This paper establishes some ways through which the Portland Plant can raise their productivity levels as well as increasing profitability, which is set to be achieved through various methods. These methods are going to be founded by performance objectives and eventually the paper will offer recommendations towards achieving that desired performance. It is evident from the information provided regarding the Portland Plant that there a myriad of issues that the Plant is struggling with. The Plant’s main customers, Hewlett Packard as indicated had experienced a problem with the product that they were offered from the Plant. It is to be read along those lines that because there had been no customer complaints from other customers that the Plant was not at all concerned with the problem and only because their largest customer had taken the issue seriously.
Borrowing from the same information, the plant made a loss of around $1 million in seemingly what would be considered as an increased production issue because even the product was not satisfactory but acceptable. In the spring of 1998 the plant was acquired by Rexam and more significantly the plant was faced with a hurdle of winning a new contract amidst their troubles (Slack & Chambers, 2007). It is an assumption that on acquiring the plant, Rexam had to profoundly assess the Portland’s Plant operations management so as to sail then safely out of this whirlwind.
Operations management is thus a key pedestal upon which the newly acquired plant needs to successfully build upon. An organization that needs to improve on its efficiency and customer service as are the needs of the plant, then they need to effectively employ operations management. Another important underlying factor that concerns operations management is that it is an all-round function, which is to mean that it is not it is not only confined to the operations function (Slack, Chambers, & Johnston, 2010). Every manager is involved in the work of managing both processes and serving customers, work that means that at least a part of their activities is concerned with operations.
With this in mind it is therefore imperative that those in management of the plant recognize that any task , issue or decision that is made from an operations viewpoint, that that is what is going to eventually determine the outcome and results that are going to be exhibited by the now Rexam Corp. Paper plant. Every potential and present customer is going to judge the plant based on the operations conducted in the plant, and borrowing from the past bad experiences that have been encountered by the plant, Rexam as the new acquiring company needs to be very keen on the plant’s operations (Brown, Walker, Seuring, Sarkis, & Klassen, 2014). The reason as to the importance of the operations of the company exists in the fact that the company deals with the production of various specialty papers which is their major selling point.
The Portland company reading form the provided information has pointed a very grim picture in the areas of it production decisions, productivity and most importantly its management which have been dismal. The challenges even proceed further to the storage and management of inventory, which stamps the need for the plant’s improvement. Understanding every problem and providing a way of solving it is very important in helping the company achieve its long term goals and objectives that will in the end see it improve the quality of materials and increase in its productivity. Therefore this analysis seeks to provide those techniques and procedures that will see the company’s survival in the long run.
The first step is in recognizing that the people that worked for the plant lacked in integrity. Borrowing from the information provided above it is viewed that so long as what was being produced was within the requirements, then everything else was considered to be fine. There was no drive for the employees to look beyond the product and according to their own words, so long as they pleased the outside customer, the internal processes were not relevant. It goes to show that the working culture itself is very poor, the employees do not value their work and clearly the work ethics are not at all pleasant for any company. There is a general lack of discipline as well as lack of motivation which goes a long way in defining the plant’s culture. The management which is meant to provide the overall direction and define the work ethic was more focused on just increasing production and sales without ever taking time to understand the internal issues as had been raised even by their customer.
The confession of one the managers underlines it all as they did accept that even at the management level there was a general lack of discipline as well as poor decision making strategies (Slack & Chambers, 2007). The work ethic and culture problem was stamped by the fact the quality department admitted to not been involved in solving quality problems but just served as an inspecting department. There was no internalization of the information provided to the management but they instead portrayed defense. To make a step towards solving this issue, Rexam needs to redefine the plant’s performance objectives that include quality, dependability and flexibility. The aim should shift from just supplying products to customers but to satisfactorily providing customers with quality products that are dependable and offer them at a reasonable price (Slack, Chambers, & Johnston, 2010). The focus of the company should now be geared towards providing error free goods that are not compromised and facilitating a faster way of providing an order after a customer has asked for a product which will increase the speed at which a customer receives their goods or services.
The other problem that the now Rexam Portland plant experiences is the fact the machinery that takes care of the production has been under constant neglect and under poor maintenance. At the cost of losing production, the management opted to run the machines continually which was a bad move and one that costed them over $100,000 (Slack & Chambers, 2007). Clearly this reveals that protocols to control the processes and production of products does not exist at all. This means that there are no laid procedures that should be followed in case of a production issue or a technical malfunction because it need to communicated and acted upon by the engineers and technical operations people. With constant shipment of subpar products to customers Rexam needs to highly consider a plant turnaround because the maintenance of its equipment assets is now a threatening reality (McLay, 2003). Without these maintenance procedure the equipment are set to fail and it is a known fact that unscheduled outages cost more than ten times compared to the scheduled ones and much higher if there is a catastrophic failure. Therefore there’s need to develop a business plan project and process outage schedule so as to have a long-term strategy and better accuracy in the process (Levitt, 2008).
Finally due to the poor management, there is need to have changes in the management structure. But considering the cost implications, then it would be preferable that they do undergo a massive training that teach them how to set realistic business expectations. Definitely there is need for an effective HR policy that sets out a code of ethics and have process and quality realignment plans in regards to the human resource.
Rexam has clearly definite measure to take to save it from slipping into the abyss of permanent closure. It is now their responsibility to provide clear objectives and measurable deliverables that need to see the plant’s operations improved as soon as possible.
References
Brown, S., Walker, H., Seuring, S., Sarkis, J., & Klassen, R. (2014). Sustainable Operations Management. Bradford: Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
Levitt, J. (2008). Lean maintenance. New York: Industrial Press.
McLay, J. (2003). Practical management for plant turnarounds. Edmonton, Alta.: JMC Consulting Ltd.
Slack, N. & Chambers, S. (2007). Operations management. Harlow, England: Prentice Hall/Financial Times.
Slack, N., Chambers, S., & Johnston, R. (2010). Operations management. Harlow, England: Financial Times Prentice Hall.
