136 Outcome: Operations Management in Service Businesses

What you’ll learn to do: describe operations management in service businesses

Service providers don’t produce tangible goods in a factory as we saw with the JetBoards and Peeps, but operations management is every bit as critical for this sector as it is for manufacturing.

Consider the Izmailovo Hotel in Moscow shown in the photograph above. Built to house athletes during the 1980 Olympics, the complex has 7,500 guest rooms and is currently the largest hotel in the world. Think about cleaning all those rooms—in four thirty-story-high towers—or checking in the thousands of guests. No small operation! Although the Izmailovo doesn’t produce a tangible good, it relies on many of the same operations management principles used in manufacturing to keep itself running (and profitable).

LEARNING ACTIVITIES

The learning activities for this section include:

• Reading: Operations Management for Service Providers
• Self Check: Operations Management in Service Businesses

Take time to review and reflect on this activity in order to improve your performance on the assessment for this section.