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Background: Concepts and Techniques of Service Management at Abasco, Inc.
Although Abasco, Inc. has been developing at a rather fast pace in the manufacturing department, it has been showing comparatively low performance rates since recently. Therefore, a reconsideration of some of its production process elements might be reasonable. The introduction of a new set of quality principles with the subsequent change of the staffs behavioral patterns and the transfer to a lean management approach is likely to be a welcome change of pace.
Problem Identification: Resources Management Approach
A recent overview of the companys operations has shown that Abasco, Inc. may suffer significant drops in revenue to an improper strategy of distributing its resources among the firms departments. The given issue concerns not only the process of allocating financial resources among the firms departments but also the attitude towards the use of resources in general. The lack of thought in the strategy utilized presently may trigger dire results for the entrepreneurship, down to the point where it may face the threat of a collapse.
Manufacturing Process: Reducing Waste
As an overview of the current approach adopted by the entrepreneurship managers has shown, Abasco, Inc. leaders tend to overlook the fact that the current use of resources is not as rational as it should being a highly competitive environment of the global economy. Although it would be wrong to shoehorn innovative strategies without considering the unique environment of the company first, it is still evident that criticism should be directed at the manufacturing issue first.
Roles and Responsibilities: Managing Employees
The approaches toward managing the employees and steering their efforts in the right direction is another issue that Abasco, Inc, may need to consider when designing a new approach toward the manufacturing process. Particularly, the reconsideration of the strategy, in accordance with which the staff members are assigned with their roles and responsibilities, will have to be viewed as a necessary step to make. At present, some of the staff members seem to have issues with carrying out their responsibilities properly due to the lack of skills and experience.
Quality Management: Incorporating the TQM Approach
A closer look at the issues that Abasco, Inc. has been facing over the past few years will show that the entrepreneurship is in a desperate need for a coherent quality management strategy. The shift toward a more reasonable use of resources may cause the staff members to sacrifice quality to meet the new standards concerning the use of the existing resources. For instance, facing the need to reduce the amount of waste produced and at the same time deliver the same results within the same amount of time, the employees may want to overlook some of the faults in the goods produced so that the requirements set by the managers could be met (Oakland, 2014).
Therefore, it will be imperative to consider a quality management approach that will drive the threat of faulty production to a minimum. The TQM concept should be considered as the current most efficient tool in facilitating consistent quality.
Problem Analysis and Possible Solutions: What Can Be Done
As the overview carried out above has shown, Abasco, Inc. needs to update its current quality standards and the approach toward the usage of resources so that it could deliver the performance of the required quality at the demanded rate. The adoption of the TQM program mentioned above should be viewed as the primary step toward increasing the efficacy of the organization and its profit margins.
As a the theoretical premises for the above framework suggest that the performance of an organization should be improved with the help of better planning and a more elaborate manner of managing the performance process (Schroeder, Goldstein, & Rungtusanatham, 2014). The coordination of the performance process needs to be carried out through the analysis of both internal and external factors. Thus, the managers at Abasco, Inc. will gain a better perspective of the factors that affect the quality of the staffs performance and be able to isolate the ones that trigger a drop in the product quality rates.
Therefore, it is strongly advised that the concept of lean manufacturing should be introduced to the companys framework of operations. By definition, the philosophy of lean manufacturing implies that the resources available should be used sparingly (Franchetti, 2014). On the one hand, the concept of lean manufacturing can be viewed as a part and parcel of improving the relationships with the target customers:
The Association of Manufacturing Excellence (AME) defines Lean manufacturing as a customer-based production practice that focuses on the creation of value for the end customer and considers the expenditure of resources for anything other than the customer value to be wasteful, and thus a target for elimination. (Franchetti, 2014, p. 3)
On the other hand, the very concept of lean manufacturing implies that the process of using the available resources for the production process should be arranged in a more adequate manner that involves more thought and better planning. In other words, the concept of lean manufacturing is likely to help reduce the amount of waste created and the number of defective items made by the staff. Seeing that the strategy detailed above is aimed primarily at reducing the amount of waste produced, it should be viewed as the primary tool to be adopted in the nearest future.
