Jose’s Authentic Mexican Restaurant Essay

Problem Statement: Jose’s Mexican restaurant is a small yet popular spot. Lately they have been losing customers and profits due to service issues. In order to improve the restaurant, Jose’s Mexican Restaurant must provide service that is top-notch, in other words fast, efficient, great testing, convenient and heartwarming. What must the restaurant do in order to improve service? Areas for consideration: Quality at Jose’s restaurant should be defined by service, value, reliability of the experience and overall customers’ satisfaction. The quality of a product is defined as whether it fulfills its stated specifications. Customer satisfaction should be at the top priority for the restaurant. Customer satisfaction is the measurement of a product or service that meets or exceeds customer’s expectations. Therefore, the restaurant should focus on its customers’ needs and requirements, and strive to exceed their expectations. ` The factors that affect the quality of the service are conformance to specification, value, fitness for use, support and even psychological standard impression. Food should be delivered and served as to be what is promised on the menu. Also, the food should be cooked and prepared properly, to be fresh, clean, and to have exactly the ingredients and flavors that are ordered. Service staff should be neatly dressed and greet customers with a smile; personnel should be experienced and trained to accommodate the customer. Atmosphere is another important area of quality. At Jose’s, keeping with the Mexican themed decor creates the atmosphere for the Mexican prepared dishes. The overall establishment should maintain a level of cleanliness. Waiting areas for customers should be clean and comfortable during the peak times when a waiting to be seated is necessary. The service and meals should be dependable and consistent. Food should be prepared with the best available ingredients, and served quickly and correctly. Wait staff should provide prompt service, serving in the time promised, and make the customers feel unique and special. What are the restaurant’s costs of process failures? – Because of the lack of a waiting area and reservations Jose’s is losing customers that could have been accommodated better. According to the survey conducted an average of 20% of the customers are unsatisfied. Also due to the wait time for the food to be prepared over 30% of the customers are not satisfied. Even a whopping 14% of customers are not happy with how the food tastes, this is maybe due to the ingredients the cook was complaining about. Even the servers have problems a large 12% complained about their servers. When it all comes down to it a whopping 20% of these customers say that the dining experience was not worth the cost. What does this mean? It means that 20% of the customers are not coming back. So as we can see Jose’s Authentic Mexican Restaurant really needs an overhaul. When a process fails to satisfy a customer, the failure is considered a defect. The more servers the easier it becomes to serve the customers. The more space, the less need for waiting to be seated in fact we may place a cozy waiting area for our guests. Renovations also mean you get to have the media evaluate your place again, meaning you’ll get on the paper, which means free advertising. Also a renovation will spark interest in your regular customers and the general public. People will talk about it. They will want to experience the new place. Disadvantages (Weaknesses and Threats) The expansion of space will take a long time, first a space has to be purchased. We are not even sure if the establishments around Jose’s will want to sell space. Then there comes the finances. Is Jose’s Authentic Mexican Restaurant capable of shelling out large enough capital. New employees may be hard to train and not always needed thus accumulating more cost than what is desired. Also what if the renovation and space expansion takes too long and a new Mexican restaurant owned by someone else opens up? Will Jose’s customers remember it, or will they be satisfied with the new-one’s service? All these things must be put into consideration for even an assumed small weaknesses or threat maybe underestimated and can result or turn into a fatal error. Alternative 2 Use a Six Sigma Improvement Model (DMAIC) Six sigma, which relies heavily on the principles of TQM is comprehensive and flexible system for achieving, sustaining, and maximizing business success by minimizing defects and variability in processes. Although Six Sigma Improvement Model is a five step procedure that leads to improvement in process performance, the model can be applied to projects involving incremental improvement to process or to project requiring major changes including redesigning an existence process. The following steps comprise the model: The DMAIC project methodology has five phases: * Define  the problem, the voice of the customer, and the project goals, specifically. * Measure  key aspects of the current process and collect relevant data. * Analyze  the data to investigate and verify cause-and-effect relationships. Determine what the relationships are, and attempt