The day in the life of a Dominos Outlet Manager

It was a horrifying experience and this was not the first time that this had happened. Knowing the trafiic and discipline system in India, Ferozes father had warned him about a problem he would have to face at all times. Not ability of staff to meet with stiff targets and the problems thereby. Feroze got a call at exactly 7pm from Hiranandani hospital that one of his best people had met up with an accident and was suffering from brain injury and admitted for immediate operation. He would need an insurance cover of Rs 15 lacs minimum for the operation to be successful and the hospital was asking for the money to be deposited on time. What an irony he wondered. On the one side a customer , would ask for a refund if the Domino was not delivered to his / her residence within 30 minutes. That was the Dominos promise. On the other hand a hospital wanted to start operation only after depositing a certain amount of minimum amount. When he was doing his MBA at IMT Gaziabad , Feroze did not think that actual jobs could be so different. Luckily he was working for Dominos, reputed brand and the money reached Hiranandani on time. Atleast a call was made by the Admin person , thank god he was reachable on mobile, Feroze though. Just one call from Feroze to him and Admin ensured that Hiranandani was able to admit the patient. Immidiately , a call reached his mobile from his boss. Feroze told him about the fact that though he was not having a bad performance at his store , still he was distressed with the type of accidents that his boys were getting exposed to . The Dominos promise was getting more difficult to meet. The location was in the midst of a very crowded market wherein people were promised door delivery in 30 minutes. At the time while taking the call itself the tele-operator was taking sue diligence to ensure that those conumsers who were at the difficult end of the cycle were not promised the delivery on time. They were clearly told that since the traffic in the city was too much to handle so the boys would take time.

Still customers are customers. They would shout and fight and ensure their point was heard. Mostly the problem was that those customers who would order would be accessed by same number of boys and the load was so high that the cost of ferrying the pizza was too much for the boys. Most of the times they had to break traffic rules and many times they were forced into accident prone situations.

Feroze had been getting many such reports from his guys. At first he just neglected them. Later once when he made his own routine visit to study the situation himself he realized that things were not all that right. He told his boss that he would need more people. His boss equally flatly replied that he must understand the things more globally. He must see the big picture. The cost of location in South Mumbai where his shop was located was so high that the entire

cost of running the store was bleeding the company. The company was too concerned about the fate of delivery boys. It even made an immediate call for the boy to be taken to the operating room. However, when it came to consumers. CUSTOMER IS KING !!! Feroze knew that Capacity wasa always a constraint. Time, Labor, Equipment and Facilities were always a constraints. But arent constraints to be managed only upto maximum capacity. Ideally he had read in MBA that capacity is to be managed for optimum capacity. As per him the concept of optimum capacity was clear in his mind. However, he could not estimate of opimumness in any model.

His MBA prof only tought him through a case study and theory method that there was something called optimum capacity utilization and he had to make head or tail himself of the rest of the theory. How then does he make sense of the situation today when he has to report to his boss.

To his surprise the next question his boss asked was similar to the thought that crossed his mind. Hisboss asked him. You are no where near the benchmark of accidents of this type. Normally we have seen in the company that only if a location of a Dominos gets accident rate above 3 in a year only then will it be a reason for concern. This was also not under the MDs control , even the HO from US was clear about this benchmark. If any thing was required more than this then it would only have to be on the basis of case to case.

Can you create a scheme to help Feroze out in the situation. Can you make the theoretical concept a little correct for him to understand. What is meant by capacity utilization and what are issues concerned with this?