Operations Management

OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT

INTRODUCTION

For the current assessment, I will be using the Regional Center of Investment (Department of Business Start up).

THE ORGANISATION

Regional Center of Investment -

The Regional Center of Investment of the - Region/- is a public service organization which contributes to the setting-up of the companies by providing information and carrying out the formalities concerning the setting-up of the company. To fulfill this mission, the RCI

* Plays the role of the only interlocutor of all the people who want to establish a company.

* Places at the disposal of the applicants the unique form.

* Achieves all the necessary steps to receive, from the qualified administrations, the documents or certificates required, necessary to the creation of a company.

* Puts the applicant in possession of the supporting documents delivered by the administrations, justifying the existence of the company.

OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT:

"Operations and process management is the activity of managing the resources and process to produce products and services" (Slack et al OPERATIONS AND PROCESS MANAGEMENT 2nd edition, 2009).

Operations are what an organization does to transform inputs to outputs. By adding value to inputs, operations transform them to inputs available for customers.

In the case chosen for this assignment, operations consist on transforming information, documents, money into a legally created business.

(Figure 1: operations in the RCI)

4 Vs ANALYSIS

(Figure2: the 4Vs analysis of the RCI operations)

VOLUME Low volume of outputs. The RCI treats only 10% (about 100 cases) of the whole volume of business created annually in the region. For this, the RCI appointed only one person who plays the role of the front office and the back office.

VARIETY There are only two processes of business creation procedures according to the Sole proprietorship type of business which has its own legal procedure and the other types of companies which have their unique legal procedure of creation.

VARIATION The variation in demand is high. It depends on the period of the year. In general, the volume is much higher in the period between January and march.

VISIBILITY The process of legal business creation is not visible for customers. The only contact of customers with the RCI is in the front office where they provide documents, information and fees. The RCI, on behalf of customers, achieves all the necessary steps to receive, from the qualified administrations, the documents or certificates required, necessary to the creation of a company.

As the RCI does not operate alone in the market of assisting the business start up, its operations must be performants in terms of:

PERFORMANCE OBJECTIVE ASPECT OF PERFORMANCE OBJECTIVE

QUALITY The RCI staff has acquired an important experience and professionalism in assisting, advising customers and in fulfilling the procedures to create new business. However, with one center covering the whole region (16.000 Km²), it's not enough to attract customers. Potential customers in the far locations prefer the services of consultancy cabinets, lawyers and other specialized cabinets. Otherwise, with linkage to previous experiences, the Moroccan customer does not like locations related to the ministry of Interior. The creation of RCI as a public service of the Minister of Interior and the location of the RCI within the building of the province (representation of the Minister of Interior in the regional scale) inhibit most of the potential customers to have recourse to the services of its services.

SPEED In order to deliver a faster service to customers, the RCI combines the use of internet and physical procedures (travels). Moreover, since it is under the authority of the Governor, the RCI made conventions with the administrations concerned by start up business to deliver to it the documents justifying the creation of new business faster than if demands are formulated by lawyers or other cabinets. Thus, the RCI provides the faster service in its kind.

DEPENDABILITY

FLEXIBILITY The process of business creation is regulated by law

COST The customers do not pay any service fees. They pay only fees and taxes proper to the legal creation of the business. However, the process as it is designed by the RCI is very expensive. In order to attract potential customers to have recourse to its services, the RCI could start the procedure and use a vehicle, an agent to do many travels even for one customer a week.

SERVICE TRANSACTION ANALYSIS

Service Transaction Analysis pulls together the service concept, the service process, transaction quality assessment