Management Concepts Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Management Concepts - Essay Example There are several reasons for such a feeble sales growth, which are discussed in the next paragraph. Major issues faced by Hogsmeadow Glass center Inventory: Hogsmeadow offers a diverse variety of products to its customers both seasonal and year round ones. The owner finds it extremely difficult to precisely estimate the amount of products, specially the perishable and seasonal ones, and thus ultimately ends up suffering loss due to either selling the off season products on huge discounts or throwing off the spoiled products. Estimating the precise amount of the stock is a crucial financing decision as significant costs are associated with the wrong choice. Estimating too low of the product leads to stock out cost, thus waving the customers away. Keeping a stock also results in cost of maintaining the inventory. Thus it is necessary to calculate the amount at which the overall cost of inventory is minimal. There is no appropriate procedure for the calculation of the stock which resul ts in a mere guess as to the amount to be stocked. This dearly cost them. Honeydukes Restaurant: Honeydukes restaurant is the only eatable spot in the surrounding area and thus often experience a gigantic load of customers to enjoy its eatable products and services. Due to the increase in the load, the resulting large queue often enrages the customers and they turn back without enjoying their meals. Three reasons may account for the resulting long queue. 1. The misallocation of work among the available staff: As evident from the case study, from among the 12 staff members, seven are deployed for kitchen work and one each for remaining errands. This allocation of work among the staff members seem inappropriate which results in people standing for long in queue for their turn in peak time. 2. Small area over which the restaurant spreads: Though the area occupied by restaurant has not been stated, yet it is clear from the case study that restaurant does not have enough seating for peak times when people reserve their places by placing their belongings. This shows that some of the visitors may not find a place to sit in and enjoy. One other reason pointed out in the case study for the seating problem is that people, after enjoying their meals or other orders, just sit there for long without any reason thus further causing the acute shortage of chairs. 3. The part of the self-service procedure: The restaurant has a policy of partly self-service and partly assisted service for its customers. The self service results in long queues, having people to wait for long thus resulting in frustration among them. Division of service between self and assisted may be a suitable option for restaurants having organized systems with efficient and multi tasking personnel and a sufficiently larger area to accommodate for such a system. Though self service essentially reduces cost of staff scheduling but for this to work out, staff should be properly trained to work at their maximum speed so that the customers are catered to instantly. In case of Honeydukes staff members, it seems that the kitchen personnel are not trained to deal with many orders simultaneously as evident from the case study. It takes more then the usual time in peak hours to prepare children lunch boxes. Staffing issues: Hogsmeadow Garden Center also has staffing issues. As stated by Don Dursley, finding the right person for the