Operations Management of Chilis Grill & Bar - Essay Example

Chili’s Name: Number: Course: Lecturer: Date: Table of Contents Table of Contents 1 Introduction 2 SWOT Analysis 2 Strengths 2 Weakness 4 Opportunities 5 Threats 6 Human Resource and Job Design 7 Maintenance 8 Forecasting 8 Inventory Management 9 Quality improvement and cost reduction 9 Structure effect in operation management 9 Layout innovations 10 Conclusion 10 Introduction This paper is aimed at analyzing the operations management of Chili’s Grill & Bar. The analysis will focus on identifying the mission, vision of Chili’s Grill & Bar. Later focus on SWOT analyses that are within the operation management. In addition, the paper will be aimed at identifying on key areas that are considered to be fundamental to the organization. Their contribution to the success of the company will be a major concern of the paper. Other sections that the paper will be focusing on are structural effect of Chili’s Grill & Bar and how it achieves success through this. Finally, innovation layout within the operation department is done in relation to its success. 1. State the mission, and identify the SWOT analyses that are relevant to the Operations Strategy at the chosen business? The mission statement for Chili’s Grill & Restaurant is “To Spice up Everyday Life,” its vision too is “to dominate casual dining.” SWOT Analysis Strengths On the operation section at Chili’s Grill & Bar is identified for its unique services that have been planned in style. It provides a sporting bar environment with a full menu and bar. Competitors comprise Chili’s Grill & Bar, TGI Friday’s, Champps Restaurant & Bar Apple Bee’s Restaurant and Bennigan’s Grill & Tavern. The SWOT analysis that is conducted was done in relation to competitive advantages and limitations of the stated competitors. Mode of serving being under operations is regarded to unique as compared to the rest of the restaurants and bars outside there. The model of serving is made in such a way that there is a flexibility of serving at the counter table; customers therefore customize their Chili’s stuff experience to meet the different time demands and services that are scheduled for a workday as from lunch, dinner, take-away meals, including afternoon and evening enjoying a sporting event or a late night craving (Kelly, 2000). The operation management has been credited for their uniqueness in their mode of serving have allowed esteem customers to either make requests at the counter by themselves or get seated so that one of the staff members can serve them. In comparing to other restaurants, there is no one of them that has employed such a model of reaching to customers. Sport bars are also unique from the rest. A customer seated in any site within the sport bar will be in a position to watch the televisions or anyone of the gigantic projects screen televisions. In subscribing to any of the sporting package, via direct televisions, direction does not matter or who the favorite sporting team is, Chili’s Grill 7 restaurant has it and with enough televisions to make everyone happy. There is hardly a place within the restaurant that one is not in a position to watch at least one of the displayed television screens. To add to all of the already great entertainment, all Chili’s restaurants consist of the NTN Trivia system which that gives customers room to interact with each other across the country. With a user id, a customer can see how they stack up with the thousands of other customers that are using the system everywhere else. The NTN system uses five of the sixteen televisions in the restaurant and the customers are provided a touchpad controller that allows them to play the game at any time. The best part about it is the playing is FREE! Unlike many of other competitors who close at around 11PM to midnight, Chili’s restaurant has decided to open as long as the laws will allow them. Most states allow restaurants and bars to stay open until 2AM which gives this gives them an extra two to three hours of operation over their competitors in the same area. The strategy is that customers who are getting a late start to the evening will pick Chili’s knowing that they will not be hurried out and will be able to stay well into the night. Not many consumers want to leave an establishment shortly after they have started to drink. Weakness Although their operations seem impressive to the management for their aggressiveness, Chili’s Grill & restaurant consists of small restaurants which when compared with their larger competitors they can serve only a small percentage. Their markets are small, with an average of about 8-10 restaurants in any one metropolitan area. Because of their size, national marketing is not worth the cost which makes it tougher to get to their customers. Centralization The stakeholders of Chili’s Grill are centralized, since they are responsible for decision making, they get reports from all the restaurants. Living abroad has made it very difficult at times to get changes approved especially within the operations management, conduct weekly reviews and meetings, and retrieve answers to key questions and other basic operations. In order to operate smoothly, Chili’s restaurants should eliminate these kinds of obstacles. Their