Supply Chain Management

The Grand Marquis has most of the control of the supply chain, except for the suppliers of the raw materials. For example, for the food that needs to be served for an event, the raw materials would be tomatoes, salt, rice, beans, vegetables, keep in mind that these raw materials come uncooked from their suppliers. Then, once they have all the raw materials they are send to the kitchen to be processed (cooked), the chef itself would be the quality inspector by making sure the food is fresh and in good conditions to be cooked. Once the chef cooks the food it is served to the final customers. The Grand Marquis does not own the suppliers therefore it does not have total control of the supply chain, but it has different supplier companies to choose from basing on the quality, time, cost, and delivery. When choosing a supplier, for the Grand Marquis, quality and delivery (time) are the most important. They need to have everything ready and in house for it to be processed and be ready for the date of the occasion such as wedding, prom. Cost is also important, but not as quality and delivery.
Another example would be the beverages, which can also be prepared in house when making cocktail drinks or natural house juices. But also beverages such as sodas, beers are delivered to the customer as they come from the supplier, meaning that they are not processed. In the other hand, cocktail drinks for example need an expert such as the bartender to able to mix the right measurement of every ingredient while customizing the cocktail drink. The quality and delivery is also very important when choosing the suppliers for the beverages.
It is hard to make recommendations to a company that has so much experience in the business. The Grand Marquis does train every employer, and in this case the bartender and chefs are professionals. My recommendations are to keep training the people so they keep their quality high, and at the same time cut costs. Even though when talking about food and beverages cost its not one of their priorities, I would recommend to focus on cutting cost in other things such as the lighting that they use for the halls. They could use fluorescent lighting, and this way they won’t only save money but also become “green” meaning that they will be helping this planet.

Operations

The Grand Marquis have very simple corporate and operations strategy because of the fact that it is such a small company. The catering business is not as much involved in corporate and operations technique as many other big companies. They have certain ways of doing things, for example payroll. That is part of the business, therefore it has to be done a certain way all the time. As for the company having global operations, it is not available right now. But hopefully in the near future they will expand and continue to grow on a global level. In a family owned business it is hard to adopt any new ways of doing the business, that is why they have found the best way and have doing it for over 25 years, that is why it is hard for them to adopt any focused operations.

Projects

In the Grand Marquis every occasion is a project. For the reason is that every party that is hosted at the Grand Marquis has its own unique setup and characteristics. For example there can be an Italian wedding in the morning, where all the food is Italian and all the decorations are Italian. But as soon as that wedding is over, we have to construct a new project right away because there is an Indian wedding that follows right after. So we have to take off all the Italian decorations and put all the Indian decorations etc. Some tasks in the Grand Marquis can be, putting certain flowers on the tables, putting different kinds of bowties on the chairs. Also assigning different jobs to the right staff members so that the job is done correctly. As for the Gantt charts, the Grand Marquis does not use them for the fact that the management has a great system that they have been dealing with in the Grand Marquis for a long time. Some recommendations can be hire more staff so that the job can be done faster and better. Maybe expand the building so that there can be more parties and events. Finally they should spend some more time in marketing, because mostly the marketing strategy of the Grand Marquis is by word of mouth, so if they work hard on developing a new way of marketing it should expand the business much more.

Quality

The Grand Marquis being a small company do show much interest in quality control. Some examples of which quality control method would be the QC chart. The inventory manager uses the QC charts because it helps him see and control any problems, and also be able to fix the problem much faster. Also the Grand Marquis use operator inspection, which places responsibility on those who make the product or service. In the Grand Marquis, when it comes to liquor everyone makes sure that they do their job correctly because if we don't, than the liquor inventory will be all wrong. Also the fish bone diagram does help when it comes to figuring out the problem. The reason that it helps, because one can trace any minor problems and try to solve it. Having a combination of all these Quality Control techniques will always keep the company running.

