Case study of National Sealife Birmingham and London Zoo

Introduction

Operation management is about how organizations produce goods and services

(Slack 2007).It is a basic functions of any enterprises therefore it will give us a better
understanding of business and help us improve our performance if we can analyze
business from a operation management perspective .This report is based on two case
which are National Sealife Birmingham and London Zoo. The article will focus on
input output ， process, 4Vs and layout of Sealife and Zoo with comparison and
contrast of the mutual problems they have together, at last conclusion and
suggestions will be given. This article is divided into two parts. Part 1 is about analysis
of Sealife center, part 2 is analysis of London Zoo and comparison and contrast
between two cases.

Part 1

Sealife Centre

National Sealife Birmingham is located alongside the Birmingham Canal Navigations

Main Line Canal by Old Turn Junction and opposite the National Indoor Arena and it
opened in spring 1996(Wikipedia website 2010). The National Sealife Centre has an
extensive seahorse breeding programme, with many species of newly reared
seahorses in tanks viewable by visitors. In other displays, it has a Giant Pacific
Octopus, as well as horseshoe crabs, green sea turtles, lobsters, sharks, sting rays,
and otters. In Easter 2009, the Centre announced as its newest attraction a
"Sensorama 4-D Cinema". So-called because in addition to 3-D viewing, the audience
can be subjected to sensations such as wind, salt spray, and the smell the seaweed,
or other sensations depending on the (sea-themed) film (Wikipedia website 2010).
Input-transformation-output

Consider Sealife Center as an operation management mechanism system. First take a

look at its input-transformation-output processes. For the input resources, Sealife
Center has visitors as main transformed resources and the whole aquarium and staff
as transforming resources. This whole system is mainly about providing satisfied
touring experience to the customers as output. Also, beside all the services parts
Sealife Center have a souvenir shop and a café bar providing products. Based on the
observation, family-unit visitors are most important part, not many single visitors or
couples .According to the Sealife Center website, it shows another important part of
visitors are organized student groups.

4Vs

Normally a sunny Saturday afternoon should be a rush-hour for an aquarium but the
truth is that not many people came which indicates a rather low volume given that
Sealife center was voted Aquarium Of The Year by the Good Britain Guide in 2004.
Since the aquarium is already packed, all the displays are already set down, so there
isn’t much flexibility for their services. Although visitors can check out a large amount
of different kinds of sea creatures, but it doesn’t mean that Sealife center has high
variety level, it is like a bus can take you almost anywhere like a taxi but you have to
go with the routes which have been set down. So despite all the different sea
creatures, the aquarium has a relatively low level of variety.
About variation in demand, Sealife center has a regularly attendance fluctuation in
daily numbers. Obviously busiest time of aquarium should be at weekends or any
national holidays, workdays would be presumed to have a much less visitors. So
there goes a high variation in demand level.
Sealife Center is a place visitor is physically inside the working facilities getting
firsthand experience with the sea creatures you paid to see, in other words,
customer satisfaction is completely governed by the customer perception. Therefore
visibility level is also high.

Processes

Given the analysis of input-transformation-output and 4Vs, Sealife center provides

services based on fixed equipment and facilities and has a high number of
transactions. These all fit to the description of mass services processes.

Layout

Figure1.1
Figure1.1 is the visitor map which downloaded from Sealife Center website.
Considering Product Layout involves locating the transforming resources entirely for
the convenience of the transformed resources. The transformed resources “flow”
along a “line” of process (Slack 2007). The aquarium is a Product Layout. All the
displays of sealife are formed a line just like the way you shop in IKEA, there’s no
other tour route except the one has already been given. All customers need to do is
follow the line from the ticket window all the way down to the exit. This way all the
visitors can fully taste everything that aquarium’s got.

Problems in Sealife Center

According to the basic operation management analysis, some problems of Sealife

Center have showed up:
First, the volume is relatively low considering Sealife center is a place benefits mainly
from ticket selling. From an adult visitor point of view, Sealife center haven’t
delivered satisfactory services cause when an adult visitor pay £13.50(online ticket
price) he wish to see more than different fishes in different tanks. Sealife center may
be a fun place for children but not for adults. And because of Sealife center a simple
“watching” service, it is hard to attract all age range customers. Also Sealife center
has a high variation in demand; even to keeping the level of family attendance is
difficult for a fluctuation reason. Sealife center can’t have the same visitor numbers
in workdays like it does in weekends. This means Sealife center make less money of
ticket selling during workdays which reduces the profit. About visibility, due to the
IKEA self-help tourist design, there basically have no tour guide or service staff. All
the visitors just explore everything by themselves. Under this kind of situation people
especially adults may feel being kind of abandoned after all, aquarium is a service
business.
Second, Sealife center choose the product layout, they order all their displays in a
line, this way it is much easier for visitors to find their way compared to any
functional layout, but a commend implication of product layout is bottleneck
problem which is rather a serious problem in the aquarium. Because there is only
one aisle and if a family wants to watch something, they have to stop and this will
cause a little traffic jam on the aisle so that people behind them can’t move on, and if
other visitors want to watch the same tank, they have to wait until the family left.
There are a lot of other reasons that will stop the line moving, for example people
want to take a photograph which hypothetically takes at least 10sec, based on the
theory in traffic research, once a car pause, it will cause the seismic waves that affect
all the cars behind it significantly which may lead to a huge traffic jam many miles
away, kind like a butterfly effect in transport system (Tom Vanderbilt 2009), the same
thing happens in the aquarium. Plus some families carry kids with prams which make
the situation even worse. Unfortunately considering the high level of visibility,
customers in this type of operation have a relatively short waiting tolerance (Slack
2007). Without doubt this whole stuck circumstance has a very bad influence on the
customer experience.figure1.2 shows the aisle jam situation.

figure1.2

Third, Sealife center has a café and souvenir shop set up so as soon as visitors finish
their tour they can have a cup of coffee to relax or buy some toys and crafts in the
souvenir shop if all these settings went as well as aquarium managers planned there
surely would be quite profitable. But the conventional fussy toys with no features fail
to stimulate the consumption desire and visitors barely stop for a cup of coffee as
they can find a better café outside in five minutes if they just simply walk through the
exit door of aquarium.

