Operation Management Activities at the LensCrafters

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Table of Contents

Operations Strategy
LensCrafters’ value chain
Performance measurements
Technologies applied to LensCrafters’ service operations
Reference List

Operations Strategy

LensCrafters specializes in the manufacture of eyeglasses. It has about 860 service shops in which customers watch over the process of assembling their glasses, which are custom made for one’s special needs. Although the company wishes to expand its markets to take full advantage of economies scale as part of its long-term operations strategies, LensCrafters occupies markets in Canada, Puerto Rico, and the United States.

LensCrafters anticipates winning confidence of its customers to ensure sustainable business through the provision of quality products and services. These concerns for the operational strategy of the company are implied in the mission of the company, which states that the company endeavors to deliver legendary services to customers while “crafting perfect quality eyewear in about an hour” (Designing Operations Systems, n.d, p.126).

Based on this mission, it is possible that the operations strategy of LensCrafters, which operates as the main mechanism of gaining competitive advantage, is organized around the need of delivering value to customers as the most valuable source of success. According to Pfeifer, Mark, and Conroy (2005), a strategic decision of an organization to focus on delivering values to customers is crucial.

In fact, without them, an organization cannot dispose of its products to earn profits and/or deliver value to its owners (p.13). Consequently, when LensCrafters focuses on creating value to customers by giving them an opportunity to watch over the process of making their eyewear, it implies that its sustainability efforts possess high probabilities of yielding fruits.

The success of this strategy is akin to the development of perception in customers’ that satisfying their needs does not just entail picking an eyewear from the shop shelves. Rather, it encompasses carrying a detailed analysis of the need of the customer to ensure that the specific needs of each client are fully addressed.

How operation management activities affect the customer experience

Operations management involves various activities, which enhance customers’ experiences and satisfaction. From the context of supply chain management, operations management houses activities such as “overseeing, designing, and controlling the process of production and redesigning business operations in the production of goods or services” (Janvier, 2012, p.199).

The manner of design of the production process and delivery of products influences the experiences of customers in terms of satisfaction of tastes, preferences, and aesthetic value of products as implied by customer perceptions. In case of eyewear, apart from the capacity to satisfy the medical need of the eyewear, aesthetics properties are also incredible properties of products in the effort to enhance customers’ experience.

In operations management, several challenges are evident. Two of these challenges are communication and change management. In an organization, situations are encountered in which issues fall out of hand with instances in which an organization finds it hard to get people to seal the missing loops of communication within the appropriate time.

This often happens when there is miscommunication or inappropriate interpretation of information that is meant to enhance the process of making quality decisions in an organization (Slack, Chambers & Johnston, 2010). In such situations, mails, documents together with conversations are sent to various people only to land in the wrong hands or else arriving to the right people at the wrong time.

Consequently, when problems emerge, people start blaming one another on various failures. To address this problem, operations managers should alter various communication structures in an organization. This strategy includes breaking down bureaucratic communication networks to permit vertical and horizontal communication.

By accomplishing this role, it becomes possible to make clarifications concerning the issue of miscommunication and wrong attachment of meaning to information. Any organization, including LensCrafters, which wishes to gain a competitive advantage and/or build a sustainable brand, must address the challenge of change management.

Essentially, people are reluctant to change, especially once they become accustomed to a given working culture (Slack, Chambers & Johnston, 2010). In the process of execution of various operation strategies, operations managers anticipate achieving all plans within constrained timelines, with precise quality standards, and without flaws.

However, in practice, this strategy is not possible since flaws are often inevitable. Managers have to face the challenges of project scope changes, personnel, and even alterations of various project parameters, including timelines of various tasks. Such changes have negative consequences to an organization such as consumption of additional financial resources.

To resolve the problem of change management, it is important that operations managers seek and/or embrace flexibility in terms of willingness to alter plans, information vital for completion of tasks in new ways, and more importantly embrace close collaboration with all stakeholders. This implies that, to develop the capacity to address challenges of change management, the organizational protocols for process execution need to have flexible command chains.

LensCrafters’ value chain

The value chain of LensCrafters is organized around customer perceptions about the nature and quality of products and services. From the perspective of the nature of services, the appeal of the stores of the company is a major concern. It is for this reason that the company ensures, “the store is spacious, open, clean, carpeted, and has professional merchandise display area fitted with modern furniture” (Designing Operations Systems, n.d, p.127).