Indeed, the lack of understanding among the employees about the current manufacturing approach has become egregiously noticeable. The fact that the people working for the company have very little concept of what roles they perform and what responsibilities they have means that there is a strong need to reconsider the current concept of resources allocation, including the human resources, the financial ones, the manufacturing ones, etc.
Seeing that the inconsistency in the resources management approach is the primary problem of the organization, the promotion of sustainable environment in the target area can be recommended. The concept of sustainable resources use is one of the philosophies that allow steering the efforts made by the participants in the right direction. Therefore, the action plan to adopt will require that the concept of lean manufacturing should be incorporated into the firms operational design. According to the existing definition, the subject matter allows for an impressive drop in the amount of waste produced by a company (García-Alcaraz, Maldonado-Macías, & Cortes-Robles, 2014).
Therefore, it can be assumed that the design of a lean manufacturing strategy is the first step toward building a better environment, in which the employees will be able to deliver improved results.
The steps suggested above, however, are obviously not enough to make sure that Abasco, Inc. should remain competitive in the context of the global economy. In addition to the principle of lean manufacturing strategy, the reconsideration of the roles and responsibilities that the staff members are assigned with needs to be carried out. As soon as the employees receive new and more detailed instructions concerning the roles that they will have to play in the firms progress, the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) needs to be woven into the texture of the firms philosophy and corporate ethics. According to the existing definition, the subject matter allows for a redesign of the staffs concept of their professional duties and the further promotion of a responsible approach toward managing the manufacturing process.
The incorporation of the basic CSR principles should be followed by the application of the TQM strategy to the designated environment. It is desirable that the concept under analysis should be coupled with the Just-in-Time philosophy. As Lai (2014) explains, JIT implies that the primary process inefficiencies should be identified and the preventive measures against the possible project failures should be located. In other words, the resources are supplied exactly at the point when they are required so that the goods could be produced at the exact time that they are expected to (McKeller, 2014).
The JIT philosophy combined with the CSR principles will allow for a conscious transfer from one corporate philosophy to another. As a result, it is expected that the situations, in which defects are produced, will be reduced to the minimum number possible, whereas the manufacturing process itself will be carried out at the maximum speed due to the application of the JIT principle. The TQM framework, in its turn, will allow adhering to the new quality principles in a more successful manner.
Recommendations to Consider: The Further Course of Actions
Seeing that Abasco, Inc. has a long way to go before it can accomplish every goal set above, it will be necessary to introduce the staff members to a new corporate philosophy that will later on define the course of the manufacturing process. In other words, it will be crucial to explain the significance of CSR to the employees.
The redesign of the quality principles and the promotion of a set of quality standards that the staff members will have to comply within the process of product manufacturing will have to be carried out then. It is essential that the new quality standards should reflect the philosophy of the entrepreneurship and be in chord with the capacities of the firm. Otherwise, Abasco, Inc. may fail to meet the new criteria and, therefore, face a rapid drop in customer satisfaction rates. Afterward, the manufacturing process can be altered in accordance with the newly designed framework for the staff to work in. Particularly, the incorporation of the basic principles of JIT strategy should be viewed as a necessity.
It is important that the changes should be introduced to the entrepreneurship in the manner described above. If an entirely new approach and a completely new philosophy are represented to the staff members at once, they are bound to have difficulties adjusting to a set of rather rigid requirements. The approach detailed above, in its turn, presupposes a gradual transfer from one framework of manufacturing to another, therefore, helping drive the threat of a failure to adjust to zero.
Reference List
Franchetti, M. J. (2014). Lean Six Sigma for engineers and managers: With applied case studies. New York, NY: CRC Press.
García-Alcaraz, J. A., Maldonado-Macías, L. L., & Cortes-Robles, G. (2014). Lean manufacturing in the developing world: Methodology, case studies and trends from Latin America. New York, NY: Springer.
Lai, K. H. (2014). Just-in-time logistics. Burlington, VT: Gower Publishing, Ltd.
McKeller, J. M. (2014). Supply chain management demystified. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Oakland, J. S. (2014). Total quality management and operational excellence: Text with cases. New York, NY: Routledge.
Schroeder, R., Goldstein, M. J., & Rungtusanatham, S. (2014). Managing quality. In Operations management in the supply chain (pp. 162-188) (6th ed.). New York, NY: Richard D. Irwin, Inc.
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