Walt Disney Case

1) Explain how operations management activities affect the customer experiences described in the Walt Disney anecdote at the beginning of this chapter. What "moments of truth" would a customer at Disney World encounter? Think about the total experience including lodging, food service, shopping, and transportation, as well as theme park attraction and operations.

Operation management activities affect the customer experience because if the service providers are not trained properly and give the customer a bad experience that one bad experience can end up being spread to all that persons friends and family and then that might make Disney lose customers which will hurt their business.

2) Explain why a bank teller, nurse, or flight attendant must have service management skills. How do the required skills differ for someone working in a factory? What are the implications for hiring criteria and training?

Service-providers need technical/operations skills plus human interaction and marketing skills. A bank teller, for example, must be able to complete many types of financial transactions and operate the computer and associated software. The teller must also interact with the customer in a pleasant way and market other financial services (cross-sell, up sell, etc.). A factory worker can focus on technical/operations/production skills since they have no or little interaction with customers. The training for service-providers is more interdisciplinary compared to factory employees.

3) Why is process thinking important in operations management? Thinking of yourself as an "operations manager" for your education, how could you process thinking improve your performance as a student?

Process thinking is important since processes describes how work gets done and objectives are achieved in all functional areas such as finance and human resource management, and industries such as government, health care, forestry, manufacturing, and education.

Many students perform many processes, such as studying for an exam and managing multiple readings plus homework assignments on a daily basis

4) Do you think you will be working in manufacturing or services when you graduate? What do you think will be the role of manufacturing in the U.S. economy in the future?

When I graduate I will be working in services. I believe with all the technological upgrades that are happening every single day manufacturing jobs will more than likely be done more by computers and you will see more and more people getting laid off which will push them to change direction and go after the service jobs.