CASE STUDY IdeaTech Entreprise has noticed that its production costs have increased by 20 percent in comparison to last year's costs. An investigation carried out by the Operations Manager found that nearly fifty percent of the current project are over expenses such as purchasing excessive supplies and unnecessary claims. This was mainly the result of recruiting new employees who are inexperienced in managing tasks which caused a delay in the work progress and failure to meet the due dates. As the workforce are significantly crucial, having knowledgeable and skillful employees are vital on the performance as well as keeping them abreast with the output they should achieve. Therefore, the company must ensure that their recruitment process is one of their top priorities. Additionally, IdeaTech Entreprise have to think about the cost of selection, recruitment and providing training to all employees in the company. As the Chief Operations Manager, Mr. Jeffry believes that a productivity improvement program should be conducted and he promised to give his full commitment to the program. Not only that, he also promised to provide the financial support for the training program. He added that employees' involvement are crucial for this program as they are well-versed with the workflows, processes and procedures in the company. With their knowledge and experience, they are able to provide valuable ideas and feedback for the betterment and improvement of the tasks. On top of that, the organization and employees' goals should be identified and all efforts must be carried out in order to achieve the goals. The achievement of employees' goals will result in enhancing employees' performance. Corrective actions must be taken on the low employees' performance and slow work progress. You strongly believe that there is a need for assessing employees' work measurement methods. Hence, during the discussion with Mr. Jeffry, you proposed that the company uses a simple technique where an employee can directly records the time used to produce the work. Not only this technique is simple but it is also financially feasible for the company to carry out. In addition to this technique, there is another technique that can be employed where the inefficient work processes can be identified through the elimination of wasted motions after repeating a sufficient number of cycles to determine the completion time of each element of the process. Those techniques are more reliable in regards to the issues that occur at IdeaTech Entreprise. Before the end of discussion, Mr. Jeffry hopes that new employees should discuss regularly with a project leader and other group members who perform related tasks so as to ensure that any problems can be thoroughly identified and solved properly. He also instructed the project leader to design a work schedule that provides a daily list of tasks including the estimated completion time that each task needs to be completed. Employees are also encouraged to follow the weekly scheduled tasks and be responsible to complete each of the tasks that has been assigned to them. a. Suggest and explain the appropriate improvement technique to ensure that new employees are able to plan the daily tasks and help them to efficiently meet the datelines for the tasks. (3 marks) b. Suggest four (4) ways to ensure the effectiveness of the above technique? (4 marks) c. Suggest and explain three (3) characteristics of a successful productivity improvement programs for the IdeaTech Entreprise. Cite an example from the situation to support your answer. (12 marks)
