Siemens Company and Hard System Method - Case Study Example

A Report to Describe Siemens and Hard System Methods, (HSM the Report Is Prepared For to Describe and Analyse Siemens and Hard SystemsMethods and Help Tutors Make Sense of the Situation Details of Persons for Whom the Report Is Prepared (Client to Fill Here): Details of Preparers of the Report (Client to Fill Here): Date of the Report (Client to fill here): Introduction Siemens is a German multinational engineering and electronics conglomerate company headquartered in Berlin and Munich. It is Europe’s’ largest engineering company and maker of medical diagnostics equipment and its medical health-care division, which generates about 12 percent of the companys total sales, is its second-most profitable unit behind the industrial automation division. Siemens principal activities are in the fields of industry, energy, transportation and healthcare. It is organized into four main divisions: Industry, Energy, Healthcare, and Infrastructure & Cities. 2012. The Company has been the subject of a number of controversies in its history. Critics have argued on the Siemens hard systems method others saying it is always guesswork and inappropriate. We need to explore and analyse this critical complex situation; we need to understand why it is happening? And how we could depend on some systems analysing tools such as’’ Method, tools, Methodology and many techniques’’ in order to cover the complexity and have a good understanding of the situation we have. In my current case study I chose to talk about an issue effecting on the organization which will be the case study topic, staff resignations, the turnover of employees in Germany is not a result of a bad economy cut-off jobs strategy, its a behavior and a decision of an individual, We need to explore and analyze this critical complex situation; we need to understand why it is happening? And how we could depend on some systems analyzing tools such as’’ Method, tools, Methodology and many techniques’’ in order to cover the complexity and have a good understanding of the situation we have. Objective In my project, I will try to promote research and documentation in the field of employees behaviors and how to manage a sustainable environment for them and reduce the resignation of which costs the company recruiting new employees, including exploring many aspects of which may increase employee motivation such as pay schemes, incentives, training and creation of new working environmental concepts. Summary A summary of important findings from the bank’s management and shareholders are reported along with discussion. Additional to the methodology which was given in the report, I have also attached the control model which is a closed loop developing the outcome with their inputs to facilitate the process on going, diagrams are being presented in this project to simplify and try to understand the nature of the case, the causes and the structure of complexity. I am going to present the case of ‘induced staff resignation’, and on what circumstance this choice being made by the staff, how could we reconfigure their decision making when it comes to resigning, and how could we work to improve the situation from being very critical and harmful for the company, individuals and their career to an opportunistic situation to learn more knowledge and reflect it on our administration. Applying (B.E.C.M) concept In my opinion, by applying the concept of (B.E.C.M) and (Hard – System Method), I would be able to encounter the complex. The usage of the concept & HSM will help to identify the weaknesses & provide change, and this is the aim of the project. The HS-method provides the right tools for analysing the whole situation. At this stage of HSM, I have acted as a practitioner juggling four balls and trying to keep the equally in the air without letting one fall down. Hard system method is an 8 stage process which consists of interrelated stages. MEYERS, R. A. (2011). It helps the organization to identify the problem first, and then it makes an organization what to achieve. In the third stage, an organization makes a plan to achieve the desired goals. The fourth stage is the analysis stage, which tells when you will achieve the objectives. In Stage 5 - Modelling is carried out i.e. how can you tell the outcomes. Evaluation will be done in stage 6 in order to find out the relative outcomes. In Stage 7 - Choice of route(s) to objectives is defined. Final stage i.e. stage 8 is the implementation stage or in other words go ahead stage. Reason for choosing HS-method: Our main consideration in such cases is to investigate in order to come up with most useful ways and solutions, it’s not a mess it is a problematic difficulty that could be engineered and dealt with by parts rather than whole. By applying the HS-method it provides me with a huge understanding of the complex situation which Siemens staff faced and led them to resigning, problems which need to be analyzed through such methodology, dealing with tangible problem situation, which might affect emotions, other wider tangible and intangible action and decisions. Applying HS-Method Recent studies of employee turnover have found that overall job satisfaction is negatively related to employee turnover (Cotton and Tuttle, 1986). Satisfied employees exhibit greater productivity (Miller and Monge, 1986) and lower employee turnover reduces costs of assimilating new workers. In this case of staff resignations, we are facing a problematic case, which could be analyzed by Hard-system Method, and according to the core meaning of HS-method, it tends to investigate the complex situation throughout many stages, which we are going to describe specifically below. Stage1: System description (where are you now?) We are experiencing a behavior which has been seen happening frequently from the industry at Siemens which is resigning and leaving their jobs for other jobs, and some employees are leaving for government sector with is less offered salary ,and some decide to go and complete their higher education. The resignation of staff is not specified in certain department, It’s happening in all department and even with people who are well known at the industry of their loyalty and experience. The below spray diagram provides an overview of relation