Fitness Plus

Fitness Plus

OM400

Hetal Shah

Fitness Plus, a full-service health and sports club, has been growing its number of members at a great rate since 2000. However with this growth has come an issue of capacity that the owners are worried about. Information regarding the utilization of their fitness and recreation activities has been able to help them deal with the current growth, however if the number of members continue to grow at a similar rate, the issue of overcrowding will need to be dealt with in a stronger manner.

Total Quality Management, a management system that achieves high levels of process performance and quality, should be used to solve the current issue as well as rectify new issues before they arise. TQM is based on three principles, the first being customer satisfaction. In this industry where there are several sports clubs and gyms to choose from, member cancellations are high but if customer satisfaction is an objective of the owners, they can hedge against it. Customer satisfaction is broken down into 5 components - conformance to specifications, value, fitness for use, support and psychological impressions. Customers are pleased when their expectations are the minimum are met so it is important to advertise the true views of the establishment.

Another critical part of the TQM is employee involvement. If the employees are not aligned to each other and the objective of the company, then they cannot work together successfully to provide their members the experience they expected and perhaps an even better experience. Although members visit the gym to exercise, they still want to feel appreciated when they get there and have the support they request. Members create a type of community within the club so it important to keep the values and expectations of the community intact. Working in teams is a great way to achieve this as it prevents any member requests/issues from slipping through the cracks.

Finally the most important aspect of the...