Running head: OPERATION MANAGEMENT
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Operation Management at Marriott Hotel
Marriott Hotel is an international hotel that runs and licenses hotels and lodgings in
different nations across the world. It was founded by Alice S. Marriot and Willard J. Marriott in
1927, and currently operates and manages at least 3000 hotels globally (Marriott, n.d.). It offers a
variety of amenities to clients including exceptional décor and dining and internet access. It
constantly innovates and invents to ensure it develops and offers unique products and services to
clients (Marriott, n.d.). As a result, the hotel offers high quality services to clients including
vibrant sites for tourism and destination. The hotel provides recreation, accommodation, and
food services to clients by the hotel (Marriott, n.d.). It collaborates with varied stakeholders
including the government, shareholders, employees, customers, and the supply chain to ensure
the services and products offered are tailor-made to meet the needs of clients (Marriott, n.d.). It
forms strategic partnerships with suppliers to ensure the supplies are delivered to the hotel when
required and at the required time. Marriott Hotel has implemented six sigma, continuous
improvement, Just-in-Time (JIT), and employee empowerment through job redesign, employee
training and development, work measurement, and employee decision making respectively.
However, it should still implement six sigma, continuous improvement, JIT, and employee
empowerment by task combination, target setting, training standardization, and provision of
employee growth path respectively to improve employee and the hotel’s performance.
Overview of Quality
Marriott Hotel International is a worldwide company that offers lodging services in many
nations across the world. The hotel has over 6,700 properties in over 130 nations (Marriott, n.d.).
In 2007, the hotel registered revenue of $22 billion (Marriott, n.d.). Its headquarters is in
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Bethesda, Maryland. It has a team of highly experienced and skills leaders who strive to ensure
the hotel leads in the services it offers. The hotel offers varied goods and services (G&S) to
people from different backgrounds across the globe. The key goods and services offered by the
company include hospitality management, hotels, resorts, boutique hotels and hotel groups. The
hotel as well offers leisure services, accommodation services, and food and beverage services.
Marriot Hotel offers its products inform of services. The main service offered is lodging, which
entails restaurant, reception, valet, and room services (Marriott, n.d.). Since the company
receives clients from varied cultural and racial backgrounds across the world, it delivers goods
and services that aim at meeting the needs of individual clients based on their cultural and racial
preferences of practices.
Marriott Hotel faces different key quality issues. First, the company has to deal with
supply chain quality issues. Since the hotel relies on supplies from different suppliers across the
globe, the company has to deal with the issue of high quality supplies since some supplies are
perishable and without faster supplies when required, the hotel ends up receiving supplies of
lesser quality (Rizescu & Rizescu, 2014). Second, the company faces a quality issue dealing with
employee recruitment and development. The company understands that in order to offer high
quality services to clients, the hotel has to recruit and develop highly qualified, experienced, and
talented employees. With the current shrinking hospitality labor force and finance, the hotel has
to confront or address the quality issue about employees. Third, the company faces a quality
issue relating to too much specialization in job design. Since the hotel is diverse and offers
varied products and services, Marriott Hotel has to deal with the need to design jobs that allow
multitasking to ensure clients are offered with high quality services by any employee in the
organization (Marriott, n.d.). In this regard, the company has been grappling with the need for
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multiskilling to allow flexibility and innovation of workers. The last quality issue the hotel deals
with is work measurement. The hotel has been confronting the need to determine the time
duration an employee takes to finish tasks assigned to them. For instance, the company struggles
to determine the time it takes an employee to clean the hotel’s accommodation or lodging
premises and deliver quality work. As a result, the hotel struggles to unearth activities that do not
add value or processes that are not standardized.
Current Quality Methodology
Continuous Improvement
Marriott Hotel has been continuously improving the skills of its employees to ensure
excellent customer service. The hotel continuously improves the skills of employees through
training and development. The hotel implements an employee training and development program
that begins when new employees are oriented to equip all employees with the skills required for
effective performance in their duties (Marriott, n.d.). For instance, the hotel provides employees
who work on an hourly basis with a 15-minute training daily to equip them with skills in fields
such as purchasing, rooms operation, and culinary. The hotel as well offers training to its
managers and supervisors to equip them with management skills.
