Brock Company is a manufacturer of children's toys and games. The company has been experiencing declining profit margins and is looking for ways to increase operating income. Because of the competitive nature of the industry, Brock is unable to raise its selling prices and must either cut costs or increase productivity. The following departments have made recommendations for improving worker efficiency and reducing costs. As an operational auditor, you have been assigned to evaluate the recommendations.

{Accounts Payable Department}

As the company purchases a variety of raw materials, the volume of paperwork in the accounts payable department is very large, and several accounting clerks are involved in processing and paying the invoices. The repetitive nature of this work leads to errors because of inattention to details such as part numbers and unit prices. These errors have led to double payments, payments for goods not yet received, and delays in the receipt of raw materials because suppliers that should have been paid have not been paid. These situations often require a great deal of supervisory time to resolve. The department manager has recommended that increased emphasis be placed on quality control. This would be achieved by increased monitoring of daily output, curtailing talking among staff members, and strict adherence to work hours. All errors would be discussed with the employee, and the staff would be informed that performance evaluations will be negative if errors are not reduced.

{Assembly Department}
Brock uses a standard cost system to monitor performance and investigates negative variances at the end of each month. The production manager has noticed that the assembly department seldom exceeds the established standards and occasionally requires less than the standard time to accomplish some of its operations. Reasoning that the application of lower standard costs to the products manufactured will result in improved profit margins, the production manager has recommended that all standard times for assembly operations be lowered. The production manager will inform the assembly personnel that the standards have been lowered and relay the company expectations that these new standards will be met.
    {Creative Department}
Because of quickly changing consumer tastes in the toy market, demands on the creative department are increasing; however, Brock's management believes there is a need to trim departmental expenses and set priorities for the staff. Traditionally, the staff members have been given a large degree of latitude in deciding which projects are most important, but management does not believe that the projects deemed most important are always the most profitable. The manager of the creative department has recommended that the staff be allowed to participate in all budget discussions and make suggestions as to how the monies could be most effectively spent. This would afford the management team the benefit of the staff's professional expertise and allow the staff members to better understand the objectives of management.
Required:
Discuss whether the above proposals will improve productivity.