Operations of a Digital Camera Company - Assignment Example

? Assembly Operation Assessment of the Assembly Operation Assessment Strategic policy development and implementation has been predominantly considered a continuous process that involves the management in executing and evaluating the relevant strategic routes and refocusing energies on the highly significant corrective actions to ensure the alignment of the organizational operations towards the attainment of the desired results. There are several reasons why the management must be very proactive in evaluating strategies and thereby making corrective adjustments. These include the fact that the needs of the customers as well as the conditional competitive environments are in constant change and the managers must always seek to strike a balance between achieving the desired goal of satisfying the needs of the stakeholders while also ensuring that the strategies are in line with the overall goals. Further, it is imperative to note that in the contemporary business marketplace, new opportunities keep unveiling and new managers, equipped with different ideas, take over organizations that are also on the learning path. Therefore, the sufficient alignment of the organizational operations and managerial capabilities with the emerging forces seems to be the only way for organizations to optimize value from their operational endeavors. This paper seeks to assess the assembly operations of a digital camera company in light of its operational excellence and performance. Further, the paper will suggest necessary corrective actions in a bid to revise and properly align strategic goals towards the overall aims of the organization. As a conventional rule, the assembly operational capability of any firm in the digital camera industry should first and foremost conform to the rating requirements of the regulatory authority within the industry. Further, the company should also seek to strategically place itself in a better competitive quarter in relation to the production and assembly costs, quality of the cameras and the overall satisfaction of the ever changing customer needs. Organizations must further seek to provide responsive products and services that aim to fit in the changing consumption trends but which are also enabling the clients to optimize value of their expenditure. Thompson et al (2009), observes that in addition to executing strategic goals that aim to address all the competitive factors affecting the organizational market share, companies in the digital camera industry must be ready to assess their strategic options and make appropriate changes and corrections where necessary so as to sustain growth and development while satisfying the increasing demands of the customers (Thompson et al, 2009). From the assessment templates, it is evident that if the company continues with the current strategic policies without amendments, the overall cumulative unit volume of cameras that it will assemble in the tenth year will be significantly below the desired quantity. This is in reference to the previous and current assembly capabilities. This is because the company is only able to produce cumulative unit volume of 1024 at the end of the fifth year, while the previous highest achieved volume is 917. However, the gap between the highest previously achieved and the cumulative unit volumes reduce significantly in the six year as is between 1045 and 1024. Further, the difference spreads to the negative in the projected year 10, when the company produces less than the highest achieved in the previous years. The trend is also evident from the results of the unit assembly that the company does entirely on in-house basis. The units increase to 1024 in the year 6 up from 917 in the year 5. However, the increase is not commensurate between the years 6 and 10 respectively and the company must assess the reasons behind the marginal decrease and implement mitigating operational approaches to help save the situation (Thompson et al, 2009). Moreover, the significant reduction in the number of overtime units assembled during the third quarter from 75 in the fifth year to the 66 assembled in the sixth year and finally to nothing in terms of overtime orders assembled in the projected tenth year is quite telling in relation to the amount of available cameras to be assembled. Consequently, managers should be quick to assess the operational capacities of the company and the level of rewards and/or commissions offered to the employees to motivate them to work and achieve results. On one hand, the results indicate that the company would be able to produce and assemble all the units within the scheduled time, which is something to boast off. On the other hand, the results indicate that the company would be having either surplus employees or less camera orders and thus will be operating at less the optimal level of its employees and machines (Thompson et al, 2009). The latter could be true given the recorded level of special orders as well as the level of excess unit production capability under the special orders assessment. The company will be having a stagger 300 excess capacity in the year 10 up from a mere 46 and zero in the years six and five respectively. additionally, the four unmanned PAT workstations to be experienced in year 10 confirms the assertion in the earlier section that the company must explore corrective actions to streamline strategies towards obtaining highest possible production and assembly capabilities. This will ensure that the company operates in line with the overall objective of the organization. The entry level cameras’ production in general and assembly in specific are quite exonerated in comparison to the industry-wide seasonal assembly pattern as outlined in the strategy and affirmed in the GLO-BUS guidelines (Thompson et al, 2009). In accordance to the estimated rates, the company should be able to assemble on average 20%, 20%, 40% and 20% of annual number of cameras in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th quarters respectively (Thompson et al, 2009). However, the company in discussion achieved an average of 80 percent assembly composition over the four quarters in a period of about five years. The multi-featured camera’s production and assembly, however, recorded scientifically established results ranging between 18 and 21 percent. This implies that the company is strategically and conventionally meeting its targets with regards to the production of multi-featured cameras as opposed to the entry level cameras. This is something that the managers must be keen to establish if only they want to sustain growth and development of both the camera production lines. In light of the current and the projected assembly operational capability and practices of the company, it is sufficiently evident that the company is not operating at its optimal levels and the managers must keenly evaluate the resultant reasons behind the deviation from the desired results and make recommendation and essentially execute corrective strategic aims. Such aims may include ensuring that the company is continuously capable of accommodating new developments in industry and thus align the relevant strategies towards achieving the goals but in recognition of the changing demands of both the clients and the industrial competitive forces (Thompson et al, 2009). References Thompson et al. (2009). GLO-BUS Developing Winning Competitive Strategies: Participant’s Guide. McGraw-Hill/Irwin. 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