With this glamour of the store, it means that customers would associate the eyewear offered by LensCrafters with specialty, aesthetic, and confidence in terms of appeal while wearing them. In fact, if customers go home with the glasses and find that they do not meet this brand image, the company is flexible enough to reaccept the glasses in exchange for another pair that meets the needs of clients through its unconditional 30-day service guarantee strategy.

In delivering value to customers through the provision of quality products and services, inputs of employees are vital. This position is perhaps magnificently clear in the operations strategy of the LensCrafters. The company frames its key issues for consideration at the service counters with regard to the satisfaction of both employees and customers.

For instance, the company considers various issues that are worth paying sufficient attention to ensure that right people are recruited, trained, and motivated to enhance quality service at the customer service counters. The issue of rewards system is also not left behind. This strategy is an attempt to build employee commitment to the value, mission, and objectives of the organization.

In fact, in any organization, employees are the people who are in close contact with customers to whom value must be delivered. Hence, even though organizational structures may be developed by the management team to enhance customers’ satisfaction and value delivery, their implementation is solely in the hands of employees. This assertion perhaps points well why the value chain for LensCrafters revolves around the aspects, which are in close contact with customers such as employees and the physical presence of the stores.

Performance measurements

Organizations must evaluate the extents of achievement of their goals, strategies, and operations in an effort to develop indicators that show whether the outputs measure up to the inputs as anticipated. LensCrafters can deploy several performance measurements. They include efficiency, effectiveness, productivity, quality, safety, and timeline performance measurements.

The operations strategies of the LensCrafters that are deemed appropriate for ensuring that the organization gains a competitive advantage in the eyewear industry are structured in terms of value delivery to the customers. Customers are cautious about the quality of the eyewear they purchase from LensCrafters. Hence, it is important for the company to develop quality performance measurements.

This goal can be achieved by development of a scale for rating “the degree to which a product or service meets customer requirements and expectations” (Ittner & Larcker, 2008, p.215). A more simplistic scale would be keeping track of the number of returns and customer complaints. A lesser number of returns and customer complaints would imply a high quality of the eyewear offered by LensCrafters.

An organization not only exists to offer quality products and services to customers. It also provides value to investors. Hence, a performance measure for effectiveness is necessary for LensCrafters. Such a measurement would help the company to know the degree to which the company is capable of producing outputs at minimal costs. Lower costs indicate a higher net of value return.

Usage of effectiveness performance measurement at the company would mean that in case it is realized that the company is cost-ineffective, strategies should be deployed to alter operations and technologies. Ineffective production technologies have the implication of low production outputs, which influence the competitive advantage of an organization together with its sustainability (Slack, Chambers, & Johnston, 2010).

Technologies applied to LensCrafters’ service operations

Technology is dynamic. To avoid obsolescence, it is important for an organization to adopt flexible technologies. Flexibility is crucial since it creates opportunities for fast and cost-effective switchover from one production technology to another when such a need arises. LensCafters may be viewed as deploying customized production technology.

The company produces its products based on orders placed by clients upon successful testing to determine the type of product that best suits a particular customer’s needs. Since mass flow is not involved, high mechanization through the usage of single-purpose machinery is not used in the making of glasses. This implies that the company has the flexibility in terms of having the capacity to fit in new designs of eyewear.

Customized production technology has its own demerits. For instance, it is incredibly difficult to determine the types of materials to procure since it is not precisely known what is likely to be demanded by a given customer and in what magnitudes. Consequently, although the company insists that it strategically focuses on one-hour service delivery, challenges emerge when urgent ordering of raw materials is required to meet the needs of special customers.

Another important production technology showcased by LensCrafters is the just-in-time production technology. Under this technology, products are produced just at the right time when they are required. This helps in the reduction of waste accumulation.

Wastes refer to finished stocks, work in progress, and raw materials that are held in stores, among other things that are associated with unfinished products. In the context of LensCrafters, this technology is important since it enhances effective performance of the organization through the reduction of the costs associated with the handling of wastes.

Reference List

Designing Operations Systems (n.d). An integrated case study of LensCrafters. London: Routlege.

Ittner, C., & Larcker, D. (2008). Coming up Short on Nonfinancial Performance Measurement. Harvard Business Review, 2(1), 212-223.

Janvier, M. (2012). A new introduction to supply chain management: Definitions and theories perspective. International Business Research, 5(1), 194-207.

Pfeifer, P., Mark, H., & Conroy, R. (2005). Customer Lifetime Value, Customer Profitability, and the Treatment of Acquisition Spending. Journal of Managerial, 17(1), 11-26.

Slack, N., Chambers, S., & Johnston, R. (2010).Operations Management. New Jersey: Person Education.

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