Operations Management Assignment: Implementing Blockchain In Dominos

Question

Task:
Students are expected to answer the following questions throughout this report on operations management assignment:

Identify both established and emerging consumer value propositions within the fast food industry.
Provide a process map (or flowchart) of a fast food restaurant’s order fulfillment process.
Discuss how Blockchain may enhance the supply chain performance in the fast food industry?
Review the relationship between service quality and profitability with the adoption of Blockchain in the supply chain.
Describe the potential operational challenges faced by managers of your chosen restaurant to implement a Blockchain solution.
Provide recommendations for improving the service operations of the fast food restaurants.

Answer

Executive summary
The present study has dealt with the related concepts of operations management for the organisation of Dominos. Block chain; value proposition and order fulfilment process has also been considered in the respective study. On the other hand, the relationship within the quality service and profitability has also been discussed along with deriving the challenges for implementation of blockchain technology in the organisation.

Introduction
Operations management seems to be the direction based on business practices for the formation of a superior level of possible competence in a company. However, it is mainly apprehensive with the converting materials as well as efforts within the services and goods in a successful manner for the maximisation of the income for an organisation. Hence, the current study evaluates dissimilar aspects related to operations management focussing on the organisation of Dominos. The company is known to be an American multinational restaurant chain of pizza that was developed in the year of 1960. It is headquartered in the Dominos Farm Office Park, UK.

Established and emerging value propositions in the fast food industry
A customer value proposition seems to be a marketing or business statement which tends to describe the reason for a customer buying a product or rather using any service. This has been particularly targeted towards the potential customers as compared to the other constituent groups like suppliers; employees and partners (Babbar et al., 2020, p. 356). Hence, the essence based on the value proposition for the fast food industry has been to provide the customers with a reason for becoming the customer of a respective brand as the offering consists of certain aspects related to value which seems to be attractive for the consumers within target markets such as the case of Dominos value proposition.

Value proposition example for Dominos
This differentiates the respective organisation from its other competitors. The main factors of the company are mentioned below:

The convenient locations of the organisation which are easily accessible for the customers
Its fast and effective service with time
It consists of comfortable in-store and seating facilities
Distinct products of food and consistent quality for the products
Best offering of value and price
A broader range of choices in food

Target markets of the value proposition
It has been evidenced that the value proposition of Dominos can appeal to various target markets. For instance, a broad range of choices in food might appeal towards the family; the comfortable facilities can be applicable for the customers who are interested within the store to socialize and sit. However, as stated by Nair and Reed?Tsochas, (2019, p. 84), dominos within their overall value proposition consists of distinctive benefits as compared with their key competitors like facilities; distinctive products, locations, fast service and similar others. (for detailed value proposition, refer to appendix 1)

Process map of order fulfilment process
The order fulfilment process is referred to as the steps that the organisations should take through a moment that is received by them with an order till the item is provided to the customers. The most common ways through which many organisations judge or rather oversee their efficiency within the respective process is through looking within the perfect order metric. (for detailed process map, refer to Appendix 2) The perfect order consists of the orders that can be on time, undamaged, complete along with an accurate paper work for accompanying it (Cachon et al., 2020, p. 218). The respective metric has been similar for the fill rate. The order fulfilment process based on the concerned company has been mentioned below:

Receiving the order either in phone; or in person or through email
The order needs to be entered into the back office
The order is prepared for being packed
The order is picked
The customer seems to be notified about their order to be on the way
Order is received within time

Product service continuum of Dominos 1

Figure 1: Product service continuum of Dominos
Source: (Glock et al., 2019, p. 432)

Challenges in order fulfilment process
Demand planning: This includes the advance of knowing whatever the demand of the product might be along with its shaping and the efforts of the organisation which tries for generating the demand such as promotions and marketing.

Supply chain: When the food items are known to be stocked out, the lowest time required to make them available; the time for preparing the food and the time consumed for delivering the product to the customer. All these are associated with the supply chain management which is responsible for impacting the fulfilment of order.

Application of Blockchain to enhance supply chain performance in the fast food industry
Blockchain technology
Blockchain is referred to as a tamper-proof implement, which is distributed as a digital ledger that can eventually record the transactions. As evidenced by Qi and Shen, (2019, p. 406), this might be utilised in different ways over various sectors from the food towards the drink as well. The use of blockchain technology is responsible for helping the concerned organisation through many ways such as safety of food, making the supply chain of food transparent along with empowering the chain for being aware of any kind of food safety disasters. The blockchain technology seems to be a sharing and storing of the information over a network based on the users through an open virtual space.

