To maintain profit growth, several manufacturing companies have responded to the recession by cutting jobs. After the 2008-2010 recession, for example, Harley-Davidson reduced its workforce by 1,400 in one year and 1,600 more in the next year. As sales declined, the company reduced labor capacity at many plants. The same is true at General Electric, Texas instruments, Coca-Cola and many other companies that have reduce capacity at certain plants, closed selected plants entirely, or dropped product lines. In many of these companies, the profit is held as cash, and the companies are holding off on making any new investments until economic conditions improve. Some analyst says the companies are just shrinking their operations to march the decline in expected future demand: the companies are profitable but smaller.

QUESTIONS:

1.How do the actions by these companies support their long-term strategies?

2.How does quality improvement differ from productivity?

3.Do you agree with the statement that a financial productivity measure contains more information than an operational productivity measure?Why or why not?

4.Do you agree with the statement that a total productivity measure encompasses all partial productivity measures?Why or why not?