Part 2
Background information on London zoo

London Zoo is the world's oldest scientific zoo. It was opened in London on 27 April
1828, and was originally intended to be used as a collection for scientific study. It was
eventually opened to the public in 1847. Today it houses a collection of 755 species
of animals, with 15,104 individuals, making it one of the largest collections in the
United Kingdom. (ZSL 2008)

Input-transformation-output, 4Vs and layout

Like Sealife center London Zoo is also a service provider, in this process transformed
resources are visitors, transforming resources are London Zoo including all its
facilities and staff. London Zoo gets regularly attendance levels of between 4000 and
6000 in weekends which shows a high volume level. But before Christmas Eve only 48
people came to the zoo, this huge gap between 6000 and 48 means variation level is
high. Like Sealife center variety is high. Visibility level is also high because customers
are completely inside the zoo. And same like Sealife center London zoo is a mass
services process.
Figure1.3 is a visitor map downloaded from London Zoo website
Functional layout is so called because it confirms to the needs and convenience of
the functions performed by the transforming resources which constitute the process
(Slack 2007).according to the definition, the whole zoo is built by functional layout,
different animals are located in different areas like Gorilla Kingdom and African Bird
Safari etc. It means that when products, information or customers flow through the
operation, they will take a route from activity to activity according to their needs
(Slack 2007), so after visitors entering the zoo, they are free to choose the tour route
that they like.
 figure1.3

Comparison and contrast between the two cases

Both Sealife center and London zoo are service providers based on their own
collections and profit mainly by ticket selling. Visitors are their transformed resources
their facilities and staff are the transforming resources. But two places choose the
different layout type because own characteristics. Compared to London zoo, Sealife
center has a much smaller facility in order to fully utilize the space, Sealife center
choose to set up aquarium in product layout which saves a lot of spaces but easy to
cause a bottleneck situation also shorten the time that visitors spend inside the
aquarium because the simple and convenient route design. For bottleneck problem
aquarium could draw a white line in the middle of the aisle like escalator, so when
people stop to watch, other people could go by the other side of aisle and wouldn’t
get stuck. If it’s possible aquarium could offer smaller baby container so parents
don’t have to use their own push wheels which would take up a lot of aisle space and
easy to cause aisle jam.
London zoo have a rather complex functional layout takes much more spaces and
need careful scheduling and loading control in operation. From a customer point of
view, after you paid £18 for ticket, you would certainly like to check out all the
animals that the zoo has, so this complex layout would hold the visitors inside for a
longtime. For this kind of layout, it’s essential to have a clear guidepost to show
where the visitors currently are and how to get to the destination they want to go.
Sealife center and London zoo have a similar 4Vs status. No 1 mission for their
managers is increasing visitor numbers. Question is how? Dr Jo Gipps, the director of
London zoo admitted that they have done all the market research they already know
all the things about their target customers, they know who they are, and they know
what they like to see. But none of these things made a change in attendance level. Dr
Jo Gipps believe it has something to do with the change of society’s attitude to
animals. This could hardly be the whole reason. Same attendance level low problem
happens to Sealife center too. The problem lies in the services they provide. Sealife
center and London zoo’s services is too simplex. For example, when visitors walk
through the aquarium all they can do is watching, there is no further programme
that aquarium can offer, it’s ok if the Sealife center is commonweal organizations but
they do charge for tickets so visitors especially adults visitors, how to make them feel
this tour is more than a boring process that they have to go through just because
they made promise to their children. How to attract more non-family customers. This
is a problem related to Capacity Plans. There are three methods of responding to
demand variations. Demand management is an approach to medium-term capacity
management that attempts to change or influence demand to fit available capacity
(Slack 2007). In order to increase attendance level, Sealife center and London zoo
need to make some change in their operation management strategies. Disney land is
a great teacher. Sealife center and London zoo can open more interactive programs
which fit the themes of their animals or fishes. Considering all the resources that
they already have as a strong advantage, they can easily build up some programme
that other theme parks could never have. In this way with integrated resources,
Sealife center and London zoo could hopefully attract more different age range
customers which not just think this as exhibition but also as theme park. Same thing
should be done to the café and souvenir shop they have, for instance, instead of
having a normal café, Sealife center can decorate it with more ocean style, they can
use special fish cup to offer café or make cakes look like turtles, anything to make the
café special and unique.

References:

Adrian Watt, Stuart Chambers,（1995）. London Zoo, CASES IN OPERATIONS

MANAGEMENT, pp. 8-pp24

Sea Life Conservation, http://www.sealife.co.uk/research.php

Slack, N., Chambers, S. and Johnston, R., (2007), operations management, 5th Edition,

Tom Vanderbilt (2009) Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do and What It Says about
Us