Process Performance at Starwood Hotels-Free-Samples for Students

Questions: 1.Evaluate the degree to which Starwood successfully addressed each with the redesign of the Sheraton Service Promise program. 2.How might the new Sheraton Service Promise process help Starwood avoid the four costs of poor process performance and quality (prevention, appraisal, internal failure, and external failure)? 3.Starwood is the first major hotel brand to commit to a dedicated Six Sigma program for improving quality. Answers: 1.Top-down commitment The six sigma approach is assisted from top to down of the organization. It is very expensive. Well-paid managers are appointed from other regions. Training programs are conducted to develop Green Belts into Black Belts. There is commitment towards all the brands. Measurement systems The hotel has given a guest satisfaction survey form to each guest, which contains many questions regarding their experience in hotel. It has taken the help of National family Opinion for data collection. Tough gal setting It has done the internal benchmarking against other assets in the system with the help of results, which are posted on intranet. Education Training and continuous education is provided to employees and it is making aware the guest about the Sheraton service promise program. Communication Intranet of Starwood helps in sharing the achievement of the goals of Six Sigma method in organization. This transparency level highlights the commitment of senior-management to program. Customer priorities This approach focuses on the experience of customer, because it emphasizes on fast solution of problems, related to guest stay. Guest satisfaction score is clearly watched (Omar Mustafa, 2014). 2.There are four costs of poor performance and quality, such as; appraisal, prevention, external failure and internal failure costs. At Starwood, there is a concept of prevention costs in Six Sigma approach. So it is not able to ignore these costs. Sheraton service promise program is focusing on the enhancing customer satisfaction in hotels. It did not alter the appraisal program, so there is not any change in costs. Before implementing this approach, hotels were facing lower customer satisfaction due to poor service to guests. This program assisted in avoiding internal failure cost (Mahadevan, 2010). Generally, Sheraton does not know about the external failure costs, until a guest informs about any problem. So, it is not able to avoid these costs. Any problem, reported by a single guest can influence others also, so, they have an opportunity to avoid this cost. 3.Many of the organizations, which are unwilling to adopt Six Sigma program, as it is very costly and time consuming. There will be need for employee training program to gain knowledge about this methodology and provide education to learn about measurement and analysis. Six Sigma methods follow scientific process for measuring the qualitative experiences, which may not be comfortable for managers and employees in hospitality business (Omar Mustafa, 2014). There may be some other approaches, which Starwood and competitors could use, like; total quality management, process capability, statistical process control, continuous improvement etc. References Mahadevan, B. (2010). Operations Management: Theory and Practice. Pearson Education. Omar, A. Mustafa, Z. (2014). Implementation of Six Sigma in Service Industry. Journal of Quality Measurement and Analysis.