current point-of-sale system, Hospitality Systems International (HIS), only runs on a Microsoft Windows operating system versus a POS system that also runs on an open source operating system like Linux. With many of their POS upgrades, they must also upgrade the operating system. This is very expensive because upgrades on the POS can be performed remotely but operating system upgrades must be done on-site. With a Linux based POS, there would never be a need for upgrading so the cost of Upgrades would be substantially less and would probably save the organization hundreds of thousands of dollars. The POS network is also vulnerable to the security problems and other bugs associated with MS Windows. Chili’s Grill & Bar does not have any type of delivery or drive-thru service. They offer counter service for ordering, much like a fast food establishment, but they do not currently have any delivery or drive-thru service available. They have the resources to produce a fast meal much like fast food restaurants and a drive-thru service would generate larger lunch revenues and it would be another avenue for customer satisfaction. Although none of their competitors offer either of these services, they are one of the few full service restaurants that are able to implement these services and therefore, they are losing revenue to fast food restaurants that do offer these services. Opportunities International Business With the large increase in globalization over the last decade, Chili’s restaurant has a great opportunity to provide their services and food on the international market. The Chili’s, New York-style chicken wing is still somewhat of a new concept and the international market has not yet been touched with this type of product. They can start with Canada and Mexico to test the market and eventually spread over-seas if it proves to be a profitable decision (Warshaw, 2005). Delivery or Drive-Through Service They are the only full-service restaurant that has the resources and capabilities to provide a Drive-thru service and one of the few would also profit from a delivery service. Either or both of these services could put Chili’s restaurant over the top and neither would prove to be that difficult to implement. They would obviously not sell any alcoholic products through the drive thru but they could be the first restaurant organization to provide an alcoholic delivery service along with the food delivery. National Marketing As Chili’s restaurant becomes larger and larger, exploiting more markets across the US, they will be able to explore National Marketing opportunities. While these opportunities are not cost effective for their organization at the current time, they will be very advantageous to the growth and success of their organization in the future. Threats Wing Price Increase or Unavailable With the image of Chili’s Grills resting solely on chicken wings, the chicken wing market is crucial to the success of their organization. When the price of wings increases, their profits take a bigger hit than their competitors since wings are by far their largest selling product. If the price of chicken wings ever rise too high or even become temporarily or permanently unavailable due to some disease, their organization would need to make some drastic changes. Sports strikes, holdouts or canceled games The largest part of their clientele consists of sports fans and their business is impacted greatly by the world of sports. For instance, the NHL season is currently in a lockout which means absolutely no NHL games. Same store sales are greatly impacted at restaurant locations in NHL city markets. Their restaurant locations in Denver, Dallas and Detroit are being impacted the most right now since they are the larger hockey markets and larger markets in general. Their revenues are affected whenever a game is canceled or a season is canceled due to strike or holdouts. Another problem is when a professional sports franchise moves out of a large market to another city, especially if there are little or no restaurants in the new location. Sports are important. Tougher Competition The emergence of new nation-wide sports bars or wing joints could greatly impact the market share for Buffalo Wild Wings. If new or existing organizations copy any of the distinct strengths that they have on the market, these strengths would weaken. They must continue to come up with new products, services and ways to attract new customers in order to compete with the changing restaurant industry. They need to be proactive when it comes to these types of threats, instead of reactive. Intelligent competition will enable to stay one step ahead of the game and eliminate the possibility of failure (Plunkett, 2008). 