1. a. Shareholders and Stakeholders:
Any organization, individual or company that has acquired legally, share(s) of stock in a joint-stock company is the shareholder of that Company. The shareholders collectively own the Company by owning the stock shares and thus possess the right to decide on matters that affect the Company and eventually the shareholders in the end, through voting rights. The attributes of a shareholder are their concern with the Company’s bottom line, the primary influence on the company’s strategy, the foremost objective of increasing the Company’s value of stock
A stakeholder can be defined as anyone who is directly or indirectly influenced by the Company’s policies, objectives, and actions. This may comprise of both the internal stakeholders, including managers and employees, and external stakeholders, including suppliers, customers, adjacent communities, shareholders, creditors, and the Government.
- The triple bottom line
The Triple bottom line is an accounting framework that merges three dimensions of performance: social, environmental and financial. The difference between traditional reporting frameworks and this system is that it also includes ecological and social measures that may though have appropriate measurement problems. These TBL dimensions are also referred to as the three Ps: People, Planet and Profits.
There are various definitions associated with TBL. The most accepted belief is that which says, The Triple Bottom Line framework "captures the essence of sustainability by measuring the impact of an organization's activities on the world including both its profitability and shareholder values and its social, human and environmental capital”. The actual trick though is not in defining TBL but in measuring it.
- Order Qualifiers and Order Winners
Order winners can be defined as the competitive attributes that compel a firm's customers to choose that firm's goods and services compared to those of its competitors. Actually, order winners may be referred to as a competitive advantage or core competency of the firm. Order winners are the ones who usually focus on one rarely or more than two of the various strategic initiatives: price/cost, quality, delivery speed, delivery reliability, product design, flexibility, after-market service, and image.
On the other hand, order qualifiers can be defined as the competitive attributes that a firm must possess and display in order to stand as a viable competitor in the existing marketplace.
- Competitive Dimensions
The competitive dimensions that are recognized by firms regionally and globally are:
-Cost or Price
-Quality
- Delivery Speed
- Delivery Reliability
- Coping with Changes in Demand
- Elasticity and Novel Product Introduction velocity
- Product-related Criteria
2. a. Core Competency
Speaking broadly, core competency is a combination of collective knowledge and technical capacities that give an advantage to businesses to be aggressive in the marketplace. Theoretically speaking, a core competency is the ability, which allows a company to enlarge into fresh end possible markets and provides a significant advantage to customers. It should also be a challenge to the competitors to replicate the advantage obtained.
Core Competency allows firms in establishing a footprint, where core competency, usually, gives the Company the best chance to flourish its continued growth and survival. These factors are what differentiate the company from competitors.
b. Quality Function Deployment, House of quality, Value analysis/ Value Engineering
QFD is a system, which involves two dimensions or functions: 1. Understanding the consumer wants and 2. Transforming those wants into products and services.
House of Quality is a quality analysis tool, which involved processes to identify customer, and producer wants and matching them with the specifications of product and service attributes that we can offer.
Value analysis/ Value Engineering is an important concept that explains how value can be created out of a good or service that maximizes the return to all the involved stakeholders.
c. Design for manufacturing and assembly (DFMA) and how it works
DFMA system is an approach that advocates the efficient use of resources. The DFMA software tools use a question, answer approach, and allow the achievement of cost reduction and quality improvement in a short span of time. There are lower costs involved, and the customer gets the desired product at that lower cost. DFMA provides a creative way to work and find new avenues to improve efficiency and profit margins. It works through product simplification; software products and product costing.
3. a. Project Layout
Project layout is a system where the product remains fixed in the location due to its weight, bulkiness and other reasons and all the activities are performed by bringing the resources to the place where the product has been set up.
b. Work center layout
All tasks associated with a particular process are performed in one section in this layout. This type of layout promotes specialization.
c. Manufacturing cell layout
This is also known as cellular manufacturing. This layout is an attempt to decrease the complexity of process layouts. It categorizes manufacturing resource up into small clusters. These clusters can be easily used to act upon different products or product groups in the manufacturing process.
d. Assembly line layout
Assembly line layout is also called the Product layout. These layouts arrange activities in a line based on the sequence of operations that is to be performed to assemble definite products or services. Each product exhibits its own line, and these are suitable for mass production or repetitive operations and in situations when demand is stable, and volume is high. The advantage of this layout is its efficiency and utility of ease. The possible disadvantage may be the inflexibility.
- Continuous process layout
This layout consists of a streamlined process that involves ongoing production of end goods and services. More informally, this process keeps on going on, and the layout is so designed that it supports this objective.
f. Splitting tasks
The operation consists of a number of tasks. The operation of the tasks can be simplified by using splitting task. Splitting tasks refers to breaking down a task into a number of them so that it is easier to focus on each small task with much attention. It helps build a better system as each task is completed with utmost care.
g. Flexible and U-shaped Line Layouts
In order to compensate for the different work specifications of assembling a number of models, it is mandatory to establish a flexible workforce and to arrange the line with an aim to facilitate mutual assistance between workers. Because the models produced in a line differ, mixed-model scheduling involves an extra decision--the order, or sequence, of models to be run through the line. This explains the U-shaped line layouts.
h. Mixed model line balancing
Mixed-model assembly is a system that is practices when more than one model of the same general product is intermixed on a single assembly line. The measure of work that is required to collect units can vary from model to model that can create an uneven flow of work along the line. Since, the line balancing and sequencing procedures encompass a wide variety of factors; they are applicable to varieties of assembly lines.
4. a. Single and multi-stage process
Single stage systems are the ones that come in many designs, each designed to function with varying modes of procedure and differences in these operation and design. These systems are less complex than many two-stage systems and less expensive to construct and operate.