Six Sigma
Marriott Hotel has realized that errors, defects, and wastes takes considerable amount of
its resources. As a result, the hotel keeps on analyzing jobs specifications of every employee and
redesigns them to ensure there are no duplications, which it terms defects and wastes (Marriott,
n.d.). For example, the company redesigned its working hours for managers from 50 hours to
lesser hours per week after realizing that managers were not productive as they stayed on their
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jobs for long hours to be seen rather than to perform (Vora, 2016). Currently, the managers are
productive as they are able to concentrate on their jobs as well as have time with their families.
Employee Empowerment
Marriott Hotel empowers its employees by allowing them to perform work in groups. In
addition, the hotel involves employees in its decision making process by welcoming ideas from
its employees and implementing the ideas it believes are able to make the hotel realize its
strategic objectives (Marriott, n.d.). The employees are as well encouraged to professionally
grow and take leadership positions in the company. The hotel designs and puts into practice the
training that ensure the employees act and behave in a manner that support effective
implementation of the ideas. The company has been able to gain competitive advantage out of
the innovative ideas contributed by employees.
Just-in-Time (JIT)
Marriott implements JIT in its work measurement initiatives, encouraging its employees
since the outputs are smaller and efficient. The company measures the time it take for employees
to accomplish specific tasks to enhance timeliness of service delivery to clients. The company
ensures that when a customer arrives in the facility and orders a meal, for example, the customer
is able to get his or her ready meal within the time promised by the chefs (Marriott, n.d.). The
timely delivery is as a result of the measured time a service could be accomplished, thus
enhancing customer satisfaction. The company as well implements flexible workforce so that
employees are able to accomplish multiple tasks. For instance, when there is high demand for
lodging employees, the company’s employees in the reception or marketing department are able
to help the lodging employees to accomplish their tasks because of the implemented flexible
workforce initiative.
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Recommendations
Continuous Improvement
In addition to encouraging employee involvement in decision making, Marriott Hotel
would apply the concept of continuous improvement by creating targets and expectations for
employees and rewarding those that have reached the targets. For instance, the hotel can create a
target of reaching a specific amount of sales each and every month and reward the employees
when the target has been reached. In this regard, the employees would work towards improving
processes to ensure the target is realized. Setting targets would be effective as it would drive
performance. For instance, Uber Company sets sales targets for its employees, and employees
who reach the target are provided with a percentage of the amount above the expected base
amount (MailOnline, 2017). Setting targets would thus encourage the employees of the company
to work more and gain recognition or get rewards.
Six Sigma
Marriott Hotel would apply the six sigma concept by combining tasks in a way that
combined work finished by a group of people is considered a full unit. For instance, the hotel can
combine waiter/waitress tasks with those of bar attendant so that they can be performed by same
employees. Combination of tasks would lower costs as there would be no need to employ more
people who could do the same work, reduce redundancy, and improve efficiency (Kamar, 2014).
An organization that has been able to successfully lower costs through task combination is
Nestle. Nestle has been able to combine the work of human resource management with that of
line managers where line managers are able to recruit and select employees. Since line managers
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are at a better place to know the job requirements in their departments, they have been able to
hire the best people suited for the jobs, improving employee productivity (Nestle, 2012).
Therefore, task combination would help the hotel improve its employee productivity.
Employee Empowerment
In addition to empowering employees by enabling to take part in decision making
processes of the hotel, Marriott Hotel would apply the concept of employee empowerment by
providing growth paths. For instance, in case an employee is qualified in food and beverage
preparation, the company would provide the employee with the chance to pursue education in the
area with the aim of incorporating the employee in the hotel’s leadership. Provision of clear
growth paths would be effective since it would encourage employees to stay in the company for
long (Kasanoff, 2016). The employees would as well be motivated with the hope that their
growth would be recognized through promotions. For instance, Hilton Hotel provides plenty of
opportunities for their employees to grow by allow employees improve skills, knowledge and
leadership abilities and take leadership positions when appropriate (Vora, 2016). Therefore,
providing employees with clear growth paths would lower the company’s spending on employee
replacements.