of components related to the induced staff resignation and hoe they are structured Stage2: Identification of objectives and constraints (Where would you like to get and what stops you?) In this stage we should be focused on our research objectives, we are working on getting extra information about Siemen’s employees to enhance our knowledge in the side of working in the firm and acting as stakeholder into the complex situation which we are having. So our main goal would be to come out after this research with maximum advanced knowledge to reduce losing the employees and keeping them within advanced knowledge to reduce losing employees and keeping them within the organization because they are the human capita for company’s success. This multiple cause diagram showing some of the causes behind the staff movement, which all in common describes when the morale is down they tend to quit work. Stage3: Generation of routes to objectives (how could you get there?) In this stage we have to keep in mind that it is the problem which needs to be fixed rather than controlling or encouraging people involved, and this could be achieved by: 1Working on building a group of sustainable work environment by enhancing the channels of development, personal growth and organization social culture. 2. Increasing the communication with employees and adopting the open door policy 3. Setting out the mission, goal and objective clearly, to staff of all levels The below is a system map of that describes the work system at Siemens and how it overlaps with the personal individual system which is part of the overall environmental system for a human being priorities. Stage 4: Formulation of measure of perfomance (How will you know when you have arrived?) This stage explores the different ways of achieving the defined objectives. It is the most imaginative and free-thinking stage of the approach. The idea is initially to generate as many ideas as possible, then to whittle the list down to two or three ‘definite possibilities’ that can be carried further in the development stage. Stage 5: Modelling (how can you tell the outcomes?) The hard systems approach emphasises the need to have measurable means of assessing the efficacy of any potential solution or design, but recognizes that this may not always be possible. Stage 6: Evaluation (what are the likely outcome?) The objective here is to develop the routes to objectives generated in Stage 4 to the position where they could be implemented if the decision to go ahead were given. This involves doing sufficient work on each option for technical and other details to be defined, and for costs and benefits to be assessed, and for a sound decision to be taken, while at the same time minimising the time and resources devoted to the task. Stage 7: Choice of route(s) to objectives (choose the best) While the identified objectives and constraints have been referred to constantly during the development stage, the testing stage of the approach is a more formal analysis of each option. Its objective is to determine whether: the option will meet the operational objectives it is technically feasible it is organisationally feasible it will meet the financial objectives. Stage 8: Implementation (ok, go ahead) You might imagine that after all that has gone before, the decision about whether to go ahead or not would be automatic, but this is rarely the case. There will still be much discussion and ‘fine tuning’ necessary to ensure that the proposal is acceptable. It is at this stage that any qualitative measures of performance are brought into play. Implementation involves all the detailed design, development and installation tasks required to get the agreed proposal operating.  shows an arrow leading from ‘implementation’ to ‘problem/opportunity’; this recognises that implementation is never the end of the story. The successful completion of a project will give rise either to other opportunities or to a further set of problems that need to be tackled. Control Model Diagram is attached to clarify the idea of how to control and administer our inputs resources and factors into such methodological way in order to achieve the outcome with the measurement and appropriate actions to be taken clearly and identified objectively PROBLEM ANALYSIS Problem analysis can be defined as dissecting and thoroughly studying a problem with the objective to understand how the problem emerged and how it grew to its current proportions. Problem Analysis is used to find the cause of a positive or negative deviation. When people, machinery, systems, or processes are not performing as expected, Problem Analysis points to the relevant information and leads the way to the root cause. The process is used to gather and analyse just the information needed to find and correct the true cause of a problem, making it particularly effective in today’s data-rich environment. This promotes rapid and accurate issue resolution. The Five Steps in Problem Analysis Gain agreement on the problem definition. Understand the root causes—the problem behind the problem. Identify the stakeholders and the users. Define the solution system boundary. Identify the constraints to be imposed on the solution. CONCLUSION The HSM system will enable Siemens to lastly achieve the global standardization, visibility and efficiency in to those systems that are considered to be costly, complex and slow to set up. It is about designing a communication system that can be implied cost effectively and quickly outside headquarters. CASANOVAS, P. (2010). If Siemens want to provide its customers the ultimate satisfaction in far off places away from headquarters then it must look upon devising the HSM system which will help it to incorporate its operations with NHS. No matter how complex an issue is we must welcome it and use the methods and engage with it as a system practitioner, as weve seen above in my complex issue regarding the Siemens system, I have analysed the complexity using the Hard System method and moving on from stage to another I got deeper in the complexity and I have used the diagrams to learn about the situation and how to simplify interacting with it. Ethically Statement: Because of nature of this project, and dealings with such information about Siemens is critical and dangerous I will be committed based on my work ethics no to reveal any of the confidential records, information and internal resources to any other third party, I will not allow to let the information I have to be misused, I only used it in my case study for improvement of complexity purpose and it is highly restricted to be shared and must be risk aware of the consequences that arise when behaving recklessly. References HUGHES, A. C., & HUGHES, T. P. (2000) Systems, experts and computers: the systems approach in management and engineering, World War II and after. Cambridge, Mass. [u.a.], MIT Press (1987). Complex systems. Champaign, IL, USA, Complex Systems Publications. INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON AGENT-BASED APPROACHES IN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COMPLEX SYSTEMS, CHEN, S.