The Home-Style Cookies company decided to implement the employee’s offer to open a retail cookie store in the manufacturing building. The bakery has a well-elaborated working process and wants to increase profit and popularity in the area by launching another plant. Hence, this paper aims to create the initial plan, describe its steps, and provide service design recommendations for a new retail shop in Hudson, New York.
It is vital to identify the necessary resources for launching a new bakery. At the start-up stage of the bakery and at the initial phase of operation, a minimum number of personnel is required. They are managers, bakers, cashiers, assistants, cleaners, and others. In sum, approximately 30 people should be hired at the beginning. Baking ovens, proofing cabinets, kneading machine, equipment racks, dough-cutting tables, baking carts, and other furniture is needed for the bakery.
Suggesting additional goods such as napkins, paper bags, straws, sugar packets, and tins is indispensable. The importance of explicit services should not be diminished even though customers can barely observe the production process (Stevenson, 2017). The bakery’s personnel should wear uniforms and provide high-quality customer service. It especially applies to the cashiers and those who pack the cookies since the aesthetic aspect is essential for the clients. What is more, the staff needs to be friendly and open-minded to solve issues effectively.
The service blueprint is an indispensable part of any business since it allows for building logical interconnection between the process participants. The customer blueprint is the following: they would come to the bakery, study the assortment, choose the appropriate option, and purchase the item (Lewis, 2019). Meanwhile, the cashier welcomes the client to the store, support chat, provides details about the goods, and sells them. The production line checks if the ingredients are in stock, measure their amount for the batch, and bake cookies. There is a backstage interaction between the customer and the cashier: one asks the question while the other responds. Additionally, the cashier corresponds to the production line staff to ensure the time of the next batch or if anything is out of stock. The service blueprint for employee training presumes setting goals, compiling a schedule, and choosing appropriate methods for measuring the results; the training should take less than a month.
The time phases of the process help define the number of workers needed. For instance, the preparation activities take up to two hours, while the cooking process lasts for more than four or five hours. The packaging occupies more than an hour, depending on the number of cookies. Additionally, the time may vary due to delays, shortage of ingredients, personnel call-ins, or equipment breakdown. Consequently, it is vital to have a couple of hours in advance to avoid problems.
Moreover, service boundaries need to be established, especially on the level of production. It presumes that the managers should set a specific time for the work to be ready. Furthermore, both the front and back of the bakery are responsible for the quality of the goods. A major failure may occur during production if the oven is out of order. In order to minimize this threat, the plan is the following: the staff should check the equipment daily and report the faults to the manager. The other failure may relate to poor quality products. In this case, the personnel markets the batch and makes a new one. Service errors occur more often; they typically include customer-vendor interaction. Here, the managers should identify the root cause of the conflict, solve the issue, and ensure the client is satisfied.
In sum, the use of technology will improve the design of the service so that it is faster, more efficient, and better in quality. The significant challenges identified relate to solving customers’ problems and managing the personnel. Once the sales increase, the production line scope expands, including staff and equipment, it is recommended to improve the interaction between the retile shop and production line to ensure the goods are not late for sale and that everything is in stock.
References
Lewis, M. A. (2019). Operations management: A research overview. Taylor & Francis.
Stevenson, W. J. (2017). Operations Management (13th ed.). McGraw-Hill Education.