Operations and Service Quality

Critical Analysis of Quality Management Between “Four Seasons Canary Wharf hotel” and “The Tea and Sympathy Restaurant and Café” This essay will focus on the different approaches to quality management of two well-known organizations, the “Four Seasons Canary Wharf hotel” and “The Tea and Sympathy Restaurant and Café” situated in New York City’s west village. By analyzing both cases with the workings of Total Quality Management (TQM) and Service Quality. The Four Seasons first hotel was opened 40 years ago and they have come a long way, currently one of the highest-ranking hotel chains internationally. Their golden rule is “Do to others (guest and staff) as you would wish others to do to you”. They follow this along with the guiding principle of making quality their competitive advantage. Tea and Sympathy is the only British restaurant and cafe’ in the heart of New York City and has become a fashionable landmark of the city over the past 10 years. It has a rather unorthodox service quality which is known as Nicky’s (an owner) rules, wherein if the customers don 't follow them, they are thrown out rather aggressively (Slack, Chambers and Johnston, 2007). Quality management is best defined by International Organization for Standardization’s (ISO), or ISO9000, which describes quality management as any activity the organization does to meet customer expectations and requirements, while aiming to enhance their experience and continuously trying to improve the performance of the company to meet these requirements and expectations. Quality management gave rise to the much debated quality management process of Total Quality Management (TQM). TQM can be summarized as a management philosophy, which incorporates certain fundamental strategies such as customer focus, continuous improvement, process orientation, full commitment of organization, direct response and result oriented strategies

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