top of page

Operations? Super Important.

  • Writer: Chase Taake
    Chase Taake
  • Jul 28, 2021
  • 3 min read

Updated: Aug 18, 2021



Operations is the process of how a business works, and how a business operates can determine success or failure. Even the behemoth Amazon could sink due to bad operations, however, they are extremely efficient with their operations.




Importance of Operations in Mini Golf Courses

For example, I used to own a miniature golf course with my friend and brother, and we were faced with many operational questions:

  • How long should we be open?

  • How many people should work?

  • How many times should we clean the course?

  • When do we order more snow cone syrup?

  • How much toilet paper should we order?

  • We've had thunderstorms for ten days straight. Should we just let them go out there and play (the answer was no).


How operations answer these questions determines the efficiency of a business. If we had too many people working, we might not make enough in a single day to cover all of their salaries plus other expenses, however if we have too few people working they may become overwhelmed resulting in bad service. Having people clean the course costs money and can be very costly due to the sheer size of the course and the amount of leaves, however if they do not come out daily these leaves may ruin the fun of the game and beauty of the course.


Even the processes of how the front desk operated were operational questions we had to answer - should our front desk give an overview of the course to each customer providing a greater experience, or quickly deal with running the transaction and getting them their clubs to speed through the line faster? Should there be two people up front, one dealing with the mini golfers and one with the snow cone and food, or should one person do both to save money? These questions could change the customers' experiences and in the end affect the course's bottom line.


Amazon’s Mastery of Operations

Regarding Amazon, let’s for the sake of easy numbers, one person can pack 50 boxes an hour for a pay of $15/hr, so in a way Amazon is paying $15 for 50 boxes packed an hour, or $1500 for 5000 boxes. If their efficiency in the warehouse went down and they allowed chit chat in the room, and that same worker started packing 25 an hour for the same pay, that is now $15 for 25 boxes an hour, or $1500 for 2500 boxes. That really makes an impact and could result in lower pay or higher prices for products. The reason Amazon can do overnight shipping, and charge such low prices, is their mastery in operations. They cut everything down to make their shipping as simple as possible, and as fast as possible.



Henry Ford, the Operational Wizard

Another easy way to picture this is through what Henry Ford did. Back in Henry Ford’s time, an affordable car for all was not possible… and that’s because the operations of making a car were not good. Before Henry Ford’s mastery of operations, the process of making a car was a team of people working together to put together an individual car that would end up selling around $900. Henry Ford figured out a better way to operate the business and introduced the assembly line, which allowed for cars to be made much faster and cheaper. Instead of one team working on one car, the assembly line allowed one person to do one single task to the multiple cars that came down the assembly line. The efficiency was genius, and also changed the price to around $250 and also doubled the workers wages. The change in operations can affect multiple parts of a business.


Master Operations

Operations are in each and every business, if you're in a lawn-mowing business, how can you make more money per person? Can you throw in extra services? Can you mow lawns faster to do more lawns in a day? Can you automate parts of a business to lower expenses? If you are a Youtuber or Tiktoker, can you automate when your content posts so you don’t have to spend your time doing it? Can you figure out a different way to bring in money through sponsors? Can you create a system to automatically email potential sponsors? Operations are everywhere, and the mastery of operations can not only lead to success, but it could be game changing



Comments


© 2023 by Actor & Model. Proudly created with Wix.com

bottom of page