-H., TERANO, T., & YAMAMOTO, R. (2011). Agent-based approaches in economic and social complex systems VI: post-proceedings of the AESCS International Workshop 2009. Tokyo, Springer CHIAN, A. C.-L. (2007). Complex systems approach to economic dynamics. Berlin, Springer. INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON AGENT-BASED APPROACHES IN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COMPLEX SYSTEMS, & TERANO, T. (2007). Agent-based approaches in economic and social complex systems V post proceedings of the AESCS international workshop 2007. Tokyo, Springer. INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON AGENT-BASED APPROACHES IN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COMPLEX SYSTEMS, NAMATAME, A., TERANO, T., & KURUMATANI, K. (2002). Agent-based approaches in economic and social complex systems. Amsterdam, IOS Press. SIMONOVIC, S. P. (2013). Systems approach to management of disasters methods and applications. Hoboken, N.J., Wiley. FAULCONBRIDGE, R. I., & RYAN, M. J. (2003). Managing complex technical projects: a systems engineering approach. Boston, Artech House. MEYERS, R. A. (2011). Complex systems in finance and econometrics selected entries from the encyclopaedia of complexity and systems science. New York, NY, Springer. TUMER, K., & WOLPERT, D. (2004). Collectives and the design of complex systems. New York, NY [u.a.], Springer. CASANOVAS, P. (2010). AI approaches to the complexity of legal systems complex systems, the semantic web, ontologies, argumentation, and dialogue : international workshops AICOL-I/IVR-XXIV, Beijing, China, September 19, 2009 and AICOL-II/JURIX 2009, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, December 16, 2009 : revised selected papers. Berlin [etc.], SpringerLink. Time table showing the progress of the project among ten weeks Week 1 Reading & trying to understand what is required to do, checking & reviewing the SSM, HSM steps, reading from the project support booklet to try to get an overview of the shape and outcomes of the TMA project, and I will also need to refresh my mind about T551, T552 Week2 I went to the LMS and started a topic in the TMA forum, and I wrote my point of view about the TMA and I wanted to interact with my other friends to see their opinions, Im trying to choose a complexity which I can Engage with and which is related to my present life, I didn’t want to write about a complexity which already people talked about such as pollution and traffic congestion, I wanted to make a new unique thing which I can also interact with and be ambitious to write about. Week 3,4 I decided to write about the resignation of Siemen’s staff, and I wanted to take advantage of being in this complexity since I work there, I was just getting and becoming much more deeply for the terminologies of the complexity whether I should represent it as a project or not and I felt that I can apply the HSM method on It because I felt this is a tangible known difficultly and being a staff made me behave and feel as effected people do. I informed my tutor during class that I wanted to write about a Complexity which I see in my employer. I became more aware and focused about the project using the juggler concepts of system practitioner. I designed a sequence diagram of implementing HS-Method to the resigning Staff Resignation case, to help me focus on the steps and to demonstrate for the observer what Im doing Week 5 & 6 Im currently Focusing on the structure of my project I began the process of searching and selecting information for the chosen project issue using the websites and gathering supported topics to be used as references, I wrote a brief introduction about study then I revealed the complexity within it, I described my objective then I wrote a Summary of things which be made. This start made me know what is required from me the upcoming days to do. Week7 I designed a short plan for the next coming weeks in order to implement the HSM stages of on this project, I started drawing the diagrams to help me engage with the complexity, I also tried to imagine And feel like an employee and try to notice and feel what makes him quit working with Siemen. The rich picture I used helped me to use hand drawn figures to describe the situation of resignation from the place Im standing, the spray diagram I drew helped me to make connections of related stakeholders and gave me a spectrum of connected parts to the core issue, it helped me think about the systems and sub systems and how they dynamically effecting on each other, the multiple cause diagram made me think about the causes of the resignation and made me display the reasoning behind that, the system map made me create a working environment sub system and how it interferes with the staff environment as an individual with particular needs. Week8 I write my work down using my notes and I did a stage every day, I organized my work so I Focus more and reflect my understandings on each HSM step. I put myself in many stakeholder positions influenced the problematic case, to understand more and from a wider perspective. I designed a control model diagram to help monitoring the staff and interact with their problems and reconfigure accordingly to meet the goal of keeping the motivated and satisfied as different staff. Week 9 & 10 Before I submit my final version I start formatting, references and appropriate style and I Make sure that I fill the PT3 form with full information - The name and ID number. - The number and name of the course for which