The following article by Sally Kaufmann (2001) discusses the quality of service at a movie theatre. Identify areas of concern with regard to quality and discuss strategies that could be used to prevent recurrence.

Last Friday night my husband and I went to the movies. I’m not going to give a movie review. Instead, I’m going to tell you what happened in the theatre. We came into the theatre while the previews were playing, so it was already dark. We took our seats, and the feature presentation began about five minutes later. Shortly thereafter, we heard a baby crying. The baby wasn’t actually crying; it was screaming. This particular movie had very loud action scenes, bloody battles, and the like. We were thankful for that. The battle scenes helped drown out the crying child. I don’t want to exaggerate the situation. The baby did not cry constantly for the duration of the movie. However, there were at least a dozen or more outcries that lasted for several minutes each. It was extremely distracting. I did not, nor did anyone else that I know of, say anything to the parents. I did turn around once with a glaring look. (A lot of good that did in a dark theatre.) As we were leaving, we walked past a young man who obviously worked for the theatre. I saw “Manager” on his badge. I decided to stop and talk to him. In a very polite manner, I told him that there was a baby crying on and off throughout the movie we’d just seen. I said that I thought they should have a policy of not allowing infants into the theatre, as it can be very distracting for the other customers. He apologized and explained that they had “checkers” that were supposed to go in to each theatre to see if there was a disturbance. He wanted to know which theatre we were in so he could find out who wasn’t doing their job. I replied that the checker probably came in at a moment when the baby wasn’t crying. The problem wasn’t the checker; the problem was the inspection system. The only way to prevent the problem was to change the theatre’s policy. The manager apologized again for our inconvenience and then offered us free passes. I declined the passes and said that I just wanted to pass on my comments, and I hoped he would consider them.

The students will be expected to identify the characteristics of good quality management and the costs of doing things wrong. Research by Crosby (2014) identified that around 25% of all operating costs are the cost of doing things wrong or what he terms the Price of Non-Conformance (PONC). He further identifies that the Price of Conformance (POC) that are in place for prevention and appraisal purposes makes up around a further 12% of costs. The question is designed to allow students to explore the issues of quality (good and bad) and to discuss the techniques of reducing the cost of quality – this would include approaches such as Kaizen, quality improvement groups, and prevention and appraisal procedures. A key feature of quality is the role of operating employees as ‘experts’ in improving processes. The question does allow students to discuss how quality is managed in organizations and the strategies employed for quality improvement implementation.

Include all the above which has included further detailed critical analysis of the case study.

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In the given article the quality of service at a movie theatre is discussed particularly focusing on the issue of a crying baby during a movie screeni... View the full answer