Macdonald Refrigeration Limited
PART I 1. Characterize the dominant strategy used for each of Janet’s production plans, and provide a brief summary of the strengths and weaknesses of each.
PRODUCTION PLAN 1: LEVEL STRATEGY
Janet's first plan proposes using a stable workforce and a constant output rate. Inventories would increase during low demand periods and decrease during high demand periods.
Strengths:
* Workers are protected against forecast error * Stable work hours and increased job security lead to happier employees * Employees would not have to work as many overtime hours to fill orders because there would be substantial inventory during heavy demand months * Tasks become easier and workers more
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Strengths: * Inventory is closely managed and kept low * Inventory carrying cost is avoided * Least expensive of the three strategies due to the lack of excess inventory and employee overtime * Adjusting the workforce in response to changing demand eliminates some of the limitations of Production Plan 2 * No burnout from employees working high levels of overtime
Weaknesses: * Employee morale and union relations will suffer as a result of potential layoffs * It is risky to rely on a potential pool of “easily trained applicants” to draw on as orders increase because those applicants might not be readily available * Employees might decrease rate of production as demand decreases to create an impression of need and to preserve jobs 2. Each of Janet’s approaches offers advantages and disadvantages. If cost is the principal criterion, all three plans can be improved. For example, rather than paying overtime wages to permanent employees during the busiest months, Janet could hire “temporary” workers (who will work for at most a few months but earn regular wages and
operating costs. This could most effectively be accomplished in two ways. First, through a reduction in flying
The key to the success of any business is the strength of its staff or work force. However, to remain economical, a company's work force must be able to increase efficiency, lower staffing costs, reduce turnover and provide long term growth for the company. In order to achieve all of these goals, a company must have and implement a successful work force planning strategy. This can be difficult as many companies fail to see where there staffing short-comings lie, and therefore can not determine the best strategy for hiring, outsourcing and shifting staff positions. Since each company's staffing needs are different, a successful staffing strategy must have a broad enough outline to be applicable to any company while also being specific enough to accurately address that company's staffing needs. In 2001, Governor David Paterson, the New York State Department of Civil Service and the New York State Governor's Office of Employee Relations published a guide for work force planning for their state agencies titled Our Work Force Matters. This guide provides eight steps for the planning processes along with several strategies and
productivity is high with reduced labour cost as a result of less man hours. But most
This results in some workers losing their jobs. The majority of these workers will be those who are the least productive.
(-) They may not make as much money and it will take longer to make by lessening the pressure
As Coral reviews the master schedule and the pending orders, she can see that given the current plan, they will not process enough subassemblies to cover the upcoming orders. The master schedule is a statement of exactly what will be produced. It must simultaneously satisfy the needs of sales and marketing and be feasible in terms of operations. Developing a master schedule that is close to the aggregate plan, yet still satisfies marketing and operations, is not an easy task. The aggregate plan was developed based on a strategy that maintained acceptable inventory and workforce
3. How do you anticipate Altera’s customers will react to this new strategy? What are advantages and disadvantages for Altera’s customers?
Milligan (2015), a Payroll Business Executive, conducted research that suggested that in a year’s time, it would cost companies $400 billion in lost production. As a result, revealed three findings:
Availability projections focus on the organization’s current internal workforce. Their concern is with estimating the numbers and types of current employees that will be available in the future. More specifically, these estimates are concerned with the loss or exit of employees from the organization, the resulting distribution of employees who remain within the organization’s internal labor market and the number of accessions during the planning time frame.
1. What types of decisions must Chad Thomas make daily for his company’s operations to run effectively? Over the long run?
On the off chance that a boss has entry to a pool of promptly available work through an increment in the quantity of those utilized on zero-hours contracts, then staffing levels can be changed in accordance with better match request and pay bill expenses can be lessened.
In Chapter 4, we learned about strategic planning, job analysis and methods, what is job design means, and more. This chapter shows us how companies work with their employees, and we will use it not matter if we are working for a small or big company.There were two topics that got my attention. One of them is what companies can do when they have a shortage or surplus of workers.In the book, they talk about training programs and giving layoff. At Dunkin Donuts when they are a lot of workers manager start giving us fewer hours per week. She just gives layoff to those that don’t do their job right or have too many absences without excuses. On the other hand, there are times when the manager is hiring because it is busy in the store such as Black
Varying workforce size by hiring or layoff help companies eliminate costs. Using this method also allow businesses to use when the use of new employees is needed. An example is retail stores a business that hire people during the holiday season to help with the increase in customers. Another example of this would be when a company does not have the money nor the funds to keep worker or if workers are not performing at the full ability then the company might consider laying
The labor utilization rate is currently at 15.78%Q7 and could be improved dramatically by reassigning people to the various tasks mentioned in the examples above. Additionally, the lower cycle times would improve utilization, but a closer look at the overall process might indicate that not as many people are needed to work at any particular time. We question the need for 22 employees and feel that with a better understanding
As a XXXX for XXXX and other small XXXX style products, the increase in technology and electronic forms of XXXX products has resulted in significant decline in volumes and sales orders from the major customer. Statistical decline in the vicinity of XXXX on pagination and total order value over the period Aug 10 – Aug 11 has already provided the business case to reduce XXXX production from a 12 hour, 6 day a week operation to an 8 hour, 6 day a week cycle resulting in redundancies across all areas of the operation. The projection from the customer, and internal commercial projections have forecast that a similar decline over the next 2 – 4 years will result in further downsizing within the business, with a focus on retaining the skilled trades’ positions within the organisation due to the specialist nature of the product. The organisation currently plans the workforce around the Enterprise Agreement (EBA) in operation which has manning levels mandated for minimum requirements to run. At the present moment it is allowing continuous operation without the presence of observable shortages; however a more in depth review of the workforce has uncovered a predicted shortage which will impact the business’ ability to meet production demands in the future. Analysis has shown that the workforce is currently populated by almost a third of its workers being over 55 years of age