Blockchain technology in Dominos pizza
It has been evidenced that the blockchain technology can allow the respective organisation for obtaining the efficiencies through the automation of delivery operations along with consolidating the operation centres. The company has been found to announce that it might implement a block-chain based solution regarding its operations associated with logistics management. According to Berenguer and Shen, (2019), within this adoption, the company has aimed in the enhancement of the organisational operations related to the logistics as well as supply chain management. Blockchain Technology would allow the consumers to retrieve data about the sourcing of the raw material and its processing, which was hitherto, impossible. Details about the storage temperature, the temperature and conditions under which the materials had been transferred to the shops as well as the detailed history of the animal used in the product made available to the customers, including their vaccination details and others. Besides, live-tracking the item while being delivered, would also become easier for the consumers along with keeping a note whether the food safety standards are being followed by the company or not.

Challenges in adopting blockchain technology
Awareness: Many of the industry leaders are not found to be familiar with this technology as it might result in slowing down the process of decision making. This is because most of the companies are found to know nothing about the implementation of the respective technology.

Standardization: There seems to be a lack within regulation based on blockchain technology that also consists of several concerns (Sheth, 2019). Thus, the blockchain has been known to make sense while the common standards related to interacting digitally like those which have been developed for the internet.

Product service continuum of Dominos 2

Figure 2: Assembly Line of Dominos
Source: (Zhang et al., 2019, p. 278)

Relationship between service quality and profitability associated with adoption of Blockchain
Relationship between Service quality and profitability in Dominos
The service quality represents how well the service of Dominos is delivered along with conforming to the expectations of the customers and the clients as well. Profitability, on the other hand, is determined as ability for Dominos to make use of its resources for the generation of revenues within the excess of its expenses (Yrjölä et al., 2019, p. 95). The operators of Dominos are known to often assess with the service quality that has been provided towards the customers for improving its service quality along with quickly identifying the problems as well as assess better satisfaction of the clients as well, which influences profitability of the company, in turn. The service quality has been considered as a perceived quality along with being different from the actual and the objective quality while being judged by the loyal customers of Dominos, that plays an important role in determining the incidences of repeat-purchases by the customers and thus, the profitability of the organization. The main factor that is known to influence the profitability within the food business is its service quality which can be measured through the behaviour, time, appropriateness of food and similar others.

Relationship
The implementation of Blockchain technology in the supply chain of Dominos would ensure that the company would be able to trace back to its suppliers and their dealings, while providing correct information about the details of sources from which the animal meat as well as the vegetables, used in the production of the items, have been procured. This transparency would help improve the service quality of the company. Live-tracking the raw materials as well as the finished goods, till it reaches the consumers, would become easier and more efficient, along with providing information regarding the temperature and other conditions in which the food is being stored, in the process of doorstep delivery, along with details of the delivery personnel. Under conditions such as pandemic (the recent COVID-19 pandemic for example), it becomes essential for the consumers as well as the management of Dominos to ensure that the raw materials are being properly sourced and the finished goods are being delivered in the best possible manner as promised, often ‘contact-free’, besides being able to trace the source of contamination, if any. The correct information regarding these aspects could be retrieved efficiently, after the implementation of Blockchain technology. According to Saberi et al., (2019, p. 2120), this would enhance the service quality, bringing in customer satisfaction as well as customer loyalty and thus, influencing increased profitability of the company, Dominos in this case.

Potential Operational Challenges implementing Blockchain
Implementation of blockchain technology is known to carry a unique set based on challenges with the same that consists of a greatly contributed for the slower adoption involving the lack in scalability, dearth related to the blockchain developers, limited interoperability, insufficient standardization and extensive requirements of energy along with an absence for a regular clarity (Olsen et al., 2019, p. 152). There are several operational challenges that can also lead to a future damage within the food industry organisations such as Dominos are mentioned below:

Cost and efficiency
The effectiveness and speed through which the networks of blockchain can execute its transactions comes within a higher aggregate cost that seems to be greater for the blockchain. The respective in-efficiency arises due to each of the nodes performing the similar tasks just like the other nodes within its own copy based on the data within the attempt for being first to find any solution.

