Imagine a major holiday company has recruited you to restructure their business by employing the principles of
Operations Management. Sales, Marketing and Finance are centralised HQ functions based in the UK. They have twelve
holiday centres at beaches in the Mediterranean and the Caribbean. Each centre comprises of:
• Accommodation
• Water sports (dinghy, windsurfing, yachting, diving, waterskiing, etc)
• Restaurant, bars, entertainment and retail
Currently the twelve holiday centres operate as stand alone businesses and produce quarterly reports for HQ manually.
The company wants to automate this process so control data is available daily to local management and weekly to
senior management at HQ.
The company also have substantial quality problems and most customers do not return for a second holiday. They are
also concerned that their poor reputation precedes them via disgruntled customers.
a. Construct an A0 IDEF chart to establish the structure of the business and to introduce systems thinking to
the management teams across the company.
A1 Centralised HQ Functions
A2 Accommodation
A3 Water sports
A4 Restaurants, bars, entertainment and retail
Describe each of the processes (A1 to A4) on your chart.
b. Choose ten key performance measures spread across the business. Clearly define each measure with a formula,
where to use it, estimate a rough target value and explain its purpose.
c. Discuss how to go about introducing this major change project into the company and the likely benefits.