Week 3 Learning Team D Reflection
Lynn Buthe, Tyneshia Edwards, Rebecca Mason, and Tracie Guadiana
University of Phoenix
Operations Management
OPS/571
Dr. Michael Marticek
May 12, 2014
Week 3 Learning Team D Reflection
Chase strategy affects industries in different ways. A brief summary on what chase strategy is along with examples of companies that may use this type of strategy, and some challenges associated with it are included in the discussion.
Chase Strategy
“Chase strategy implies matching demand and capacity period by period. This could result in a considerable amount of hiring, firing or laying off of employees; insecure and unhappy employees; increased inventory carrying costs; problems with labor unions; and erratic utilization of plant and equipment” ("Advameg, Inc.," 2014). The chase strategy is often used when the demand varies and allows companies to meet their production or service demands and capacity from one period to the next. The chase strategy seems to work best when the demand is unstable and there is no inventory; thus making the service industry a suitable candidate for the use of this strategy.
Companies
The focus of the chase strategy is meeting forecasted demand. The workforce is manipulated to achieve this. Two industries that benefit best from the chase strategy are the hotel and restaurant industries.
Golden resort is a 145 acre oceanfront resort. They often run into a demand issue with their tennis courts during the summer months of June-August when the resort rooms are 98-100 percent occupied. The problem they run into is that the court time requested usually exceeds their capacity. In light of this issue management decided to implement the chase strategy. They have a base full-time tennis staff of two that work full-time year round and an additional two part-time employees that can cover 467 hours of capacity for the month during their non-peak season. During peak season staffing then changes...