Emezed Motors Ltd is a renowned automotive manufacturing company. In the current year, Emezed Motors has made modifications to all of its cars to keep up with technological advancements. Emezed Motors Ltd has a manufacturing department, an assembly department and a finishing department. The manufacturing department manufactures individual parts and passes them to the assembly department. The assembly department assembles the individual parts to give them a structure and passes the product to the finishing department. The finishing department makes the final fixes to make the product ready for sale. Until last year, Emezed Motors was able to reach its target sales and was able to recover its cost of operations. However, in the first three quarters of the current year, the company has been unable to reach 50% of its target sales. Top management of the company was worried about this trend and asked the sales team for an explanation.
The sales team pointed out that the number of cars manufactured was not enough to meet demand. You have been hired as an independent consultant to find the root cause of the insufficient production. You have inspected the manufacturing and assembly departments of the company and identified the problems listed below:
• The manufacturing department is facing operational inefficiencies because of which there is a delay in the supply of individual parts to the assembly department.
• The assembly department is unable to maintain sufficient inventory to meet demand because of the long production cycle and the 4-week lead time in receiving individual parts from the manufacturing department.
• The number of skilled workers in the workforce of the manufacturing department has reduced in the current year, and the existing workers are unable to manufacture the required number of individual parts.
• The paperwork required to place an order with the manufacturing department is time consuming.
• In the assembly department, many unskilled workers were hired to meet customer demand. This has led to excessive damage of materials and individual parts.
• The manufacturing and assembly departments have a large capacity. However, there are only two supervisors to monitor and delegate work in these departments. This has led to a lot of slack time in the production cycle.
• In the current year, the company has made some modifications to all the cars it manufactures to keep up with technological advancements. The company is purchasing new raw materials required for these modifications from a supplier who is situated in a remote location. The company is spending a lot of time on transporting the raw materials from the supplier’s location to its location. This has added to the delay in production. Also, the transportation costs incurred for transporting raw materials from these suppliers are not efficiently spread across the raw materials ordered. Based on the operational problems you have identified at Emezed Motors, you have proposed that the company implement business process re-engineering to increase its efficiency. The management has decided to accept the proposal. However, the workers are sceptical and afraid of losing their jobs.

Required
1. You have suggested that Emezed Motors implements business process re-engineering (BPR). Describe the re-engineering process.
2. What steps would you suggest the management of Emezed Motors take to address the operational inefficiencies in its manufacturing department?
3. What steps would you suggest the assembly department of Emezed Motors take to help the department maintain sufficient inventory to meet demand?
4. The paperwork required to place an order with the manufacturing department is time consuming. What action would you suggest the company take to help reduce this time?
5. You have suggested that Emezed Motors implement business process re-engineering (BPR). The rationale of the approach is to simplify and eliminate wasted efforts. Explain.
6. The suppliers of the new materials are situated in a remote location. What do you recommend to address this issue efficiently?
7. Explain the action that is needed to address the issue of job insecurity and that will help workers understand the need for change.
8. Identify the value-added activities or non-value-added activities undertaken by Emezed Motors.