Just-in-Time (JIT)
Marriott Hotel would apply JIT by implementing small standardized containers. The
hotel would standardize its activities in a manner that how a specific task is done in one branch is
as well done in another branch (Othman, Sundram, Sayut, & Bahrin, 2016). Specifically, the
hotel should standardize the trainings it gives to its employees so that the kind of training the
managers of one branch receive is similar to the training offered to managers in another branch.
Standardization of employee training would lower the cost of cross training. For instance,
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Toyota’s standardized employee training lowers time wastage and training costs, and improves
employee productivity as all employees refer to standardized training materials and become
familiar with their contents (Vora, 2016). As a consequence, the employees in all branches have
the ability to finish similar tasks within the same time frames.
Challenges During Implementation
Marriott Hotel would face various challenges when implementing the recommendations
made herein. First, the company would face financial and human resource challenges. Since
implementing the recommendations would require finance and human resource, the company
may lack enough finance or may not have adequate human resource to effectively implement the
recommendations. Second, the company may face the challenge of lack of management support
(Wuestman & Casey, 2015). The management, mostly senior management, may cripple the
implementation of the recommendations is they do not support them. Lastly, the
recommendations may face the challenge of resistance from employees. For the reason that the
recommendations affect employees, lack of employee support may be a great challenge to their
implementation.
Conclusion
By and large, Marriott Hotel implements total quality management (TQM) initiatives
such as six sigma by redesigning jobs, continuous improvement by training and developing
employees, JIT by measuring time to ensure efficiency, and employee empowerment by
involving employees in the decision making process. However, the company should implement
continuous improvement by setting targets to employees, six sigma by combining tasks,
employee empowerment by providing growth path to employees, and JIT by standardizing
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training. As a result, the company would be able to improve its employee and organization
performance.
References
Hewes, T. (January 16, 2013). 2/1/13 – The Marriott Way: Empowering Employees and
Enhancing Customer Service to Drive the Bottom Line. Retrieved from
https://www.calsouthern.edu/content/events/the-marriott-way-empowering-employeesand-enhancing-customer-service-to-drive-the-bottom-line
Kamar, M. S. A. (2014). Six-sigma application in the hotel industry: Is it effective for
performance improvement? Research Journal of Management Sciences, 3(12), 1-14.
Kasanoff, B. (March 24, 2016). 10 Powerful Ways to Empower Your Employees. Fortune.
Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucekasanoff/2016/03/24/10-powerfulways-to-empower-your-employees/#a332af674276
MailOnline. (April 3, 2017). How Uber Uses Psychological Tricks to Make its Drivers Work
Longer Hours and Earn More Money for the Company. MailOnline. Retrieved from
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4374374/How-Uber-uses-clever-tricks-makedrivers-work-more.html
Marriott. (n.d.). Our Story. Retrieved from https://www.marriott.com/about/culture-andvalues/history.mi
Nestle. (2012). The Nestle Human Resources Policy. Retrieved from
https://www.nestle.com/asset-library/documents/jobs/the_nestle_hr_policy_pdf_2012.pdf
Othman, A. A., Sundram, V. P. K., Sayut, N. M., & Bahrin, A. S. (2016). The relationship
between supply chain integration, just-in-time and logistics performance: A supplier’s
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perspective on the automobile industry in Malaysia. International Journal of Supply Chain
Management, 5(1), 44-51.
Rizescu, A. & Rizescu, A. (2014). Theoretical study on human resources management applied in
working and bureaurocratic organizations. Bulleting Scientific, 1(37), 80-89.
Vora, S. (March 3, 2016). This Is What Makes Hilton a Great Place to Work. Fortune. Retrieved
from http://fortune.com/2016/03/03/hilton-100-best-companies-to-work-for/
Wuestman, D. & Casey, J. (2015). Lean leadership: Sustaining long-term process change.
Strategic Finance, 96(8), 15-16.
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