Question #3-Informed Decision Making (Rubric Items: 1, 3 and 4)
Identify and describe an American company of your choice that is challenged in its production operations to support its basic business needs to manufacture a high quality product, safely, within budget and on schedule. Its operations management is characterized by the following:
•High scrap rate
•Low yield
•Unsafe working conditions with numerous OSHA violations
•Frequent budget overruns due to numerous flawed and poor quality supplier subassemblies and raw materials, massive overtime wage payouts, fatigued workers, re-run operations to compensate for the high scrap rate.
•Missed schedules
•Irate customers
•Narrow profit margins
•Threatened worker job actions due to working conditions and enforced oppressive policies
•Low worker morale and high employment turnover
The company must reengineer itself to a certain degree to take care of is quality, safety, cost and schedule challenges. As a strategic operations analyst, what action plan would you recommend to the senior leadership of the organization to take it from its current conditions to bring it closer to its ideal operating conditions (to become a company known for its high quality products, value to the customer, safe work operations, reliable schedules and lean manufacturing)? Please make sure your recommendations address each of the shortfalls of the organization; support your analysis and recommended solutions with rich research from industry and solid scientific research sources.
GRADING RUBRIC:
1. Provides a comprehensive evaluation of key issues and trends caused by economic globalization. Analyzes the business and financial impacts and recommends feasible and strategic solutions that leverage the trends to meet sustained business success.
2. Analyzes and prioritizes needs of diverse stakeholders from a personal, social and corporate perspective. Evaluates business situations to recommend feasible, ethical, and legal actions.
3. Synthesizes and clearly expresses the complexities in a given business problem in a clear, concise, and logical manner. Reflection, application, and analysis of business concepts are presented in a succinct, systematic, and thorough manner well supported by sound evidence and current research
4. Comprehensive and extensive review of the literature from a variety of appropriate sources, extracting the important information and applying it in an in-depth response to the business problem. Comprehensively analyzes a business problem by gathering and assessing relevant information, diagnosing underlying causes, considering and evaluating possible alternatives, and determining and defending an appropriate, well-reasoned solution or course of action. Decisions show a high level of cultural sensitivity.