The Management and Production Project at Delamere Pottery Limited - Assignment Example

The Management and Production Project at Delamere Pottery Limited Prepared by Submitted to Word Count 1778 words for Question 1 1700 words for Question 2 Question 1 1. Introduction The management activity that can introduce the new objectives or results in a change can be termed as project management. It comprises of a definite start and finish time in the course of execution. The managers in the Delamere project have to raise awareness of the problems that may exist within the own environment due to the previous receivership of the company and reduction of the employees number. The project managers and the teams need appropriate support. This is because the project managers are responsible for achieving the objectives. This can improve the ability to cope with the problems in the course of execution of projects. The integration between different disciplines is needed. The standards proposed by the company will give the planning and guidelines for the execution of the project operations. The application of project management techniques should be within the scope of the project. For the purpose of project management in any enterprise British standards will suggest the technical and organizational activities like configuration identification, configuration control, configuration status accounting and configuration auditing. The matrix organisation should have structure that can group individuals into managers and other workers. The project should be a unique process that contains a set of coordinated and controlled activities with start and finish dates. 1 2. Project management in Pottery Industry 2.1 Overview: Any company in pottery industry should think about the usage of the pottery and earthenware and the promotion of its usage. In the modern world the usage of pottery and earthen ware was being costly and majority of the people are preferring the metallic utensils that have longer life time. This obstacle can be overcome by the Delamere company as it manufactures mediocre cost vessels that can be afforded by middle income families also. When the make and quality of the products of Delamere are up to the mark, the presence of the products in the fewer regions also can attract a substantial market due to its cost effectiveness in the prices. The company can export the products to Cyprus and Italy where the demand for beautiful pottery and earthenware products is more than that of UK. The marketing of the costly products in those areas afore mentioned ensure more profit in the countries that have currency less valued than UK. 2 2.2 HRM in Project Management: The Company can put forward seven orientations to determine the production style. These are due to the risks involved in HRM and marketing. These should depend on knowledge source, product process focus and documentation mode. To have good Human Resources, the company should take care of the health of the workers involved directly with the production work. As the workers in the pottery industry are prone to tuberculosis, the illness in the workers will disturb the production of the company. In order to continue the project operations in time the health of the workers is important. 2.3 Computer aided manufacturing: The computer aided manufacturing will comprise of some fixed principles areas to follow. The important areas of the work are developing the products that can use technical support under direct guidance of clients and dealers. The risk involved in these CAM is that the lack of coordination between the mechanical and computer section. In case of pottery industry the computer aided manufacturing is limited to supply the designing of the articles, products and moulds. If there is no coordination between the mechanical section and the computer section the overall view and aspect of computer aided manufacturing will be disturbed. 2.4 Integration of CAM and CAD: projects should be developed by designers working from within the network of the company. The special training is necessary for the present human resources to work with computer aided manufacturing systems. The employees working with the CAM and CAD should need the graduate level designing training. The designs based on CAD should be innovative as the system costs more and it is adopted for speedy work and innovation and for the enhancement of the quality. The CAD and CAM should expedite the designs of the new products that need not change the moulds from which the pottery articles are prepared. This requires extra capital to invest and it can be cost effective in future as the company will be able to do extra work and production from the same amount of human resources. 3 2.5 Manufacturing, Planning, and Control: The modernity and the latest trends can be reflected in the pottery products of Delamere by CAD and CAM. The next step the company management is facing as a problem is manufacturing, planning and control activities. The manufacturing activities should take into consideration; the globalisation of competition. This provides substantive ideas on how companies can support their strategy through well designed product. This integrates the planning with manufacturing. The integration of manufacturing, planning and control can be done by judicious use of e commerce tools. The directors of the company who are giving reports that the projects are going out of time to complete should make use e commerce that integrates and inter connects the activities from manufacturing to despatching.4 3. Organisational Structure 3.1 The organizational structure of the Delamere organization is in three tiers. It consists of Senior management, middle management and blue collar workers. One of the important individual of the senior management team is Managing Director Malcolm Lewis who is responsible for sales and marketing also. The production director heads up internal operations also. These internal operations wing is responsible for new product development that is mentioned when the increase of the staff is contemplated in this paper in the previous section. Along with Andre Slip he is responsible for supply chain development also. Apart from the previous TGD from which the present delamere was bought, the Delamere has adopted a market philosophy and business processes. 