Bosoboso, Ena Kathleen M.

August 19, 2019

BSA 2 – Section B

HAZEL CASE
1. In what ways are Hazel’s customers most likely to judge the quality of her lawn care
services?

There are lots of ways her customers can judge the quality of her services.
These include the following:
 Tangibles: appearance of physical facilities and equipment
 Reliability: ability to perform the promised service with punctuality, availability
and flexibility of Hazel and her employees
 Responsiveness: willingness of Hazel and her employees to help customers
and provide prompt service
 Empathy: customer care
 Price of lawn care services
 Duration of lawn care services
 Outcome of lawn care services
 Feedbacks of other customers

2. Hazel is the operations manager of her business. Among her responsibilities are
forecasting, inventory management, scheduling, quality assurance, and
maintenance.

a. What kind of things would likely require forecasts?

 Weather
 Customer behavior
 Demand
 Cost
 Competitors
 Replacement of equipment
 Inventory: supply of gardening products and equipment

b. What inventory items does Hazel probably have? Name one inventory decision
she has to make periodically.

 Inventory items such as fertilizers, grass seeds, and pesticides; inventory

items for maintenance and operation supplies like sod cutters, rotary mowers,
lawn mower blades, rake, oil, and sharpening tools
  Inventory decision to make periodically: oil and/or gas for lawn mower

c. What scheduling must she do? What things might occur to disrupt schedules and
cause Hazel to reschedule?

 Scheduling such as customer availability, shifts of employees, weekly and/or

monthly maintenance, and ordering of supplies
 Things like fortuitous events and/or natural calamities, unavailability of
supplies, unavailability of employees, malfunctioning of equipment, and lack
of funds

d. How important is quality assurance to Hazel’s business? Explain.

Quality assurance is an important step in measuring product and/or service

quality. Since Hazel just started her lawn care business and she does not have
enough number of customers, it is very important to keep her reputation and
quality of service for old customers to contact her again and recommend her
services to others. She must meet all intended requirements for lawn care
services to attain the excellence required.

e. What kinds of maintenance must be performed?

 Preventive or daily maintenance such as cleaning and inspection of

equipment to retain its healthy condition and prevent deterioration thus
preventing failure
 Corrective maintenance for equipment with design weaknesses to be
redesigned for improvement of reliability and maintainability as well as
emergency maintenance whenever needed

3. What are some of the trade-offs that Hazel probably considered relative to:

a. Working for a company instead of for herself?

Working for a company is more stable and provides health insurance,

benefits, bonuses and consistent paycheck

b. Expanding the business?

 More expenses such as in building, hiring employees and buying more

equipment
 Larger inventory
 Greater opportunity for her lawn care services
 Wider market
  More profit

c. Launching a Web site?

 Exposure of business worldwide can provide greater opportunities
 Easy scheduling with customers
 Greater work and pressure on Hazel and her employees

5. Hazel decided to offer the students who worked for her a bonus of $25 for ideas on
how to improve the business, and they provided several good ideas. One idea that
she initially rejected now appears to hold great promise. The student who proposed
the idea has left, and is currently working for a competitor. Should Hazel send a
check for the idea? What are the possible trade-offs?

Hazel must consider how her decisions may affect her business as a whole
thus she should not send a check to the student for his or her idea. She must
make this ethical decision. She should just focus on finding more bright ideas for
her lawn care services.

7. Hazel is thinking of making some of her operations sustainable. What are some
ideas she might consider?

 Consistent client base

 Networking for growth
 Enough business to cover fixed costs