Importance of vision and mission statement
One of the most important strategic management decisions that a company needs to take is the vision and mission statement of the company, this acts like a yardstick for the rest of the policies and decisions that are made by the organisation in the future. Objectives and aims of the company are built of the basis of these statements which keep on changing with the dynamics of the business environment and achievement of the goals that are set in the long-run. Sales, revenues and profit are some of the common objectives of any business enterprise. Quality is one of the most commonly focused criterions by the organisation driven by the value of offering the best possible quality of service. This is done in order to improve the process of operation, there are several methods that can be implemented by the management of the organization (Dale 2015). The competition in the market helps the company to understand the level of the quality which can be achieved. Providing the best quality in the industry is also one of the measures taken by an organisation to achieve leadership in the industry and gain competitive advantage over the other organisations that operate in the same business model. Quality management in an organisation can be broadly segregated in three categories: quality control, quality assurance and quality improvement (Jiménez-Jiménez et al. 2015). With the help of innovation, research and development organisation strive to keep up and improve the technology (Siva et al. 2016). Depending on factors such as scale and nature of the business the operational techniques are implemented in order to maximize the output of the company and at the same time maintain the quality of the product or services provided. In order to undertake the study on the quality management the organization that is chosen to be studied is Emirates Airlines. Total Quality Management (TQM) is the theory that is going to be discussed in this assignement.
The Emirates airline is an organisation that is completely under the control of the government of Dubai. Established in 1985, the company has quickly gained prominence in the industry and has become one of the fastest growing organisations in the industry. It is the fifth-most-profitable airline in the world. The company boasts of having the largest fleet of Boeing 777s and Airbus A380s (Emirates.com 2018). The organisation is consumer centric in its strategic management approach. Providing the customers with the best experience and achieving customer satisfaction in travel is one of the major objectives of the company. The goal of the organisation is stated as the quality of the service. In the official website of the company there are several achievements that the company has gained over the years have been listed. According to the current statistics over 1,500 flights of Emirates operate from Dubai each week. The organisation has its network in six continents and is continuously expanding destinations to cover (Emirates.com 2018).
Quality management in Emirates Airlines
Operations management
Every organisation is divided in categories according to the administration and fictional segments. Operations management is the process by which the organisation plans, organizes and monitors the process of production or manufacturing in case it deals in products and looks after the provisions in case it is a service. This department of management deals in the delivery the claims that the company has made to the customers, it is concerned with the resource allocation and increasing the efficiency and performance of the resources. The resources of an organisation is based on the type of themselves could represent anything from materials, equipment and technology to human resources such as staff or workers. Thus the life line of an organisation is the operations of the business which has to be managed strategically in order to achieve the goals of the organisation. Supply chain management and logistics are the two prominent concepts in operations management.
Objectives of the organisation:
- To build a valuable relationship with the customers
- To improve the quality of the service
- To strive towards a sustainable future
- To ensure expansion and growth of the company (Emirates.com 2018)
As an airline company, Emirates is focused on the comfort of the passengers, timeliness of the journey scheduled, Price of the tickets etc. For an airline organisation the operations can be divided in two broad categories: in air and on ground. In the air the company has to focus on the following provisions: the fuel, catering and comfort of the passengers, On-board products and amenities and Air traffic control charges. On the other hand the ground charges include the airport landing and parking, ground handling provisions and handling of the cargo management, Crew hotels, CIP lounges (catering and manpower services), Chauffeur drive services etc (Procurement.ekgroup.com 2018).
The company focuses on the needs and requirements of the customers in order to improve the quality of the service. The operations management deals with all the provisions that are available at the disposal of the company to deliver the best possible service for the company. The company has expanded its services in several destinations over the years catering to a number of customers. The sales and popularity of the company has also improved over the years indicating that the operations management of the organisation. TripAdvisor is a leading travel website and Emirates Airlines has won the Best Airline award in the TripAdvisor Travelers’ Choice Awards (Emirates.com 2018). Apart from this recent recognition the company has also won several other honours over the years making a position and name for itself in the industry. The company has incorporated several strategies which have helped in achieving the objectives. One such strategy is inaugurating an institute which is planned and organized to be the most advanced flight training academy in the world, Emirates Flight Training Academy. This will help the company in improving the services that flight staff or the ground staff offer the customers (Procurement.ekgroup.com 2018).
