Solutions Manual: Service Operations-s

Review Questions
6.1 What are some of the factors that distinguish services from products? Answer: Products are tangible, while services are intangible. There is little variation from one unit of a manufactured product to the next, while there may be significant variations amongst services of the same type. The time to produce a product is usually known, while the time to complete a service is not known with certainty. Products are consumed or used, while services are experienced. There is little or no contact between the customer and the manufacturer of a purchased product, while customer contact with the service provider is usually an integral part of a service rendered. 6.2 Identify the factors by which the quality of a service is judged by a customer. Answer: The factors that determine service quality, as judged by a customer include (1) the expectations of the customer regarding the service, (2) the customer interaction experienced by the customer due to the service provider, (3) the quality of workmanship, (4) the waiting time before the service started, and (5) the time required to complete the service. 6.3 Service operations and organizations can be divided into three major categories. Name those categories. Answer: The three categories identified in the text are (1) service organizations, whose main business is providing a service, (2) internal services, which are service providers for customers within the same organization, and (3) product companies that also provide services in support of their products. 6.4 What is the difference between a facilities-based service and a field-based service? Answer: A facilities-based service requires the customer to be at the providers facility for the service to be rendered. A field-based service is one in which the delivery of the service occurs at the customers location. 6.5 Give some examples of high-contact services and of low-contact services. Answer: Examples of high-contact services given in the text are restaurants, hairdressers, dental offices, and prisons. Examples of low-contact services given in the text are postal and parcel delivery, news associations such as Associated Press, and government services such as fire departments, planning commissions, county offices, and tax collectors. 6.6 What are the differences in worker attributes between high-contact services and lowcontact services? Answer: For services with high customer contact, workers should have good interpersonal skills and a sense of public relations on behalf of the organization. For low-contact services, technical and analytical skills are more important. 6.7 What are some of the differences between manual work and service work? Answer: Manual work deals with the processing and flow of materials, while service work deals with the processing and flow of information and customer experience. Worker
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Work Systems and the Methods, Measurement, and Management of Work by Mikell P. Groover. ISBN 0-13-140650-7. 2007 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All rights reserved.

Solutions Manual: Service Operations-s

attributes for manual work include physical strength and manual dexterity, while service worker attributes emphasize mental acuity, communication skills, and problem-solving skills. Manual workers are often called blue-collar workers, while service workers are called white-collar workers. Manual work is usually associated with the primary and secondary industries, while service work is associated with the tertiary industries. 6.8 In general, determining time standards for service work is more difficult than for repetitive production work. Why? Answer: Reasons given in the text are the following: (1) Services are variable, and therefore the time to provide a given type of service varies. (2) In many service operations, customers arrive at random intervals, making it difficult to predict workloads. (3) Customer contact affects the service time. (4) Service work units are intangible, and therefore the problem of defining a standard method is difficult. (5) The service work may consist of a variety of tasks whose exact details are not known in advance. (6) Some services are delivered on an on-going and intermittent basis. (7) In service work that requires creativity, the work cannot be directly measured. 6.9 Define what an office is. Answer: According to the text, an office is a place where the business-oriented activities of an organization are transacted and/or its services are rendered. The office is where the information-processing and related activities of the organization are accomplished. 6.10 Define office work. Answer: According to the text, office work consists of information-processing activities that are concerned with the business functions of the organization such as sales, accounting, scheduling, and management. 6.11 What is the difference between office activities and office applications? Answer: Office activities are the physical or mental actions performed by an office worker while carrying out an assigned task. Activities include typing or keying, filing papers, participating in meetings, and telephoning. Office applications are related to the business functions of the organization and are oriented toward end results and accomplishments, such as reports, proposals, accounts payable, and inventory control. Office applications often require multiple activities for their completion. 6.12 Identify some of the differences between creative office work and routine office work. Answer: Creative work tends to be intellectually more difficult and requires special skills and knowledge that may take years of education and/or experience to acquire. Creative work involves learning, analysis, decision-making, and problem solving, and the decisions and problems tend to be unique and individual. By contrast, routine work tends to be repetitive and less difficult. The educational requirements are not as demanding as for creative work. Routine work consists of procedures that are replicated closely for every task of a certain type. 6.13 What are the differences between office knowledge workers and office support personnel?
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Work Systems and the Methods, Measurement, and Management of Work by Mikell P. Groover. ISBN 0-13-140650-7. 2007 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All rights reserved.

Solutions Manual: Service Operations-s

Answer: Knowledge workers are the office workers who accomplish the creative information-processing activities and applications in offices. They are the white-collar professionals such as managers, lawyers, engineers, designers, researchers, and technical specialists. Support personnel provide administrative and staff assistance for the office, serving the needs of the knowledge workers. Support personnel perform the routine tasks in the office. 6.14 Define office automation. Answer: Office automation is the application of computers and other business machines to automate much of the routine and repetitive work that is accomplished in offices. 6.15 Office automation reflects the convergence and integration of three traditional office technologies. Name the three technologies and identify some of the equipment in each technology. Answer: As identified in the text, the three traditional technologies associated with office automation are (1) office machine technology, which included typewriters, adding machines, dictation machines, and photocopiers; (2) data processing technology, which includes computers, data storage devices, printers and other output devices; and (3) communication technologies, which included telephones and teletype machines. 6.16 Define office augmentation. Answer: Office augmentation refers to the use of computer systems to enhance the abilities of a worker in low-volume creative work, such as designing a product or writing a proposal. Office augmentation is concerned with increasing the effectiveness of the process, the convenience of the worker, and the quality of the result.