4 Dimensions of Quality

Quality of Design
–In catering services, this must be planned together with the client, therefore there is going to be a high quality of design because it will have the client’s specifications before the event occurs.

Quality of Conformance
–The Grand Marquis does follow the specifications of the design for each client.

Availability
–They have more than 300 events a year, and most of them are during the weekends. Therefore a client should at least check the availability three months in advance. You can contact the Grand Marquis through the internet, online, or in person.

Fild Service
-Every event is based in a contract, and the Grand Marquis together with the client will put the specifications, and policies to follow.

Service Process Design

For the Grand Marquis the 3 elements of the service-product bundle are the following:
1. Tangible service: Providing the catering service.
2. The psychological benefits of the service: In the catering business is based in service therefore it is important if clients likes how it was personal customized and if they were happy or not with the service. We need to keep in mind that this service might be for a wedding therefore the service that they get they will always have in their memories.
3. The physical good: For catering service the physical goods are the hall, food, beverages, silverware, and decorations.

Catering services at the Grand Marquis are “Customer Routed”, for example, each client can customize their special event by picking themselves the foods menus and also the colors that would be used for decorating.
They encounter with Face-to Face total customization. When offering the catering service, the client is present during the production of the service, and they can customize it as it is being produced. Like mentioned on the book, here the customer can introduce uncertainty into the process with a resulting loss of efficiency. For example, at the Grand Marquis, if the client is not happy with how the meat is cooked, the manager will make sure the guest will get the meat cooked as they like.

Grand Marquis uses focused operations; they focus in the way that they are able to service the food according to what the client wants. They support the employees by training them, giving them raises, but they do not use technology to help provide the service; it is not needed.

They do not use self service. They do use technology for marketing purposes only, using e-marketing. There could be many problems that could occur while offering a service. For example, if the power goes down they have more than one generator. This gives a guarantee to the client that this won’t affect their event.

Proccess Selection

The type of product flow they use is “project”. Grand Marquis offerscattering services and it customizes for each event, such as weddings,proms. Each client is one project because it has different food andbeverages menus, also it would have different amounts of peopleattending to the event.
They process a “Assemble-To-Order” customer order. For example GrandMarquis will give them a food menu to pick from, and then the clientwill make an order.
In the process characteristics matrix Grand Marquis falls intoProject/Assemble-to-Order cell.

There are some factors influencing their process selection such as the time of the year, the amount of parties they have in either the week or the month. Also, for the liquor there might be some special for a specific party.
The Grand Marquis might be able to adopt some mass customization in the future, but as of right now they have to host each party with a unique and personal process.

Inventory

In the Grand Marquis there are two kinds of inventory, there are food inventory and the liquor inventory. I have researched about how this company goes about ordering the food and alcohol. First the food inventory, there is one person responsbile assigned for the inventory. This person every monday, goes into the warehouse and counts everything from A to Z. This has been found effective throughout the years because in the Grand Marquis food runs out almost every week. So this person in charge will fill out the proper inventory sheets, and sends it to out suppliers. He would also be in charge of making sure everything arrives when it supposed to. On the other hand we also have to do liquor inventory, but the way this is done is a little different. The person that is in charge of liquor inventory has a certain way of ordering the liquor. He has all the liquor in order on the shelvs, at the end of every week, he takes a sheet of which it tells him how much of each liquor is needed. After he finds out how much is needed, he plugs it right into a computer which automatically sends it to our suppliers so they know that we need that certain item. That is how the Grand Marquis goes about ordering their inventory.

Company Introduction

The Grand Marquis is a catering facility with a personal touch. The Grand Marquis is located on Route 9 south in Old Bridge, NJ. This personally owned company has been around for over thirty years, they have hosted so many different types of events over many years. Most of the functions that get held in the Grand Marquis are weddings, company parties, birthdays and much much more. The Grand Marquis has just been renovated on both the inside and outside, it is a beautiful place to host great memories.