2. From your search, experience, and from the course materials identify how -up to four of the below decisions- operations management are applied at the chosen business Human Resource and Job Design Within Chili’s Grill & Bar human resource is an important department. Since the organization deals with worker, it is therefore a mandate that it take care of their welfares. In recruiting of new staff, it is the role of a human resource manager to advertise for the vacancy before contacting interviews and finally considering those that meet the requirements of the organization. Planning is also another fundamental function of s human resource function. It responsibility is to ensure the future engagement of the organization is well planned for. Another of a human resource is to check for rewards for its employees. Being one of the functions, it motivates employees on their work by rewarding those employees who are performing well in their job. Maintenance Maintenance concerns managing and controlling various departments of a plant maintenance function. Managers in charge of operations at Chili’s Grill & Bar are assign with responsibilities of ensuring that equipment that are used such as heaters, refrigerators, televisions, computers, vehicles and other machinery are in good condition. Operation managers at Chili’s Grill & Bar therefore usually make plans and scheduling plans on when to carry out their maintenance. Forecasting Managers at Chili’s Grill & Bar collectively conduct forecast in order to check on organizational performance, since it was introduced at Chili’s Grill & Bar, forecasting has made it easy for them to improve on accuracy on what will be expected in the future. They have also found it easy to identify strategies that are applicable in order to come up with good outcomes in the future. Inventory Management Restaurant is a seasonal business. It therefore ought to efficiently overlook into the future. In doing so, Chili’s Grill & Bar has never run at a loss as only adequate food has been made available. In those months that are expected to have more customers, Chili’s Grill & Bar have made plans as to have more stock in order to meet their expected demand. 3. Explain how improving operations quality can lead to reduced costs at the chosen business Quality improvement and cost reduction In proving quality, Chili’s Grill & Bar has achieved high productivity. The reason here is that quality is all a customer needs. After the realized that quality was all a customer needed, Chili’s Grill & Bar the capitalized on it. Customers were attracted to their products. The amount of food that they had been selling per day increased. The cost of producing the same foods was almost constant; for instance, the staffs who were working never increased, time and space was constant, but due to quality foods and services, customers turned up in large numbers for the quality services. Structure effect in operation management The structure of Chili’s Grill & Bar has been divided into small parts serving a group of customers, in doing so many customers have been attracted to it. Specific customers are attracted to a particular Chili’s Grill & Bar within a given city just because he/she believes the services are unique as compared to the others. It is actually a strategy that has enabled Chili’s Grill & Bar to win most of the customers in the city. If it was one, then other customers’ needs would not be me simple because there are so many customers to attend to. In addition, the restaurant would be overloaded and families and sport fans would not have been met Layout innovations With the ever changing habits there should be changes in the organization. A layout innovation at Chili’s restaurant is the issue of working hours, they have been extended to 2 Am, and this only came as a result of customer request. Organizations should be flexible as per the needs of the customer. Most states allow restaurants and bars to stay open until 2AM which gives this gives them an extra two to three hours of operation over their competitors in the same area. The strategy is that customers who are getting a late start to the evening will pick Chili’s knowing that they will not be hurried out and will be able to stay well into the night. Conclusion This paper was aimed at analyzing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of Chili’s Grill & Bar. In this analysis, operation function was mainly focused as it is considered to be the core function of the restaurant. In the efforts to analyzing this, the restaurant was realized to have unique mode of meeting customers’ needs and the issue of time has also been utilized in order to get good returns. They are required that the increase their space as it is steel part of their weaknesses. The industry is a threat as new competitors emerge thus threatening Chili’s Grill and Bar. Finally, the restaurant should look forward to decentralizing their operation management as it requires quick decisions without necessarily consulting the head office. Bibliography Bob Adams Publishers . (1993). The Dallas- Ft JobBank. Adams Media Corporation. Bopp, B. (2011). The Everything Restaurant Recipes Cookbook: Copycat Recipes for Outback Steakhouse Bloomin' Onion, Long John Silver's Fish Tacos, TGI Friday's Dragonfly Chicken, Applebee's Baby Back Ribs, Chili's Grill & Bar Molten Chocolate Cake...and Hundreds More! Everything Books. Kelly, M. R. (2000). The Los Angeles Jobbank. Adams Media Corporation. Plunkett, J. W. (2008). Plunketts Food Industry Almanac 2008: The Only Comprehensive Guide to Food Companies and Trends. Plunkett Research Ltd. Plunkett, J. W. (2009). Plunkett's Food Industry Almanac 2009 (E-Book): Food Industry Market Research, Statistics, Trends and Leading Companies. 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