to ensure that all factors have been considered. Seek out root cause of the defect under investigation. * Improve  or optimize the current process based upon data analysis using techniques such as  design of experiments,  poka yoke  or mistake proofing, and standard work to create a new, future state process. Set up pilot runs to establish  process capability. * Control  the future state process to ensure that any deviations from target are corrected before they result in defects. Implement  control systems  such as  statistical process control,  production boards, and  visual workplaces, and continuously monitor the process. Let us use the Six Sigma Approach: 1- Define. Determine the characteristic of the process output that are critical to customer satisfaction and identify and gaps between these characteristics and the process’s capabilities. Get a picture of the current process by documenting it using flowcharts and process charts. At Jose’s, some of the concern are stated at the survey about customer satisfaction from the service they receive at Jose’s. The survey shows that 20% of the customers were not happy, and don’t consider the service they receive worth the money they pay. Look into the problem thoroughly and see if there are cracks in the system, for example we noticed that Jose’s does not take reservations. 2- Measure. Quantify the work the process does that affects the gap. Select what to measure, identify data sources, and prepare a data collection plan. In Jose’s case, the survey covers all the major issues that could have direct effect on the business performance. 3- Analyze. Use he data on measures to perform process analysis, applying tools such as Pareto charts, scatter diagrams, and cause-and-effect diagrams, and statistical process control (SPC) tools to determine where improvements are necessary. Jose’s should analyze the data from the survey in order to address the problem. 4- Improve. Modify or redesign existing methods to meet the new performance objectives. Implement the change. The Jose’s team should observe the positive achievement in the operation, and should stop the process if there were mismatching. 5- Control. Monitor the process to make sure that high performance level are maintain. Once again, data analysis tools such as pareto charts , bar charts scatter diagram, as well as statistical process control tools can be used to control the process. The selected operational procedure should be revised, and needs to be documented and this process must be firmly held by Jose’s operational team. In the operation processes, continuous improvement need to be find out for the more better performance from Jose’s in general and over all catering services. Advantages (Strengths and Opportunities) The Six Sigma Image Model is a thorough study of the problem. Through using this Jose’s will get down to the roots of the problem and maintain the system functioning well. It takes less time and resources to accomplish. It can be started immediately and the results are effective. This approach is not only cost effective but keeps the guessing-game out of the picture. Since this approach is cost-effective the money saved may then be invested in other things such as equipment, advertising or a totally new business depending on the owners judgment. Disadvantages (Weaknesses and Threats) I don’t really see any major flaws here except that it may be too tedious for the less-active folk. A threat can be that another restaurant may be able to use this system better and come out with better results than Jose’s Authentic Mexican Restaurant. Conclusion and recommendation: Alternative 1 – may indeed spark interest and increase sales for an unknown period of time after the restaurant re-opens. However, this method is not cost-effective and will take too much time, effort and capital to set in motion and complete. And it does not take an in-depth look at the problem but only gives a superficial or shallow solution to the problem. With the information collected by Jose’s Authentic Mexican Restaurant it is possible the restaurant is ready to take the Six Sigma Image Model approach. I therefore conclude that Alternative 2 which is to take an in-depth search of the problem through the Six Sigma approach originally developed and made popular by Motorola, USA can be most helpful to solving the problem with service at the said restaurant. This alternative takes a deep meaningful search of the problems, solves it and maintains it. This approach meets the objective of the study, which is to solve the service problem of Jose’s Authentic Restaurant. The importance of investing in a Six Sigma approach are the in-depth research, answers, information and system maintenance that will be available after this approach is completed. After all, it is a proven system that has been used by countless successful businesses. Aside from the research valuability, educating your employees with this approach may increase their self-esteem by providing them with information and a tool for success in life. Happy and confident employees result in a better work-ethic, which will then dramatically improve the service performance of Jose’s Authentic Mexican Restaurant.