Achieving operational excellence: Stories of restaurant managers

Abstract

Operational Excellence is attained when customers see the value of the business and meet their expectations. It is what businesses and restaurants should aim to achieve customer satisfaction, repeat business, and ensure the longevity of the business. It makes the restaurant strive to attain its highest potential to better serve not only its customers but also other stakeholders whom they affect. This is a qualitative study aimed at understanding and exploring the strategies and experiences of the different restaurants in the locality of Iloilo City in achieving operational excellence in their restaurants. It presents an opportunity to fill in the gap in the limited body of knowledge concerning operational excellence. The questions are based on the Shingo Model of operational excellence as it provides a framework for organizations to guide them in achieving the ideal results that they aim for using systems, tools, principles, cultures, and results to achieve operational excellence. This study used narrative inquiry through a semi-structured interview with six different managers and owners of restaurants located in Iloilo City to explore their strategies for achieving operational excellence. The data that was gathered underwent thematic analysis to determine the emerging themes that exist between their strategies to create a comprehensive understanding of how to achieve operational excellence in restaurants. There are five themes to this study: Continuous learning, quality, customer first, legacy in the community, and employee engagement. Each theme is discussed thoroughly by the researcher and provides an in- depth analysis to better understand how these different strategies are being used by the respondents of this study to achieve operational excellence.