Managing Service Operations

Citation

Narasimhan, K. (2007), "Managing Service Operations", Managing Service Quality: An International Journal, Vol. 17 No. 6, pp. 728-729. https://doi.org/10.1108/09604520710835028

The service sector has grown in importance not only in the developed countries but also in the developing countries, especially India, due to business process outsourcing. Tutors and researchers have also taking note of the wealth creating potential of services and the close dependency of manufacturing on allied services. Thus, this book is a welcome addition to the others which concentrate either on marketing services or service operations management.

Both the authors are from the University of Westminster, UK. Bill Hollins specializes in service design and undertakes consultancy for Direction Consultants and is a part‐time Principal Lecturer at the University. Sadie Shinkins is Head of the Business Information and Operations Department in the University and has extensive experience as a practitioner.

The book comprises 15 chapters: 14 chapters grouped in three parts and part 4 (a sole chapter), which is an extended case study of a football club that incorporates many of the concepts covered in the previous chapters. Except the introductory chapter, all the chapters start with a list of “Learning outcomes”, and end with “Summary of key points” and list(s) of student activities to help the readers to reflect on what is covered in a chapter. Some of the chapter also contain illustrative case studies.

Part I, “Services, strategy and people”, comprises three chapters. Chapter 1 shows how the service sector has grown and describes the role of operations management and an operations manager. It also explains the key differences between manufacturing of products and provision of services. The next chapters focus respectively on service operations strategy (that is gaining competitive advantage and identifying components of business strategy) and human relations aspects such as leadership, empowerment, roles and responsibilities, and motivation.

“Developing new services”, the theme of Part II, is covered in five chapters. Chapter 4 deals with the product and service design process and how blueprinting can be used as an aid to designing processes. Conducting market research for identifying customers and their needs, to ensure successful introduction of new services, is the focus of the next chapter. Chapter 5 briefly considers the importance of market research in identifying customers and their needs. It also points out that it may be cost beneficial and quicker, in some cases, to try an idea and see if there is a demand for a particular service. The focus of the next chapter is controlling the process of design specifications, which is one of the keys to successful product design. It is pointed out that many companies have been found to be ineffective in this area. The next two chapters cover respectively new concept generation using creativity, which they emphasise can be learnt, and how to learn from both failures and success of present products and services to improve the development of new services.

The theme of Part III is “Management of service operations”, and it is covered in six Chapters. First chapter on “Service quality management” discusses the merits of achieving quality through inspection, quality assurance, and total quality management and introduces the tools used including the use of the SERVQUAL instrument. The next chapter on “Global supply chain management” explores the impact of e‐commerce and the applicability of controlling inventory management to the service sector. The following chapter focuses on location issues and service layout design. Managing capacity and demand variations to optimise performance is the focus of the next chapter and topics covered include balancing demand and supply, scheduling, and how to eliminate or reduce queues. The penultimate chapter deals with measuring performance, growth and experiences using techniques such as the balanced scorecard and benchmarking. The final chapter covers how organisations plan for over a longer time scale into the future.

The book also contains a useful glossary and eight‐page bibliography. The authors also have web site that includes some PowerPoint slides for lecturers who adopt this book; and can be accessed at www.sagepub.co.uk

The book is very useful as it not only introduces the readers to core principles of operations management but also gives related lively examples.