Management Principles & Practice Essay

A group of twelve lifelong friends put together $1,200,000 of their own currency and built a $6,000,000, 48-lane bowling alley, near Norfolk, Virginia. Two of the investors became employees of the corporation. Ned Flanders works full-time as General managing director and crowd together Ahmad, a licensed CPA, serves as Controller on a part-time basis. The beautiful, modern-day set features a multilevel spacious interior with three rows of 16 lanes on two separate levels of the building, a full-service banding, a smooth restaurant, a game room (pool, videogames, pinball),and two locker rooms. The facility sits on a spacious lot with plenty of parking and room to grow. The bowling center is located in the small blue-collar town of Wallingford. There is no direct competition within the town.The surrounding communities include a wide-ranging mix of ethnic groups, professionals, middle- to upper-middle-class private homes, and apartment and condominium complexes ranging from singles to young get married couples to senior citizen retirement units. Nearly 200,000 people live within 15 miles of Wallingford. The bowling center is incon placerate 24 hours per day and has a staff of 27 part- and full-time employees. After quartet years of operation, the partners palpate themselves frustrated with the low profit performance of the business. While sales are covering write downs, the partners are not happy with the end-of-year profit-sharing pool.The bowling center operates at 100 percent capacity on Sunday with Thursday nights from 600 P.M. until midnight. Two sets of mens leagues come and go on all(prenominal) of those nights, occupying each lane with mostly five-person teams. Bowlers from each league consistently spend money at both the bar and restaurant. In fact, the mens leagues combine to generate about 60 percent of total new sales. The bowling center operates at about 50 percent capacity on Friday and Saturday nights and on Saturday morning. The Friday and Saturday heart-to-heart bowling nights include mostly teenagers, young couples, and league members who come to practice in groups of two or three. The Saturday morning group is a kids league, ages 10 through with(predicate) 14. There are four ladies leagues that bowl on Monday and Wednesday afternoons.Business is extremely slow at the bowling center on Monday through Friday and Sunday mornings, and on the afternoons of Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. It is not uncommon to have just three or four lanes in operation during those time periods. The owners have taken a close look at the cost perspective of their business as a way to improve profitability.They concluded that while the total operating expense of $1,466,000 might appear to be high, there was in fact little room for expense cutting. At a recent meeting of the partners, James Ahmad reported on the results of his three-month-long investigation into the operating cost side of other bowling alleys and dis covered that the Wallingford Bowling Center was very much in keeping with their industry. James went on to report that bowling alleys were considered to be heavy fixed cost operations and that the key to supremacy and profitability lies in maximizing capacity and sales dollars. QUESTIONS1. Apply the decision-making process described in the chapter to this case. What is the study problem facing Wallingford? List five specific alternative solutions that could be implemented to solve that major problem. 2. As general manager of this bon ton, how could you utilize and manage the group decision-making process and technique to improve company profits? Which employees would you include in the group?