Designing and Excelling in Service Operations

The overall objective of this course is to understand the application of operations management to design and excel in services operations.

This would include:

• To understand the importance of the service dominant logic
• To understand the service strategy of the organisation and the formulation of a service concept for new service development.
• To understand the primary role of customers in service operations – their expectations, perceptions, and experience.
• To understand the “nuts and bolts” of process analysis.
• To translate the service concept into a design for the service that ensures service quality and satisfaction.
• To understand supply networks and supplier relationships.
• To manage all resource capacity (people, technology, and systems) to satisfy demand, and reduce excessive waiting lines.
• To understand the importance of measuring a “balanced scorecard” of objectives so that the service delivery can be improved.
• To understand the notion of “excellent service”, and the characteristics of a world-class service organization.

The program attempts to unify the subject of service management, and thus its conclusions are valid for all types of services (retail, travel, hospitality, health, government services, tourism etc.).  It will thus prove useful for all executive and senior managers engaged in servicing (as opposed to providing a “service”) customers.  That also includes manufacturers whose major share of sales and profits has now moved from the “good” itself to the “service” that the good provides.  It will also be useful for marketing professionals who either ascertain customer requirements, make delivery promises, or assess customer satisfaction since service marketing and delivery are not easily separable.

The program aims to provide a comprehensive coverage of service management – strategy, new service development, running service operations, and continuous improvement.  We therefore expect participants to acquire an in-depth knowledge of service management at the strategic level (senior executives), operations and delivery (operations managers), implementation and improvement (staff and customers) for the achievement of service excellence.  A major benefit of the program is that participants will learn how to influence customer behaviour. 

The teaching is mainly via the case study method which enables us to discuss the actual underlying business situations, actively engage participants, and then abstract general principles and learning that can be transferred to many more situations in several industries.  There will be ample time for group discussions and even the immediate opportunity to apply the learnings to your service situation via the group exercise on the third day of the program.  Throughout we attempt to be rigorous in theory and practical in application.  The cases employed will be from a wide section of industries like (but not limited to) healthcare, the gig economy, industrial products, government, etc.

Professor Anshuman Tripathy is a faculty member in Operations Management. His research interests are two fold. His early research, which continues today, dwells into how firms design their globally distributed product development organizations with particular focus on firms that are involved in the design and development of complex engineered systems. Of late he has also been looking into how firms need to act along the industry value chain to ensure sustainability of their product/process innovations. His research has been published in IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management and Production and Operations Management. His paper `Structuring Work Distribution for Global Product Development Organizations’ was awarded the Wickham Skinner Best Paper (Runner- Up) for the best paper in Production and Operations Management. He is a current recipient of the IIMB Chair of Excellence. At IIM Bangalore, Anshuman teaches the core course in Operations Management for the PGP programme, and offers an elective on Technology & Operations Strategy for all the long duration programmes. He also offers Executive Programmes on Project/Programme Management, Value Chain Strategies, Manufacturing Excellence, Managing Technological Innovation, and Supply Chain Strategies. As a recognition of his teaching, Anshuman has been a regular invitee to “The Last Lecture” (initiated in 2017 by the PGP students to felicitate their best faculty over the 2-year MBA program). Anshuman has been a faculty member at IIM Bangalore since 2011. Prior to that he was a faculty member at IIM Ahmedabad. Anshuman worked for more than 10 years, between his PGDM and PhD, in the automotive industry at Maruti Udyog Ltd and Ford India/USA, holding senior management positions in Purchasing, eBusiness Strategy Development, PD Programme Management, and Product Development. His last assignment, before pursuing a career in academics, was as General Manager (Product Engineering) at Ford India Ltd.

Sudhir Chadha

Sudhir Chadha is a graduate of IIT Kanpur, and obtained his doctorate in theoretical physics at the University of Oxford where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He then pursued research in theoretical particle physics first at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen (as a Royal Society European Fellow), then at Centre d’Etudes de Nucleaire a Saclay in Paris, CERN (European Organisation for Nuclear research) in Geneva, and the University of Oxford. He has published over 25 papers in international journals. His main research interests were (are) in fundamental physics, unified theories, and the structure of the Higgs boson. He is also the author (with H. B. Nielsen) of the socalled Nielsen-Chadha theorem on symmetry breaking in non relativistic systems. Following his academic career in physics, Sudhir joined IBM UK, and became a consulting Partner in the IBM Global Business Services Division specializing in supply chain management, innovation, and project management. He executed major projects in the manufacturing industry with many clients including Rolls- Royce Aeroengines, Caterpillar, Honda Motors, and Rover Automobiles. About ten years ago Sudhir returned to academia (again!) to teach supply chain and project management at the University of Warwick UK as well as part-time at the IIMB (as an adjunct faculty).