Caselet – Sheena

1. In what ways are Sheena’s customers most likely to judge the quality of her lawn care services?

Her customers will most likely judge the quality of her lawn care services with the result of her performance and the time it took her to complete the work. As well as her manner of treatment with each customer because it can be used to judge the quality of her services. The customer may also judge her previous services and consider her availability.

2. Sheena is the operations manager of her business. Among her responsibilities are forecasting, inventory management, scheduling, quality assurance, maintenance.

a. What kind of things would likely require forecast?

Things that would likely require forecast will include sales forecast, demand forecast, inventory forecast, and budgeting forecast. The most important is the sales forecast so that she can estimate the current level of sales and growth of her business, and to compare her company to the standards of other industries. It will also help her in creating some policies so that she can easily monitor the prices and costs to guarantee profits and make her aware of the minor problems which may become major problems.

b. What inventory items does Sheena probably have? Name one inventory decision she has to make periodically.

Her inventory items will probably have fuels, oils and lubricants for the mowing machine, fertilizer, and garbage bag. With these inventory items, Sheena should decide the best reorder quantity for each item to avoid service disruptions and to minimize cost. Her major inventory decision may be whether to hold more inventory of fertilizer for the next period or not.

c. What scheduling must she do? What things might occur to disrupt schedules and cause Sheena to reschedule?

She must create a schedule for her lawn services to her customers, employees’ workload or tasks, inventory purchases, and machine maintenance. She should create a flexible schedule to avoid and minimize

conflicts and rescheduling. Natural disasters, customer demand, the availability of the worker in case the other one is absent or sick, and machine breakdown may disrupt schedules.

d. How important is quality assurance to Sheena’s business?

Sheena has no background in lawn mowing services. She was no closer to finding a job at that time that is why she decided to have a business, because the quality of her services was found helpful to her neighbors. Ensuring the quality of the business is a must to Sheena especially that she is planning to expand further. Customer satisfaction mainly depends on the service quality of a business so if Sheena can ensure a better quality, then the customer demand will increase.

e. What kind of maintenance must be performed?

Equipment or machine maintenance is necessary for Sheena’s business. These are the mower, scythe, tractor and other equipment that will be used.