Problems
6.1 A small appliance manufacturer is planning to open a repair facility that would receive broken appliances from customers and repair them. Customers would send their broken appliances to the facility, and when repaired, they would be returned directly to the customer. There are five different appliance models that would be repaired, identified here as A, B, C, D, and E. The industrial engineering department has provided estimates of the average time to repair each model. These mean times are, respectively, 23 min, 42 min, 19 min, 27 min, and 35 min. The management wants to staff the facility in anticipation of a weekly return rate of 100 appliances per week for models A, B, and C, and a weekly return rate of 150 appliances for models D and E. The facility will operate one shift five days per week, but it is anticipated that each repairperson will spend an average of only 6.0 hours per day repairing appliances. How many repairpersons will be required for the facility? Solution: WL = 100(23 + 42 + 19) + 150(27 + 35) = 17,700 min = 295 hr/wk Available time AT = (5 days/wk)(6.0 hr/day) = 30 hr/wk per repairperson w = 295/30 = 9.833 rounded up to 10 repairpersons 6.2 The Best Eastern Hotel chain is opening a new luxury hotel in Atlantic City, and its maid staff requirements must be determined. The new hotel will have 250 rooms. The occupancy rate is expected to be 75% during the week (five nights) and 95% on weekends
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Work Systems and the Methods, Measurement, and Management of Work by Mikell P. Groover. ISBN 0-13-140650-7. 2007 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All rights reserved.

Solutions Manual: Service Operations-s

(two nights). Each maid will be responsible for cleaning 12 rooms per day (approximately 35 min per room). Their day begins at 7:00 a.m., and the cleaning of all rooms must be completed by 3:00 p.m. each day. One hour is allowed out of their day for lunch and breaks, so the actual time worked is 7.0 hours. Maids will work five days per week on a revolving schedule to balance weekday and weekend duties. Given an absentee rate of 5% that must be included in the determination, how many cleaning maids must be hired by the new hotel? Solution: Define the number of rooms to clean per week as the workload WL WL = 5(250)(0.75) + 2(250)(0.95) = 1412.5 rooms/wk AT = 5 x 12 = 60 rooms/wk per maid Factoring in the 5% absentee rate, AT = 60(0.95) = 57 rooms/wk per maid w = 1412.5/57 = 24.78 rounded up to 25 maids 6.3 A new metropolitan hospital will have 500 beds, and nursing staff requirements must be determined. The occupancy rate (ratio of patients to beds) is expected to be 85% on average. For temporary peaks above 85%, the hospital plans to use overtime to cope with the extra workload. The hospital must have a nursing staff for all three shifts, but the number of patients per nurse is different for different shifts. For the first and second shift (6 a.m. to 10 p.m.), the ratio will be 8 patients per nurse. For the third shift (10 p.m. to 6 a.m.), the ratio will be 12 patients per nurse. Each nurse would work a regular 40 hours per week in shifts of 8 hours. (a) How many staff nurses (not counting supervisors) must be hired by the new hospital, if the anticipated nurse absentee rate (due mostly to illness) is 6%, which must be factored into the calculation? (b) How many nurses would work each shift during any given 24-hour period? Solution: (a) For each shift, number of patients = 500(0.85) = 425 patients Workload per shift WLsh = 425(8) = 3400 patient-hr/shift Workload per shift per week WLwk = 3400(7) = 23,800 patient-hr/wk Available time per nurse, expressed in patient-hours per week: For shifts 1 and 2, AT = 40(8 patients)(1 0.06) = 300.8 patient-hr/nurse per week For shift 3, AT = 40(12 patients)(1 0.06) = 451.2 patient-hr/nurse per week Total number of nurses required: w = 2(23,800/300.8) + 23,800/451.2 = 2(79.12) + 52.75 = 210.99 = 211 nurses (b) Shifts 1 and 2: Nurses/shift = 425/8 = 53.125 rounded up to 54 nurses each shift Shift 3: Nurses/shift = 425/12 = 35.417 rounded up to 36 nurses each shift Check: {53.125(7/5)(2) + 35.417(7/5)}/(1-0.06) = 210.99 = 211 nurses 6.4 An accounting firm has 22 accountants and two staff support personnel. The firm has trouble handling all of its workload, especially around tax time each year, because the accountants currently have more work than they can accomplish. The president of the firm has studied the work content of the various jobs done by the firm and has determined that 27% of job activities performed by the accountants are routine work that could be done by support staff. The reason the accountants perform this routine work is because the two staff support people are already overloaded. Assume a 40-hour workweek. Determine (a) how many more staff personnel the firm should hire and (b) by what percentage could the firms revenues be increased by freeing the accountants of the routine work.
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Work Systems and the Methods, Measurement, and Management of Work by Mikell P. Groover. ISBN 0-13-140650-7. 2007 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All rights reserved.

Solutions Manual: Service Operations-s

Solution: (a) Total routine workload of accountants WL = 0.27(40)(22) = 237.6 hr/wk Staff support available time per week AT = 40 hr/wk Additional staff support = 237.6/40 = 5.94 rounded up to 6 additional staff (b) If the accountants were to utilize the freed-up time for accounting work, the increase in revenues would be 1/0.73 1 = 0.37. The percent increase in the firms revenues would be 37%.

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Work Systems and the Methods, Measurement, and Management of Work by Mikell P. Groover. ISBN 0-13-140650-7. 2007 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. All rights reserved.