CASE STUDY ON MINIT-LUBE, INC.

1.

What constitutes the mission of Minit-Lube?

To provide fast and economical preventive maintenance and interior auto cleaning,
primarily to vehicles owned by individuals (as opposed to business), in the U.S.

2. How does the Minit-Lube operations strategy provide competitive advantage?

Minit-Lubes approach to the 10 key issues addressed by Operations Management
(c.f. the introductory slide on OM) includes:
Product Design:
Adoption of a specializing strategy that focuses on the service task of
lubricating automobiles, which subsequently allows the development of
more focused and efficient operations.
Quality Strategy:
Because of limited task variety, high repetition, good training, and good
manuals, quality should be relatively easy to define and maintain.
Process Strategy:
Minit-Lube processes are streamlined to the support the provided services,
allowing the employees and the capital investment to focus on doing this
mission well and efficiently, rather than trying to be a general purpose
garage or gas station.
Location Strategy:
Facilities are usually located near residential areas.
Layout Strategy:
The three bays are designed specifically for lubrication and vacuuming tasks
to minimize wasted movement on the part of the employees and to
contribute to the speedier service. Also, the bay replication introduces some
redundancy that enhances the service availability and responsiveness, since
it is unlikely that all of three bays will experience an outage or long delay at
the same time.
Supply Chain Strategy:
The company specialization allows it to control the complexity of its raw
material inventory, and enables it to seek economies of scale by purchasing
in large quantities and developing strategic partnerships with its suppliers.
Human Resources Strategy:
Human resources strategy focuses on hiring a few employees with limited
skills and training them in a limited number of tasks during the performance
of which they can be closely supervised.
Inventory:
Inventory investment should be relatively low, and they should expect a high
turnover.

ISYE 3104 Summer 2006

Homework 1 Solution

Scheduling:
Scheduling is quite straightforward with similar times for most cars. Once
volume and fluctuation in volume are determined, scheduling should be very
directassisting both staffing and customer relations.
Maintenance:
There is relative little equipment to be maintained, therefore little preventive
maintenance required. With three bays and three systems, there is backup
available in the case of failure.
3.

Is it likely that Minit-Lube has increased productivity over its more traditional
competitors? Why? How would we measure productivity in this industry?
Yes. Specialization of personnel and facilities should make Minit-Lube more efficient.
Jobs/tasks accomplished per man-hour would be a good measure of productivity.