5 As the Delamere is a small and medium sized company it has to utilize the assets more flexibly and innovatively. The management should see that the company can incur low overheads. The emergence of internet can revolutionize the business activities. The management should use information technology to integrate the operations involved in the projects. For example, the managing director who is responsible for sales can integrate his operations with sales with information technology and can produce the goods according to the needs of the market. This is possible by the open standards of the Internet that brings in electronic commerce/ buiness. Particularly in the sector like pottery and earthenware, the rapidly changing moods of the customers and their needs should be known by the company and the products should be changed accordingly. This results in the orientation of the business towards the customer needs. The organizational structure should include the open and free trade options and should extend its activities outside UK as Euro is making strides into other European economies. 6 4. Project Evaluation 4.1 The evaluation of the decisions: The Company has decided to set up a project team to monitor the processes. The budget allotted to it is 150K GBP. The project team should be able to produce integrated solutions that enable company to improve and optimise the manufacturing process. This involves CAM and other control processes. As the management is allotting reasonable budget 150K GBP for this project team activities, it is better to consult a expert in the beginning and then act accordingly. The expert’s advice report can be documented and the decisions and designs can be done according to the parameters specified in the report. One more aspect the project team need to take into consideration is that the training cost is 1000GBP more than the allotted budget and the total budget for the quarter 410686 is more than the actual expenditure 340500. This enables the project team and company to manage the Computer aided manufacturing process and to use the information technology tools in the timely manner. The successful design, its implementation, control and automation systems, data interoperability and visibility solutions can be adopted by using IT in manufacturing activities. In the estimates furnished by the project manager it was observed that the after 12 months (1 year), the actual progress in the activities of manufacturing is not up to the mark and schedule. This makes useless the revenues that are spent in the period following. That amounts to 2,95,250 GBP that is not used productively in the manufacturing activities or did not give desired results regarding production and manufacturing activities. 4.2 Manufacturing, planning and Control implementation: Area of work Design of the product Shape of the product Product output Packing and dispatch Manufacturing The first three months of the project will produce the products of previous design only. In the first three months period of the project the shapes that are favoured by the customers and the new trends are surveyed The output will be minimum as the innovation or change according to the need is absent. The time taken for packing and dispatch is noted and can be preserved for the future planning regarding this activity. Planning This area of manufacturing as the ground work is done for the new shapes based on the new design. This can be termed as planning activity. The product output will be same if there is no stock in the ware house. This means that all the goods manufactured in the first three months are marketed successfully. The time taken for packing and dispatch activity time should be decreased if there is any excess of time recorded in the previous three months period. Control The control activity regarding the design process will decide the designs that will not exceed the budget of shaping the moulds and other activities in the production plant. The control activity should minimize the extra cost incurred in the production plant due to the innovative designs without compromising on the creativity. The shapes of the pottery objects can be decided on the design of the items. The availability of the items in different shapes. The shapes of the items available will decide their usage. If they are medium in size they can be used for daily life activities. If they are very small and too big, can be used for decorative purposes. The control activities at this period is to monitor whether the design, shape and the production quantity of the goods are according to the information gathered from the customer surveys in the first six months of the project. This three month period can be termed as the starting of the control activities regarding the whole manufacturing activities; Design, Shape, production quantity. At this juncture of the project the marketing and production processes are integrated to the maximum extent. Question 2 1. Project Risk Management 1.1 Risks in the Project: Risk management is supposed as the part of the project management plan. The basics of the risk management are needed for the accurate project management. This includes the definition of risk in case of pottery industry and avoiding it. As the industry’s market demand is decreasing and the companies are finding it difficult with cope up with the increasing costs and decreasing costs, the cost effectiveness and the efficiency must go on alongside.  As the Delamere reduced the employees after purchasing the company after receivership, it will be risk free if the company increases employees to the extent of minimum need without increasing them to previous number. This type of increasing the number of employees can be used in the future as an opportunity that is a part of risk management definition.  