Objectives of the organisation
Emirate Airlines is an organisation that has been focused on the quality of the service. As an organisation that operates in the service industry the company closely works with the customers directly hence it is important for the company to maintain the quality of their service in order to keep up with the goodwill and reputation in the industry. The commercial airline industry is a market that has tough competition in the international platform. Therefore in order to make a unique identity and to gain edge over the competition in the market it is very important to focus on the quality of the service. Some of the direct competition of Emirate Airlines is: Etihad Airways, Qatar Airways etc (Goetsch and Davis 2014).
On the other hand, the instruments that are used in Quality management make sure that the changes in the process ultimately result in higher quality products and services, which is also one of the major objectives of the company.
In order to maintain and grow the loyalty among the customers the company must ensure that the service is up to the mark and is better than the competition. Quality management will help the company gain higher level of customer satisfaction and also build a valuable relation with the customers which will in turn grow the consumer loyalty. This is because the quality management tool that is used helps the organisation in understanding the needs and requirements of the customers and therefore the company can work towards that as an objective (Khanna 2015).
All these aspects of a business organisation boil down to increased profitability and revenue of the company. Though Emirates Airlines is an organisation that does not focuses on the financial aspect of the company as the major aspect of the business model but then it helps in matching up with the other objectives of the company like expansion and incorporation of several tools and requirements for ensuring the customer satisfaction etc (Krajewski et al. 2013).
One of the tools that the company can incorporate in order to keep up with the quality management is TQM.
Total quality management (TQM)
Total Quality Management is an approach that aids a business organization with support and guidance to manage the output and the quality of the performance of the company. This process focuses on the requirement and the trends of demand among the consumers in order to bring about changes in the organisation and in turn the quality of the service or product (Jiménez-Jiménez et al. 2015). It ensures an overall quality improvement in the operations so that the end result or the output is of a better or improved quality. According to (Benavides-Velasco et al. (2014), integrating all the operations of a business enterprise such as administration, communication, planning and output etc is included in the TQM approach. These functions are undertaken by the management in order to exceed the expectations of the target market. The TQM process is dynamic in nature and the management should ensure that the approach is maintained with the same integrity so that it is incorporated as a part of the business model.
TQM approach for Emirates Airlines
Emirates Airlines is an organisation that has been focusing on the improvement of the company with a holistic approach the company incorporates the principles of Total Quality Management in order to achieve the strategic management objectives of the company. the company not only includes new ideas but also ensures that these new strategies are monitored and analyzed to understand the effectiveness of the process.
Emirates have been implementing the principles of TQM and focused on mainly four factors:
- Increased efficiency in terms of reduction of costs;
- Customer care service focused on the in-air operations mostly;
- With the help of innovations and training process increasing the efficiency of the company;
- Maximize return on individual flights by investing in computerized reservations process.
The company has received a lot of recognition for the entertainment and comfort strategies that they have implemented for the customer, the company focuses on the quality of the services on the in the air operations level. Emirates Airlines should also focus on the ground level operations quality. There are several passengers who face a lot of difficulties while they are travelling in a connected flight or have faced delays due to unforeseen circumstances. The company can improve the experience of the customers on the ground as well by providing them facilities like separate lounge area in the airport, which will also have catering as well as other facilities which are available in the air. The companies already have the facility established in several airports but the quality of the service has scope of improvement. As total quality management is a process that focuses on the overall operations of the business this strategy will fit with the objectives of the company as well. The can be also expanded to cater to the passengers who are travelling in the economy class. This is a segment that is unchartered by the company (Slack 2015).
The resources that will be required in order to ensure that this strategy is incorporated are:
Investment in terms of finance: to extend the lounge area for accommodating more people the company will require to invest financially.
Human resource: in the lounge area there will be new requirement for new staff members and managerial level people in order to keep the operations of this place running. There is a manager who looks after the lounge but then another additional support will be required in order to look after the new division which will be introduced. There should also be staff members to attend the passengers and look after their requirements (Heizer 2016).
Audit and monitoring methods: the overall lounge operations must be monitored by a separate group of people who are not looking after the audit process of the in-air operations as there is major difference in between the two operations.
