J Sainsbury PLCINTRODUCTIONJ Sainsbury PLC is a major food retailer in the UK and also has interests in financial services. It includes Sainsbury's supermarkets, Bells Stores, Jackson's Stores and Sainsbury's Bank. There are currently 583 Sainsbury's supermarkets across the UK employing over 145,000 people, offering over 34,000 products and serving over 11 million customers a week. It is for these reasons that careful management of operations within each of the stores is vital to ensure that all processes run smoothly so that customers can be served and products can be replenished. PERFORMANCE OBJECTIVES Customers want quality service when they shop. Quality service is defined as “service that consistently meets or exceeds customer expectations.” The supermarket needs to consider a customer's current value: how it can make this person spend as much money as possible in the store. They also need to consider the future value of the customer: how they can ensure this person returns, when they spend more. The supermarket's objectives must be examined and achieved very carefully. The following diagram shows the main performance objectives for which you work in the supermarket. Things operations should do… Objective Provide goods and services without errors Quality Minimize delivery times Speed ​​Keep delivery promises Reliability Adapt to changing circumstances Flexibility Minimize costs Cost Andi Smart, University of Exeter For the customer to have a hassle-free shopping experience, you need to achieve most, if not all, of these goals. The first, and probably most important, goal of the shop is quality. It is important because it is the most visible part of what operations do and therefore customers are easily able to make judgments about quality. In concrete terms within the supermarket this means ensuring that the products are in good condition, that the store is clean, that the internal decorations are appropriate and of a good standard and making sure that the staff are polite and friendly. Quality is managed very carefully within the store. The floor manager is responsible for overseeing the operation as a whole and supervises the managers of each section of the store. These managers in turn supervise their section staff and monitor inventory rotation, cleanliness of islands and merchandise, and ensure all equipment is maintained. This top-down approach ensures that quality is successfully maintained within the store. The next goal is speed: ensuring short transaction times at the checkout and making products readily available is the only way to manage speed within the supermarket. A checkout manager monitors the checkouts, increasing and reducing the number of staff