According to definition of risk management, the potential risks can be turned to potential opportunities. In case of delamere company also, the risk supposed due to increase of employees also can be used as an opportunity by increasing the production of the existing items by increasing the market demand for them. This depends on the marketing department to make the judicious use of increased employees. The pottery and earthen ware items are having a declining market demand and this requires search of rich customers who pay more for short life items and articles.  The risk of increasing employees can be balanced by achieving the afore mentioned task by marketing department. As gaining market demand is not possible for pottery and earthen ware items without taking risk, it should be taken in increasing the number of employees to the reasonable extent and by planning a judicious and on time inventory that reduces costs on storage of pottery goods that need costly and careful activities. 7 1.2 Organisational Risks: The organisation in the company is responsible for making the project management and execution in right direction. The risk regarding the organisation is that the allotting work to the teams and selecting right personnel in particular positions. This decides the documentation of the project management and it will be possible to execute the project with correct documentation irrespective of the persons present. The persons present in various positions should be able to deal with the sudden risks and complications involving in the course of project execution. After that the company documentation about the human resources should refer to the human resources of the competitors and the other organisations. The relationships between various departments in the organisation will decide the timing in the production and distribution activities. The company should concentrate on product process focus to emphasise on knowledge of human resources. This results in the development of the products and services. The products are pottery and earthenware for Delamere and the services are delivering the order in time. This is considered as important because, in the case study of Delamere, the timely delivery is 56 percent of the orders and the value of the orders that are timely delivered is 63 percent. This means that the 37 percent of the total order value and 44 percent of the orders are not being delivered in time. This is due to the problem in distribution of human resources and judiciously making use of them. The Computer aided management or manufacturing can solve this problem as some of the processes will be fixed and cannot be altered according to the needs of the people. The dissemination mode of orientation is necessary in HRM to determine the knowledge shared in formal prescribed methods. This is made possible by creating highly structured formalised approach that are shared across the entire organisation. 8 1.3 Technical risks: The technical risks arise from critical infrastructures that make the process control systems active. In the modern period the cyber threats are also a part of the technical risks as the information is crucial in the process control systems. The risks regarding the production can be minimised by increasing the integration between different activities. The system’s design, implementation, configuration are the aspects that pose technical risks in the course of production. This can be minimised by technical security analysis performed by technical experts and informing the risk management decisions to the management. The following block diagram develops represents the technical risk probability.  The technical risk analysis should include IT technical security risk as any company is computerising its activities to integrate production operations and speedup the post production activities like distribution and marketing. The architectures, technologies used, components can be termed as sources for the technical vulnerabilities that create risks. The technical risks can be minimised in process control systems by integrating them using IT. Now the risk concent shits to IT domain and communication plays an important role in assessing and mitigating or minimising the risk factors. The factors like network ready physical control devices that are unfamiliar to IT risk professionals should be dealt with the team of technical and IT experts. Any company can connect physical sensors and actuators to programmable logic controllers and this requires integration of IT and other technical activities. This compels understanding between technical and IT professionals. When the risk assessment and monitoring is made to connect in network, the risk monitoring depends on communication. The probability of availability and non availability of the network will decide the course of risk assessment and monitoring. 9 1.4 Good and Bad of risk management methods in Delamere: The company is planning to decrease the number of staff and it has been done to some extent. This is for increasing the expert personnel in the staff. The risk monitoring can be done by the teams created by the management to monitor the production and distribution activities. As the company is planning to introduce the computers and IT into the production activities of the company, the coordination teams are necessary and can be termed as a good practice regarding the risk management. The next step of the composition of the teams is not mentioned in the case study. This according to the methods mentioned above, need the information about the network availability. The following table will tell about the network and information availability and the project teams’ activities should be planned accordingly. 