The wider implication of the process will be a change in the focuses of the company from the business class to a holistic approach, the company is known for being luxurious in its service, but this would also ensure that the company is not only focusing on the comfort of the people who are paying more, but also to a broader target market, this would help in broadening the existing target market as people mostly know the company to cater to the business class, but with this quality management technique slowly the company can take steps towards catering to a wider target market (Heizer 2016).
It is essential to keep a continuous check on the plan as it offers necessary link in between the documented plan and their day-to-day business operations to manage their the plan. There is an auditing process of the new projects there will be an extension to that as this change will be treated as a new addition (Slack 2015).
In order to implement the plan first in the Dubai airport the company should come in a contract with the airport authorities for the extension provision of the lounge
The company has to employee engineers and architects to plan the initial design and it has to be of a signature emirates style in order to duplicate the process in other locations as well (Chang 2016).
Communication plays a crucial part in this process as not only the customers are the stakeholders in this case; the suppliers, government, employees etc also play an important role. Therefore the implementation or organisation of such a plan has to strategically communicate to each stakeholder according to the information they need to know. Communication mix has to be developed in order to promote the change (Khanna 2015).
Employment of several mangers and ground staff members will be in order so that the customers can be served with premium quality provisions without any hindrance (Chang 2016).
In order to monitor this plan the company should set up an auditing process which will ensure that the plan is working in an organized way; the auditing process should be made according to the development of the plan. The expansion of the lounge should begin form Dubai airport, the audit panel will not only take care of the financial investment efficiency in the plan but will also ensure that the quality is up to the mark and is aligned with the quality that has been offered to the business class facility. The provisions will be similar to that of the business class the difference will be in the number of choice and the luxury factor of the business class will not be included. This auditing process will also take care of the fact that there is no compromise with the quality of the service, therefore making it a continuous process (Khanna 2015).
In order to understand the outcomes there are a few indicators:
- Infrastructural process
- Progress report from the auditors
- Improved customer relations
- Increase in positive feedbacks form the customers
- Recognition and hours from authorities
Implementation of balanced scorecard to ensure the departments of the organization has achieved considerable improvement. It helps in aligning the business functions with the objective of the organization (Hoque 2014).
Conclusion
It can be concluded from the above discussion that Emirates group is a customer focused organisation and Emirates Airlines also follow the same values and principles of the parent organisation. The company focuses on the quality of the service, but as the company is growing there is growing opportunity for improvement of the operations of the business as well.
Reference list:
Chang, J.F., 2016. Business process management systems: strategy and implementation. CRC Press.
Dale, B. (2015). Total quality management. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Doeleman, H.J., Ten Have, S. and Ahaus, C.T.B., 2014. Empirical evidence on applying the European Foundation for Quality Management Excellence Model, a literature review. Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, 25(5-6), pp.439-460.
Emirates.com ., 2018. Our Story. [online] emirates.com. Available at: https://www.emirates.com/english/about-us/ [Accessed 31 Mar. 2018].
Goetsch, D. L., and Davis, S. B., 2014. Quality management for organizational excellence. Upper Saddle River, NJ: pearson.
Heizer, J. (2016). Operations Management, 11/e. Pearson Education India.
Hoque, Z., 2014. 20 years of studies on the balanced scorecard: trends, accomplishments, gaps and opportunities for future research. The British accounting review, 46(1), pp.33-59.
Jiménez-Jiménez, D., Martinez-Costa, M., Martínez-Lorente, A.R. and Rabeh, H.A.D., 2015. Total quality management performance in multinational companies: A learning perspective. The TQM Journal, 27(3), pp.328-340.
Khanna, R. B., 2015. Production and operations management. PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd..
Krajewski, L. J., Ritzman, L. P., & Malhotra, M. K., 2013. Operations management: processes and supply chains (Vol. 1). New York, NY: Pearson.
Procurement.ekgroup.com, 2018. Airline Operations. [online] ekgroup.com. Available at: https://www.procurement.ekgroup.com/english/procurement_logistics/airline_operations.aspx?Menu=2 [Accessed 31 Mar. 2018].
Siva, V., Gremyr, I., Bergquist, B., Garvare, R., Zobel, T. and Isaksson, R., 2016. The support of Quality Management to sustainable development: A literature review. Journal of Cleaner Production, 138, pp.148-157.
Slack, N. (2015). Operations strategy. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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