Managing Activities 1 – Answers to Questions
Module 1: Managing Change
My organisation (MCP) in the last 18 months has been going through a process of constant change. In the past the business has been allowed to stagnate which has meant that the company is a long way behind the current management methods. There have been attempts to change working practices but these have been largely unsuccessful.
The organisation has changed in the last 18 months with a new team structure being implemented. This has had many problems due people’s unwillingness to accept change and some problems in how to implement the change. Although the team structure is not fully operational at the moment, there have been significant advances resulting in improvements in quality, efficiency and staff relationships. The staff are now supporting the change and can see the benefits that this new team structure is bringing to them. This team structure is also enabling the management to implement more of the modern management techniques that have been lacking in the past.
Many lessons have been learnt by the management in my company as to why change processes in the past have failed. It is through managing this change in an organised and open way that the change has the best chance of being accepted. There are five stages to the change process. These are:
Each of these stages must be done in order to enable to change to be successful. Often in my organisation steps i) and ii) are not performed, step iii) is not done adequately, step iv) is only partially done and very little of step v) is performed. In the implementation of the team structure at MCP, an attempt was made to use all these steps. Although not all the steps were followed exactly the change has been somewhat successful.
There is much resistance to change within my organisation. The main reasons for this resistance is scepticism and fear. The scepticism is caused by past failures of the system and the attitude that "We’ve seen it all before". This is the major hurdle that has to be overcome. Fear also has a part to play in that the staff are worried about their job security and that this change may mean an increased workload on them. I believe that the best way to overcome this is by getting ‘buy-in’ throughout the change process. This means being open with the staff about the changes that are in hand and asking their opinions, where practicable, at each stage of the process. In this way both the decisions made and the impression that the staff have of the change will be better.
It is important when choosing a style of leadership to implement one that the manager is comfortable with. If the style is not appropriate to a manager it will be easy for the staff to adopt, as the manager will act out of character. My style of leadership is to try and manager by getting buy-in throughout the process. To utilise the skills and ideas of my staff enable the process to work most efficiently. This improves both morale and the sense of belonging. It has been necessary for the team managers’ to be as open as possible with their staff in order for the implementation of the new structure to go to plan.
There are a number of ways that communication has been effectively used in order for staff to recognise and understand the change that is taking place. I think that the most effective method is by being open, so as to reduce the ambiguity and minimise the uncertainty associated with the change. It is also necessary that communications be made to the right people, at the right time, in the right way. So often in the past this has failed with ‘the jungle drums’ being the recognised way of obtaining information. This means that staff fail to get the full story and their buy-in is difficult to gain. Another method is to use meetings, workshops, project teams and briefings to involve the staff in the process. All of these have been used within MCP during the current changes with a largely positive response.
Module 2: Managing Operations
6a) What type of production process are you involved in?
6b) How do you plan the key tasks in the production process?
In our business the emphasis is on product rather than service. There is little contact between our customers and us. However, it is essential that our product be of exemplary quality and delivered reliably on time as we are in competition with other newspaper production facilities that are trying to produce better than us. It is not acceptable for us to produce newspapers that are consistently produced on schedule, but are illegible to our readers and of insufficient quality for our advertisers. Although we do have a quality manager on-site, until recently quality was not seen as being important in comparison to producing the copy on time. In the last six months, much more emphasis has been placed on quality. Not only has the quality improved, but as a result of using more consistent systems, the reliability and hence production consistency has improved.
Capacity planning is achieved at MCP by assessing the type of product to be produced, the need for planned maintenance and the availability of staff. Through experience, it is known how many staff will be needed to produce a certain job, how long it will take to produce a specific amount of product and how this will impact on the maintenance schedule. Increasing production requires all departments to be consulted so that they can make arrangement to accommodate this increased capacity or highlight areas where they think there may be problems with this increased capacity.
The way that production scheduling occurs at MCP is by the use of specialised Gantt chart. This is a rolling week-on-week schedule of line utilisation. Included on this chart are the maintenance jobs, the production jobs and any other operations that require lines to be off production. The Gantt chart is stored on computer and emailed to all staff on a weekly basis. The chart is easily amended and often changes are made during the week to accommodate changes in production or maintenance requirements.
Currently our control of quality standards is limited with little interest being actually shown in analysing the quality of the finished product. A quality group has been set up but has only met once in the last six months. The main problem arises because the site quality is measured using indicators designed at the group level. These indicators are easily ‘fiddled’ so that the results appear better than they actually are. It is a view that these indicators are not useful but there seems to be an unwillingness to lobby for change or to try and produce more indicative measures ourselves. I hope that the company will make efforts to adopt a recognised quality standard in the future, as I believe that is the only way that the company can remain competitive.