the assignment I submit - The number and title of the assignment. - The date on which the assignment is due And finally I Review the project by checking the following points before submitting final version - Does the project overall structure look good, are the paragraphs all in required format, are there any miss spelled words. - Does the discussion fulfill the aims and objectives stated in the introduction of the assignment and according to the instructions? - Are the main points which I was asked to perform from the TMA covered? - Have major conclusions and/or recommendations been logically and from a system practitioner background argued and discussed? - Have I allocated space appropriately to each section/issue with regard to its relative importance to the paper as a whole? - Are citations, quotations and referencing complete and accurate? - Are the diagrams and tables correctly and accurately presented? Summary of the Project Log: I will now review in this section what Ive wrote in the time table, this section will allow you to estimate what I face generally so it can be possible for you to understand, interact and facilitate the concepts in my project for the past 10 weeks. I have studied the T306 course as a complementary and continuous course for what I have took last year that was T205- and approach to system thinking. Engaging with T306 – Managing complexity, has introduced me to observing the world of varieties between things along with their perspectives, relationships and even more the social and cultural complexity within such as communities. When I choose my project subject, it was in interesting feeling about how I developed and built an interesting background, knowledge and an organization method with an outlined dead line of the project structure and spread within the 10 weeks, I prepared myself and started taking notes and sketches of how the project is going to be done, I was facing two complexities when I done this project, the first complexity is that I was required to find a TMA case topic the process of choosing a topic and applying the suitable method for analyzing and how to contextualize and engage using the diagrams till a reach the end of the TMA, choosing a topic is a complexity to trigger something and start working on, and how to perform it on paper is also a complexity and the second complexity was regarding how to start with my project and organize myself to do it with having three midterms and three TMAs which I had to study for at the same period of time. I had to keep the deadline of the assignment and the other midterms I have in my mind, so I was forced to act effectively and fast, I had in the first two weeks to decide the staff resigning situation whether if its suitable for my final project for the course T306 as being a complex situation and I have to manage it along with the suitable methodology. On the first 4 weeks I have worked hard in the field of interacting with the tangible resources, I have also investigated, and talked with performing Siemens staff to learn about their demands and what would lead them to resign. So I could use their addressed points along with the knowledge and perspective I have. This helped me a lot to see the complexity from different views and to realize the hidden impacts. After I decided the complexity and the method I will be using to engage with things had become much easier because of the exercises that I have done through my previous TMA’s and midterm case studies made me more experienced with using the system analyzing tools which were reflected on my understanding of the concepts for the course T306 for both part A & B. I have also applied the core meanings of being a juggler in the system by acting as system practitioner, who is juggling the four balls of the system which could be called as (B– Being in the system, E – Engaging with the system and stakeholders, C – Contextualizing along with the system, and the last ball would be defined as M–Managing). Acting as system practitioner have been defining clearly in my mind and inner thinking after applying it on the chosen complexity and it has developed from the previous term, it allowed me to discover new mental thinking and experiences and to encounter from different approaches and to understand more about the stakeholder influences. In the first four weeks I was reflecting the experiences of the complexity to myself, I still didnt take action all the searching in note taking was the process of reflecting afterwards I decided to go in depth by drawing the diagrams, these diagrams are tools that I love to use and personally love to draw, but learning such tool made me have the skill and ability of using them, cause as we learned the drawings sometimes tell what words dont, the drawings help show you the interaction and relation between things. Although I reached the final stages of my project and the Ethicality statement, was an in depth course concepts and an outcome to me as I am acting currently as a system practitioner for the case of staff resignation, so I had used ethical principles regards the stakeholders in accordance to their engagement with the situation. On the final week I have worked on the client report which was about the importance of my approach, theories and orientation of my case showing the importance of it, I felt like I was trying to convince my client and market my case study in order to feel how valuable the outcomes are and letting him realize how it would be effectively positive if the idea is adopted and what are the consequences of ignoring the case study and denying the conflict it arises from losing the human capital of the organization and giving notice that the people who are effected are all the stakeholders dealing with the bank with such loss of employees I have also wrote a conclusion as a redefinition of my project with an overall look of stages and how they stream and reflect from the previous stage as a continuous analyzing effort targeting to solve the resignation complexity, I indicated that complexity is a thing that we must fear , we must communicate and welcome it in order to be aware of it by being in it m and engaging with its roots and make it appear on surface , than after that it will be our turn to take control and manage it , after it was an unknown status. Read More