One of the major strategy decisions that must be made by any organization is where to locate its producing and storage facilities. For manufacturers, the problem is broadly categorized into factory location and warehouse location; within this categorization, we may be interested in locating the firm’s first factory or warehouse or locating a new factory or warehouse relative to the locations of existing facilities. The general objective in choosing a location is to select that site or combination of sites that minimizes two classes or costs — regional and distribution or sites that minimizes two classes or costs — regional and distribution costs. Regional costs are those associated with a given locate and include land, construction, manpower, and state and local expenses and regulations. Distribution costs are those directly related to the shipping of supplies and products to customers and other branches of the distribution network. Since the location of Continue reading
Operations Management
Meaning of Job Design, Job Enlargement and Job Enrichment
The nature of work and its organization has interested managers, economists and social scientists for as long as people have been employed by others to engage in productive activity. Managers have largely been interested in maximizing output from available resources. Job design can be define as the process of putting together various elements to form a job, bearing in mind organizational and individual worker requirements, as well as considerations of health, safety, and ergonomics. The scientific management approach of Frederick Winslow Taylor viewed job design as purely mechanistic, but the later human relations movement rediscovered the importance of workers’ relationship to their work and stressed the importance of job satisfaction. Trends in Job Design Quality control as part of the worker’s job Cross-training workers to perform multi -skilled jobs Employee involvement and team approaches to designing and organizing work Extensive use of temporary workers Organizational commitment to providing meaningful and Continue reading
Total Quality Management (TQM) – History, Concepts, and Principles
Quality Control processes in business are aimed at ensuring a good or service is of the standard of quality that the manufacturer or supplier has determined. Under the concept of Total Quality Management (TQM), quality control extends to every aspect of the way a business operates. In the case of a manufactured good it means that during design, production, and servicing the quality of work and materials must be up to the standard laid down. The emphasis put on quality control in many countries in recent years was to a large extent a response to the competitive edge Japanese businesses had achieved by paying attention to quality. However, it was an American management consultant, W. Edwards Deming, who brought the message to the Japanese that “the consumer is the most important part of the production line”, and who taught them methods that would help them control quality. He was Continue reading
Negative Aspects of Material Handling Systems
It is bad engineering and worse management practice to look only at benefits and to ignore limitations. Handling systems, at times, have consequences that may be distinctly negative. These too, should be evaluated before the changes are adopted. Some such possible disadvantages are 1) Additional capital investment: It must be verified that the cost of the handling system is more attractively invested in the system under consideration than in any other part of the business. It should be assured that the gains expected are not based upon a more mechanized system v/s present practice, but rather the proposed new system v/s the best version of present practice. 2) Loss of flexibility Proposed system must be flexible enough to be economically and quickly adapted to the likely range of changes in the product or production techniques. If not, change over cost and time loss must be included in the evaluation, or Continue reading
Introduction to Production Management
Meaning Of Production Management A few definitions of production management are being reproduced here under to understand the meaning of the term clearly: “Production management is the process of effectively planning and regulating the operations of that part of an enterprise which is responsible for actual transformation of materials into finished products”. Elwood S. Buffa has defined the term in a broader sense as: “Production management deals with decision making related to production process so that the resulting goods or services are produced according to specifications, in amounts and by the schedules demanded and at a minimum cost”. Production management, thus, is assigned with the following tasks. Specifying and accumulating the input resources, i.e., management, men, information, materials, machine and capital. Designing and installing the assembling or conversion process to transform the inputs into output, and Coordinating and operating the production process so that the desired goods and services may Continue reading
Difference Between Cost Control and Cost Reduction
A cost reduction program is a type of method which is to improve profitability of the organization or by expected to get a good result that flow to the bottom line of the financial statement and exempted from any serious damage to the organization itself. As this program is much more about reducing cost or reducing expenses of the organization, so a good cost reduction program is all about how to control the damage of an organization. Furthermore, a cost reduction program is said can be improved the profitability of an organization because by reducing expenses, profits are increased without making others changes. On the other hand, if the cost reduction program can matched with a sales improvement program and perhaps, finally it will get the double profit. A cost reduction program must be a complete plan that is results-oriented. A structured cost reduction program will put the company on Continue reading