no other choice than to learn and improve.
2.6.4 Business Ethics
In business the relationship between the customers and the organisation selling customers services or products, generate the parameters that determines business ethics. As opined by Singh (2012), business ethics is not about judging what is right or wrong in the social context; it is about the generation and maintaining of trust that ensures that the customers are dealt fairly, in the backdrop of standard oriented issues that generate controversies. On a different note, Rhodes and Pullen (2018) argued that business ethics is mediatory set of principles that determine the ration of an organisation’s inclination towards mandatory government standards and core competences of business.
2.7 Quality Management Methodologies
Among the most popular and highly used quality management methodologies are mentioned below
Lean: Lean in quality management emphasises on the reliability, efficiency and quality of the service that is provided to the customers and in order to make the performance level fast and effective, it considers eliminating formal aspects of the service that includes style, steps and other non-productive actions. As mentioned by Price, Pepper and Stewart (2018), lean methodology is very effective in managing wastes and therefore, must be includes in organisational quality management parameters.
ISO 9001: ISO 9001 is a set of organisational standards that has been popularised and maintained by Internal Organisation for Standardisation. As suggested by Castka (2018), as ISO 9001 maintains a consistent and global standard and therefore, any organisation maintaining ISO 9001 in its quality management standards would be able to do business on global standards.
Six Stigmas: The six stigma aims at reducing the occurrence of quality issues in the final outcome a system. The interrelated components of the six stigmas tend to identify and eliminate the factors or cause quality issues. As mentioned by Ciancio (2018), six stigmas have five major phases of functioning - defining, analysing, improving, measuring and lastly controlling.
Benchmarking: In every business sector, some organisations lead the way, in terms of quality, efficiency and overall productivity. As described by Herasymovych (2018), through benchmarking process a scale for quality and performance is created, where the leading organisations score the highest and other companies compare their performance and quality levels to determine their positions in the market sector and try to improve.
2.8 Role of Management in Restaurants
The reputation of a restaurant that generates the power to attract customers, are...