Managing Activities 2 – Answers to Questions
Module 1: The Business Environment
The organisational culture in MCP is difficult to describe for a number of reasons. The primary reason is that the organisation is going through many changes at the moment. The closest model that MCP follows is the bureaucratic system. The various structural layers are well defined, but in the past it wasn’t felt necessary to give anyone job descriptions. This has caused problems with accountabilities and with new recruits to positions. It was just assumed that an employee would know what was expected from them.
The culture is best described as a role culture, where everybody is focussed on the task in hand and very little review or forward planning takes place. Each day appears to be taken in isolation. This causes many problems when changes are implemented. There is a lot of scepticism when new ideas are put forward as people are not prepared to look ahead and don’t see the larger picture.
The organisational structure is hierarchical with each layer being distinct. An organogram covering nearly every employee would be easy to draw. Unfortunately the company is not developed enough to have any clear strategy. There is a mission statement, but this is not taken seriously by either the staff or the majority of management.
It is planned to start appraisals and group briefings over the next 18 months so that strategies can be formulated and implemented and objectives set.
Unlike many other industries, I believe that the newspaper industry has been only slightly affected by social and environmental factors over the past 20 years. In my industry factors like "a job for life" and high trade-unionism still exist where they have ceased in other industries. One major factor that has affected all industries is the drive for cost savings. It has always been assumed in the past that as long as the job was done, then the plant was successful. This is no longer the case with there being substantial competition to win and renew contracts. This has meant that there is a lot of resentment of management by the current staff. A large proportion have been with the company at least 20 years and they don’t understand why costs have to be kept as low as possible. These cost savings have also resulted in decreases in manning levels and consequently an increase in workload.
Module 2: Quality Management
The application of Total Quality Management (TQM) to Mirror Colour Print would make a big difference to the performance of the company. At the moment there are quality standards but they are not well communicated or designed. Many of the quality indicators that the site is measured by are not indicative of the performance of the plant. They are also open to interpretation and manipulation. We get a number of complaints about quality and if we employed TQM, I am sure that these complaints would reduce. I think that if the was buy-in throughout the organisation improved quality would result and maybe eventually go for a quality standard such as ISO 9000. I believe that this would not be too hard to achieve as long as there was a focus on quality. This requires a quality group to be set up lead by an influential manager who could first convince the management of the benefits and in turn convince the shop floor.
Quality standards definitely have a place in MCP. Standards enable a set level of performance to be defined so that everyone is clear as to what is expected of them. Standards like objectives need to be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Appropriate, Relevant, Time-Related). The current standards at MCP do not meet many of these SMART criteria. A quality standard would not only improve our performance, but it would demonstrate to potential customers that we are dedicated to delivering a quality product. It is a method of distinguishing ourselves from the competition.
There is an ISO standard specifically for the production environment: ISO 9002. The effect of achieving the standard at MCP would be to meet the customer requirements better, improve efficiency, reduce waste and ensure that the company keeps up with the market competition. I am researching the feasibility of introducing ISO 9002 in MCP as my work-based project.
Module 3: Managing Health & Safety
Legal liability is the extent to which anyone may be answerable for his or her acts or omissions. Both companies and individuals are liable for their actions. At work all people are subject to the Health & Safety at Work Act. The are the regulations that must be adhered to by both employers and employees. Contravention of these rules may result legal action to either party.
Civil breaches carry different penalties to criminal breaches. Criminal law is quite clear cut, in that the usual penalties are either fines or a term of imprisonment. Civil law has a few more remedies. These are financial compensation (usually known as damages, paid to the person affected detrimentally by the action), reparation orders (return the conditions back to their state before the breach), performance orders (to order performance improvements), or an injunction (stopping an individual or company from performing a certain operation).
The employer has three duties that must be adhered to under the Health & Safety at Work Act. These are:
Employees have two duties:
One further regulation applies to all: It is forbidden to intentionally interfere with or misuse anything that has been provided at work in the interests of health and safety.
If a claim of negligence is made against the company, the best defence it to look first at the various factors that need to be proved in order for a case of negligence to be successful. These factors are:
In order to defend the case these factors need to be taken into account. There are other defences or mitigating circumstances which include: the claim not being made within three years of it happening, the employer suing the defective equipment supplier or contributory negligence, which means that the employee contributed to their injury