1.5 Financial Risks: The financial risks depend on cost control, efficiency, fraud and judicious spending on the production, distribution and marketing activities. The cost control activities need to be done by the team that is combination of technical and financial experts. This is for avoiding the obstruction in the production activities due to cost control measures. The lack of integration of the technical and financial departments will hamper the efficiency of the production activities and quality. The next aspect that is involved in financial risks is fraud. The transparency and the accuracy in the methods employed to conduct financial transactions will minimise the fraud. This is possible by making use of information technology in the financial transactions. In the absence of IT the frauds may or may not be detected. In the implementation of the IT in financial transactions, the frauds can be avoided and if done can be exposed easily. 1.6 Good and bad in the financial risk practices: As per the case study there are no particular financial risk management procedures in the project planning of Delamere pottery industry. This is evident from the fact that though there is a probability to allot the amounts for training of the personnel regarding the computerisation of the activities, the reports of the managers did not include it. This is capable of resulting in affecting the quality and execution of the operations due to lack of knowledge and expertise and results in delay in delivery and lack of quality. This in turn affects the financial returns for the company. In the reports of the company, there is no suggestions of computerising the financial activities and integrating production and financial transactions. This should be done to make the system and processes transparent and bringing integration between production and financial activities. 3. Relation of the Risks to the Case Study and practices of Delamere 3.1 Risks relevance to the Case study: The risks discussed in the study are related to the pottery industry and Delamere. The reduction in the market, reduction of employees, organisational risks, marketing risks and production risks are involved in the project management of pottery industry. The reduction in the market for the pottery articles should be dealt with the innovation of the design and model of the articles. The reduction in the market of the pottery articles can be corrected and the loss of revenues can be neutralised by targeting the rich and costly customers by innovative designs. 3.2 Relevance of the practices of risk management in Delamere: The risks regarding reduction of employees can be managed by computerising the production, inventory and marketing activities. For this purpose the training programme is necessary. In the budget allotted for different activities of the Delemare, there is no amount allotted for training. The computerisation of the activities will not be useful if there is no proper training regarding CAM and CAD. The risk management will not be relevant with out training of computers for the employees. The innovation in the designs and the making of the products through CAD and CAM is not possible unless there is relevant training in it. Conclusion Regarding project risk management of Delamere, the company can manage the risk regarding production activities regarding technical activities. When it comes to the integrating of the departments and activities, there is no accurate planning for minimising the risk in those activities. Moreover, even the project teams are designed to monitor the innovative activities but not integration of the activities and departments. The induction of the integration and innovation along with the monitoring the quality and production activities into the project teams that are to be designed by the company, the risk factors can be minimised. Another aspect in the risk factors of the company is that the implementation financial activities of the company are not designed for transparency or efficiency. This can be managed by integration of the financial, production, distribution and marketing activities by Information technology. References: The references are given in the Harvard referencing format in the following format Author, year, title, Publisher or organization, edition, type of media, date retrieved, website address. When the author name was not mentioned, the organization name was mentioned in the place of author. Any information regarding above format is not available, a gap has been left. 1. BSI, 2002, Project management, British Standard, ,electronic, 16-07-07, bsi-global.com 2. Heldman, Kim, 2005, Project Manager's Spotlight on Risk Management. CA, ,electronic, 16-07-07, http://site.ebrary.com/lib/nulibraries/Doc?id=10131929&ppg=16 3. Case study of Delamere pottery 4. Al-Qirim, Nabeel A.Y, 2003, Electronic Commerce in Small to Medium-Sized Enterprises: Frameworks, Issues and Implications Hershey, Idea Group Inc., ,electronic, 16-07-07, http://site.ebrary.com/lib/nulibraries/Doc?id=10044336&ppg=19 5. Van Wijngaarden, Gert J, 2003, Use and Appreciation of Mycenaean Pottery in the Levant, Amsterdam University Press, , electronic, 16-07-07, http://site.ebrary.com/lib/columbiasouthern/Doc?id=10053691&ppg=129 6. Ricardo Chiva et al, 2005, Organisational learning styles and organizational values in the ceramic tile sector, Int. J. Learning and Change, Vol. 1, No. 1, electronic, 16-07-07, http://www.inderscience.com/storage/f117658429101312.pdf 7. European regional development fund, 1999, Urban pilot projects, Regional policy, inforegio, ,electronic, 16-07-07, http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/urban2/urban/upp/src/bullet05.htm 8. Boer, Harry, 2005, Managing Innovative Manufacturing. Emerald Group Publishing Limited, , electronic, 16-07-07, http://site.ebrary.com/lib/nulibraries/Doc?id=10085696&ppg=8 9. Advanced automation team, 2007, In today’s world it is all about efficiency, Advanced automation.com, ,electronic, 17-07-07, http://www.advancedautomation.com/home/ 10. Peter Kertzner, 2005, Process Control System Security Technical Risk Assessment: Analysis of Problem Domain, Institute for information infrastructure protection, ,electronic, 22-07-07, http://www.ffrdc.com/work/tech_papers/tech_papers_06/06_0045/06_0045.pdf Read More