Culture
The blockchain tends to represent the total shift through the traditional ways for performing things even for the industries which have been seen to be important transformation through digital technologies. As put forward by Bumblauskas et al., (2020, p. 102008), this is known to place the authority and trust within the decentralised network as compared with the powerful central institution.

Regulation and governance
Regulations have always been known to struggle for keeping up with the advances within the technology. However, few technologies like the Bitcoin blockchain are known to bypass regulation in a complete way for handling the inefficiencies within the conventional intermediated networks of payment. The other challenge based on this blockchain technology that also consists of its original motivation has been its reduction of oversight.

Limited supply of developer
The groundbreaking technology needs time for the developer community for adopting the same along with the educational institutions for the introduction of relevant courses. The blockchain landscape has been recently within its infancy and is known to suffer through an acute shortage based on the skilled developers. It also consists of a lack in adequately trained as well as skilled workforce to manage with the complexity for innovation.

Recommendations for improving service operations
Protecting data
Whether developing the private blockchain or rather establishing the architectures which can leverage the public blockchain, an organisation should always decide its best platform regarding deployment. However, as per the views of Kshetri, (2019, p. 64), blockchain consists of inherent properties such as vulnerabilities which might be manipulated. All the blockchain technologies should consist of the infrastructure with the integrated security.

Restriction of access for the data
There is certain data that the organisations do not upload for the public blockchain like the electronic medical record information along with the numbers of social security. Through a private blockchain, the security features are required to be strong for preventing anyone through accessing any kind of sensitive information. This seems to be the need for being able to redact the sensitive data like personally identifiable information (PII).

Conclusion
To conclude, the present study has evaluated the importance of different aspects related to operations management. The value proposition has also been considered for the fast food industry along with the order fulfilment process of Dominos. However, the relationship within the profitability and service quality of the organisation has also been highlighted in the present discussion along with the implementation of blockchain technology and its challenges.

References
Babbar, S., Koufteros, X., Bendoly, E., Behara, R., Metters, R. and Boyer, K., 2020. Looking at ourselves: Lessons about the operations management field learned from our top journals. Journal of Operations Management, 66(3), pp.349–364. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/joom.1081.

Berenguer, G. and Shen, Z.J., 2019. Challenges and strategies in managing nonprofit operations: An operations management perspective. Manufacturing & Service Operations Management. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/msom.2018.0758.

Bumblauskas, D., Mann, A., Dugan, B. and Rittmer, J., 2020. A blockchain use case in food distribution: Do you know where your food has been?. International Journal of Information Management, 52, p.102008.

Cachon, G.P., Girotra, K. and Netessine, S., 2020. Interesting, Important, and Impactful Operations Management. Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, 22(1), pp.214-222.

Glock, C.H., Grosse, E.H., Jaber, M.Y. and Smunt, T.L., 2019. Applications of learning curves in production and operations management: A systematic literature review. Computers & Industrial Engineering, 131, pp.422-441.

Kshetri, N., 2019. Blockchain and the economics of food safety. IT Professional, 21(3), pp.63-66.

Nair, A. and Reed?Tsochas, F., 2019. Revisiting the complex adaptive systems paradigm: leading perspectives for researching operations and supply chain management issues. Journal of Operations Management, 65(2), pp.80-92.

Olsen, P., Borit, M. and Syed, S., 2019. Applications, limitations, costs, and benefits related to the use of blockchain technology in the food industry. Nofima rapportserie, 2(1), pp. 151-154

Qi, W. and Shen, Z.J.M., 2019. A smart?city scope of operations management. Production and Operations Management, 28(2), pp.393-406.

Saberi, S., Kouhizadeh, M., Sarkis, J. and Shen, L., 2019. Blockchain technology and its relationships to sustainable supply chain management. International Journal of Production Research, 57(7), pp.2117-2135.

Sheth, J.N., 2019. Customer value propositions: Value co-creation. Industrial Marketing Management. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2019.10.012

Yrjölä, M., Kuusela, H., Närvänen, E., Rintamäki, T. and Saarijärvi, H., 2019. Leading Change: A Customer Value Framework. Leading Change in a Complex World: Transdisciplinary Perspectives, 51, pp.91–101. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2019.05.030

Zhang, T.C., Gu, H. and Jahromi, M.F., 2019. What makes the sharing economy successful? An empirical examination of competitive customer value propositions. Computers in Human Behavior, 95, pp.275-283.

Appendices
Appendix 1: Value proposition canvas

Product service continuum of Dominos 3