1

Hard Rock Café Case Study

Strategy at Regal Marine Case Study

Glenn C. Greenwood

OMGT310 – Operations Management I

January 7, 2012

Mr. Russel Flippo

Southwestern College Professional Studies

 2

Hard Rock Café Case Study

1. From your knowledge of restaurants, from the video, from the Global Company Profile that
opens this chapter, and from the case itself, identify how each of the 10 decisions of operations
management is applied at Hard Rock Café.

Design of Goods and Services

Hard Rock first built its business on rock service memorabilia utilizing the publicity and
public recognition of Eric Clapton when he hung his guitar above his favorite bar stool. Since
then Hard Rock focused on building their service based empire with a focus on food and retail.
In order to keep up with a changing market, Hark Rock continuously updates its menu and
music selections. It also has branched out to take advantages of other opportunities by
expanding into the hotel, casino and concert arenas.

Managing Quality
Tough quality controls are in place for both the food’s quality and service provided to the
customer. Customers are encouraged to fill out surveys after each visit. The surveys are based
on a one to seven scale with seven being the best score. Anything given less than a seven score
is seen to be as a failure by the staff. This process lets the customer define quality.

Process and Capacity Design

The production process is defined from raw food receipt to plating to ensure product
efficiency as well as a quality meal. This minimizes customer wait time and allows Hard Rock
to serve more people in a day.

Location strategy
About 75% of Hard Rock’s employees are people in the United States therefore a multi-
domestic strategy works well for its Orlando headquarters. Hard Rock serves 35 million guests
out of 129 restaurants in over 40 countries. By utilizing the multi-domestic strategy,
management practices can be exported while keeping a level of autonomy at each location. This
allows each Hard Rock to cater to local tastes and expectations.

Layout strategy
The layout of the restaurant contributes to the efficient movement of people and material.

Human resources and job design

When Hard Rock hires employees, it seeks out the best people it can recruit and train. They
seek out not only people that are passionate about music but have engaging personalities as well.

Supply-chain management
Required products are analyzed for cost and quality of ingredients. Only ingredients from
qualified suppliers are used.

Inventory, MRP, JIT

 3

Inventory is based on demand. Hard Rock serves over 3,500 meals a day and music
memorabilia makes up 48% of profits.

Scheduling
Hard Rock employees are scheduled to 15 minute intervals. To allows flexibility in
scheduling to meet peak seasonal and dialing demand changes and increases the productivity of
its scheduled staff.

2. How would you determine the productivity of the kitchen staff and wait staff at Hard Rock?

To measure the productivity of the kitchen and wait staff at Hard Rock you would use a
calculation bases on a number in inputs. To measure single-factor productivity, productivity
equals the units produced divided by the labor hours used.

3. How are the 10 decisions of OM different when applied to the operations manager of a
service operation such as Hard Rock versus an automobile company such as Ford Motor
Company?

While the production of goods and services companies have quite different production
outputs, the application of the 10 critical decisions apply to both. Both services and goods
companies have the same organizational structure consisting of operations, finance, and
marketing and both rely on labor, capitol and management inputs transforming into high yielding
outputs.

Strategy at Regal Marine Case Study

1. State Regal Marine’s mission in your own words.

To provide innovative high quality boats that everyone can enjoy.

2. Identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that are relevant to the strategy
of Regal Marine.

The strength of Regal Marine is its ability to maintain a competitive advantage through unique
features, innovation and high value. Its weakness and threat is the competition with low cost
entertainment alternatives such as home theaters, the internet and game systems combined with
high fuel prices and a diminished economy.

3. How would you define Regal’s strategy?

Regal Marine’s mission is to provide low cost, high quality, innovative boats covering
customer demand from small watercraft to ocean yachts.
 4

4. How would each of the 10 operations management decisions apply to the operations decision
making at Regal Marine?

Design of Goods and Services

Regal Marine produces boats to meet the desires of consumers in over 30 countries. They
keep close contact with their customers and develop new lines of boats every year. Regal
provides high quality boats to satisfy customers seeking small watercraft to yachts.

Managing Quality
Regal utilizes defect charts and visual inspections. They have also developed close ties with
suppliers ensuring both flexibility and perfect parts.

Process and Capacity Design

Regal Marine uses a high quality computer-aided design, high quality molds and close
tolerances.

Location strategy
Basing in Orlando Florida supports a highly active boating community and other boat
manufactures which should provide a larger customer base and a skilled labor force.

Layout strategy
The layout of Regal Marine supports the production of 22 different lengths of boats.

Human resources and job design

Being located in Florida, Regal Marine should benefit from a community with many skills
in boat building and repair.

Supply-chain management
Regal Marine partners with suppliers to ensure both high quality parts are available and
flexibility.

Inventory, MRP, JIT

Regal implements the just-in-time supply process. Everything is developed in-house with
the exception of the engine
 5

References

Heizer, Jay and Render, Barry (2010). Operations Management. (10th ed.)