Pharmacy improvement at CVS is one of those classic cases where the solution is neither too simple nor it is too unimaginable to leave the student high and dry. In today's class, we started off by discussing the magnitude of opportunity lost by CVS by not improving its processes. We then assessed the process in its current form and then discussed the pros and cons of various improvement options. Further, we discussed implementational challenges and sustainability of the improvement initiatives. The ever aggressive Swarit and the always sweet Nidhin did an interesting role play exercise which demonstrated to the class, what an uphill task the PSI team was up for!
One of the interesting solutions offered was by Abhishek and Ankit who suggested centralization of the DUR process thus reducing valuable in-house pharmacist's time. Kudos to them.
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After a long hiatus, we resumed our course with a discussion of the Benihana of Tokyo case. We began our discussion with the Benihana's service concept and then went on to discuss how the various aspects of Benihana's service concept were deeply tied in to the operational choices made in the design of the service. We discussed how Benihana's incentive systems, space allocation, limited menu options etc and their coherence with the firms service concept. We also briefly discussed service blueprinting and developed a rough blueprint for a typical benihana restaurant. Thanks to Manish for the talk on service blueprinting. More on service blueprinting could be found in the course compendium, textbook and here. Finally, thanks for all the warm wishes for my baby girl. Signing off with this video of the various antics of a Benihana chef. Enjoy. Following are the assignment questions for the Benihana and CVS cases.
Benihana of Tokyo
Pharmacy improvement at CVS
Today's session began with a disappointment of not having any team come up with a concrete final solution to the Southwest case. The actual decision and the relevant calculations were discussed in the class.
We went on to discuss what I call the hands and legs of the service. The physical location of the service, the Servicescape. We understood the factors that impact approach, avoidance and interaction behavior of the employees and customers of a service firm. We tried to understand through a lot of examples how the physical layout and other subtle aspects like the smell, music etc impact the customer and employee through physiological, emotional and cognitive means to determine approach, avoidence and interaction behavior. A servicescape is a visual metaphor of the organization and needs to reflect the core value of the service. Following are the three announcements I made:
During the next two sessions, we would be discussing cases titled Benihana of Tokyo and the Pharmacy improvement at CVS. Team-case allocations can be found in the course outline. Keep watching this space for the assignment questions. In this session, we discussed the remainder of the Southwest case. It is strange that the everybody in the class (except for Sonia) looked clueless about the questions posed in my previous post! Sometimes, I feel who I am doing this for! Anyway, we went ahead with the discussion on how Southwest transformed itself over the last few years to match up with the volatile conditions of the airline market. We also did some number crunching on what makes Southwest's low turn around time a key competitive advantage. We also discussed the pros and cons of the LaGuardia entry decision. While an overwhelming majority of the class did not want to enter LaGuardia, only Ankit Goyal and Amar Garg seem to be interested to go ahead with it. The teams promised to get back to me with a quantitative analysis of the LaGuardia decision. I have my fingers crossed!! I expect them to come up with solutions by putting themselves in the shoes of Gary Kelly. We ended the session with closing discussion on Strategic Service vision, how it should be both externally as well as internally focused, its relation to Service Profit Chain and finally the customer value equation. Relevant slides have been attached. I would like to thank Prof. Pierrie Dussauge from HEC, Paris for providing us with the Southwest Airlines video as well as the slides that were used for the discussion. More on Southwest can be found here and here.
In the last session, we finished taxying around theory on services and took off our Service Operations course with our first case discussion on the Southwest Airlines. I must say we did have a smooth take off. The discussion, as usual, was lively with everybody pitching in their two pence and some people pitching in two pounds. We discussed what made Southwest what it is today. Further, the class contributed to build what is known as the Strategic Service Vision comprising of target market, service concept, operating strategy and support systems.
In the next class, we shall continue discussing the Southwest Airlines case. We will discuss the following questions.
The long case, in the course compendium, is to be used for this answering these questions. |
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November 2019
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