LensCrafters Operations Management: Strategy & Value Chain

Operations Management and the Five Competitive Priorities

Operations management is the control of business processes to generate the greatest possible efficiency in an organization. It is focused on transforming materials and labor into goods and services as effectively as possible to maximize profits. There are five key competitive priorities in operations management: cost; quality; flexibility; delivery performance; and innovativeness (Kim, Sting, & Loch, 2014, p. 467).

Cost involves monitoring expenditures and effectively distributing those costs across various products and/or services. Quality focuses on ensuring that products and/or services and their processes work and comply with specifications. Flexibility is the ability to manage changes in product mix or service mix, volume, equipment, and/or workforce. Innovativeness focuses on how quickly new products, services, or processes can be employed and effectively marketed.

In combination, these five key competitive priorities help form a strategy or strategies to improve a company's position in the market and guide decisions regarding such processes as capability, technology, production processes, planning, and control (Kim, Sting, & Loch, 2014, pp. 468–469). The strength or weakness of an operations strategy depends on the degree of consistency between the organization's stated emphasis on competitive priorities and the actual decisions about operational structures and processes.

In a highly competitive market, trade-offs are often made regarding each competitive priority because businesses cannot normally be the top performer in every characteristic. In order to create and maintain a workable management strategy, the five key priorities are divided into decision categories, which are prioritized by the recognition and development of order winners and order qualifiers. Order winners are qualities that will make it likely for the company to obtain new orders for products or services. Order qualifiers are qualities that are necessary for competing in the marketplace (Collier & Evans, 2012, p. 126). Both order winners and order qualifiers are constantly reevaluated and adjusted in order to stay as competitive as possible in a changing market.

LensCrafters' Operations Strategy and Competitive Sustainability

LensCrafters' operations strategy is the effective combination of products — in the form of high-quality eyewear — and services — in the form of fast, accurate eye examinations and one-hour service from examination to finished product (LensCrafters, 2016). The company focuses on time and quality of service as its highest priorities and potential order winners.

LensCrafters offers an extensive benefit package to its customers, including convenient locations; professional and friendly employees; modern equipment in its showrooms; one-hour service; eye examinations and related services; eyewear; eyewear accessories and cases; and contact lens accessories (Collier & Evans, 2012, p. 126). LensCrafters achieves its competitive edge through efficient production and an attractive service delivery system. Its efficient production consists of rapidly producing eyewear in each store's "backroom factory" without sacrificing product quality. Its service delivery system is conveniently located in high-traffic areas, projects high quality and professionalism, is accomplished through 11 separate in-store work roles, and is designed to allow customers to observe eyewear being produced in each store's optical laboratory.

LensCrafters' strategy greatly assists its sustainability by delivering a convenient, rapid, high-quality service and product with minimal waste of time and material. The company has therefore created long-term strategies for retaining existing customers, attracting new customers, and attracting and retaining highly professional employees.

Operations Management Challenges and Customer Experience

In the case of LensCrafters, operations management activities affect customer experience through the company's design of a rapid system of examination and eyewear production that delivers high-quality eyewear in an exceedingly short amount of time. Two operations challenges in this regard are: conflicting internal processes, such as differing methods of eye examination; and inconsistent methods of producing eyewear.

At LensCrafters, the possibilities of differing examination methods and inconsistent production methods are confronted by a management strategy that openly communicates and ensures that all team members understand how the organization operates and follow established procedures. All sites use the same methods and all sites follow the same procedures, thereby maintaining uniformity of customer experience across locations.

Conclusion

Operations management is the control of business processes to generate the most efficiency possible and ultimately to maximize profits. Five key competitive priorities — including quality, flexibility, delivery performance, and innovativeness — are utilized to comprehensively design, examine, and constantly improve business functions. The strength or weakness of an operations strategy depends on the degree of consistency between the organization's stated emphasis on competitive priorities and the actual decisions about operational structures and processes.

LensCrafters' operations strategy is the effective combination of products in the form of high-quality eyewear and services in the form of fast, accurate eye examination and one-hour service from examination to finished product. Within its operations strategy, the company offers a generous benefit package to its customers, which gives it a competitive edge through efficient production and an attractive service delivery system. Two key operations challenges — conflicting internal processes such as differing methods of eye examination, and inconsistent methods of producing eyewear — are both confronted by management's insistence on open communication and uniformity of operations and procedures across the organization.

A value chain generally consists of a management design of how the company receives raw materials, adds value to those materials through its designed processes, and sells the finished product or service to the customer. In the case of LensCrafters, the highly effective value chain flows from customer information to examiners to manufacturers to suppliers, and then back from suppliers to manufacturers and from manufacturers to customers — all within a tightly integrated system. Several types of performance measurements can be used to measure LensCrafters' service-delivery system design, including service quality, customer growth, altruism, organizational productivity, business performance, and cost/price. Service quality and customer growth are readily applicable to LensCrafters, as both high service quality and significant customer retention and growth are vital to its operations management success in a highly competitive market.

One of the most impressive aspects of LensCrafters' service and products is the state-of-the-art technology it employs. Eye examinations are conducted by rigorously trained personnel who use Clarifye for digital examinations, the Snellen eye chart to assess the customer's vision proximity to 20/20, phoropters for multiple lens comparisons to detect the degree of nearsightedness or farsightedness, and keratometers to gauge possible astigmatism. To ensure a proper fit and maximal usage of the prescription, LensCrafters uses AccuFit technology. When preparing the finished product, the company uses "the same state-of-the-art equipment found in large-scale production facilities," and when specialized eyewear is required, it sends the prescription and other measurements to a special off-site production facility, still aiming to have the eyewear ready within an hour or on a promised date. The company also uses an anti-reflective coating machine to apply an anti-reflective coat to the eyewear's lenses, and relies on certified lab technicians to prepare and triple-check the finished eyewear. LensCrafters' use of highly effective management systems and state-of-the-art technologies has given the company a notable competitive edge and strong profitability in a highly competitive field.

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