There are certain limitations of a single stage system that are the facts that conditions within the reactor is not going to suffice for the various tropic groups of products or materials used.
A multi stage system normally uses two process stages. Each process serves a different objective, and the output represents a different state. Since it is two-stage model, we assume that some additional processing in terms of the resources or technique is to be used.
b. Buffering, Blocking and Starving
Buffering is a process in which a storage area is established between stages where the output of the stage is placed prior to being utilized in the subsequent stages.
Blocking is the situation where the running activities are stopped because there is no adequate place or space to store the items just completed. An example of this could be a situation in which an employee will hold on to units produced, not able to continue working on the next unit when there is no place to store the units.
Starving is the situation resulting when activities in a stage are stopped due to the lack of work. An example of this could be a situation in which no work is coming to an employee while he is waiting for work at the workstation; the employee will remain idle until next unit of work arrives.
c. Make to stock versus make to order and what is the hybrid
MTO (Make To Order) is the system which follows the notion that only after the quantity is ordered and making only the amount of quantity offered. In such a 'lead time' business, there is no place for any residual stock, although there may be overruns, or change in the minds of customers.
On the other hand, Make To Stock (MTS) is apparently the system which follows the notion that before the order arrives, we have enough stock, and we supply from that stock.
However, in the current times, a combination of both is used, rather than using both these systems individually, called a hybrid.
- Little’s law
Little's Law states that, “Under steady state conditions, the average number of items in a queuing system equals the average rate at which items arrive multiplied by the average time that an item spends in the system.”
If we assume, L =average number of items in the queuing system,
W = average waiting time in the system for an item, and
A =average number of items arriving per unit time,
Little’s Law says that, L=AW
In the equation, however, there is no mention of the number of servers that we require, whether each individual server is awaiting its own queue or all servers are fed by a single queue, the service time distribution data, inter-arrival distributions and the order of item services.
5. a. TQM
Total Quality Management is a system that involves the continuous process of “reducing or eliminating errors in manufacturing, streamlining supply chain management, improving the customer experience and ensuring that employees are up-to-speed with their training”. TQM is an overall approach that has the aim of bringing together all the parties involved in the production process as responsible and accountable parties for the maintenance of overall quality of the product or service.
William Deming developed the concept of Total quality management (TQM). The objective of TQM is to ensure the internal guidelines and process standards to reduce error, whereas the objective of Six Sigma is to reduce defects.
b. Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award
Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award is an award established in 1987 by the U.S. Congress. The aim of this award is raising awareness of quality management and recognizing U.S. companies that have succeeded in the implementation of successful quality management systems. The award has been named after the late Secretary of Commerce Malcolm Baldrige, a supporter of quality management. The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) is presented on an annual basis by the President of the United States to organizations that have lived on the standards of quality and performance excellence. Three awards are given annually in each of six categories: Manufacturing. Service Company, Small business, Education, Healthcare, Nonprofit.
c. The Four Costs of Quality
The cost of quality is classified into following four categories:
External Failure Cost: These are the costs related with defects discovered after the customer receives the product or service. The examples of such costs may be processing customer complaints, warranty claims, product recalls.
Internal Failure Cost: These are the costs related to defects found before the customer has in hand the receipt of the product or service. The examples of such costs may be rework, re-inspection, re-testing, material review, material downgrades.
Inspection (appraisal) Cost: These are the costs borne to determine the level of conformance to prior standard quality requirements. The functions are measuring, evaluating or auditing. The examples of such costs may be testing, audits of process or service, measuring and testing of equipments.
Prevention Cost: These are the costs incurred to avert poor quality. The examples of these types of costs can be product reviews, planning of quality, surveys of suppliers, reviews of processes, teams for quality improvement, education and training ("Cost of Quality | Total Quality Management," n.d.).
- Six Sigma Quality
Six Sigma simply reflects an appraisal of continuous quality that strives for near perfection quality systems. Six Sigma is a universally accepted, disciplined, data-driven approach and can be defined as a methodology for eliminating defects in any process. This may range from manufacturing to transactional and also from product to service ("What Is Six Sigma?," n.d.). How the process is performing can be easily described by the statistical representation given by Six Sigma. To successfully Six Sigma, a process must not construct more than 3.4 defects per million opportunities. A Six Sigma defect is the one that is outside of customer specifications. The value of process sigma can easily be calculated using a Six Sigma calculator.
- The Shingo System: Fail Safe Design
The zero defect system, also known as Shigeo Shingo, the Co-Developer of the Toyota Production System, developed the Shingo System. The system depends on controls comprising of fail-safe devices called POKA YOKE. Poka Yoke includes such things as checklists or special tooling ranging, from simple to complex systems, from a bin to sophisticated detection and electronic devices ("Zero Defect Systems - fail-safe design for detection and prevention of errors," n.d.).
- ISO 9000 and 14000
The ISO 9000 is a series of systems of quality management standards shaped by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). ISO comprises of 132 national standards bodies and stands as a strong global federation. The ISO 9000 quality management systems (QMS) standards apply to the processes that create products and services rather than being specific to those products and services. The standards can be used universally, in all manufacturing and service industries as they are generic in nature. ISO 14000 was released in 1996, and is a global series of environmental management systems (EMS) standards ("About ISO 9000, ISO 14000 and AS9100 and other international standards - Perry Johnson, Inc," n.d.). This standard provides a framework for organizations to display high dedication and commitment to their respective environmental and global responsibility.
References
Jacobs, F. R., & Chase, R. B. (2014). Operations and supply chain management: F. Robert Jacobs, Richard B. Chase.
