The Management of Lean and Agile Organisations - Case Study Example

Lean and Agile management Objective The government has taken initiative to engage a company for the purpose of rubbish collection and disposal in thecity of Derby located in the east middle land of England with a population of 233,700 according to 2001 census report. The company engaged for this work should be able to do the job effectively and efficiently coordinating and monitoring various teams involved, report back to the government about the work done and to give the feed back to the government. The objective of this recommendation is to suggest to the company ways and means to accomplish the above task of clearing the rubbish. In tune with the company’s policies the personnel employed should not be more than twenty. Organizational structure Before proceeding to draw the structure of organization for the company we would like to delineate about the nature of work, necessary infrastructure required for the execution of work, type of skills expected of the staff, expectation of the government regarding the job like reporting of work done, coordination with various agencies, follow up for getting payments in time etc. once the nature of job is ascertained it is easy to identify the skills required and recruit staff according to the requirement. Infrastructure As the job involves collection of garbage it is essential that the company should have a fleet of trucks meant especially for the purpose and also dustbins at various locations in the city. As the company has the permission from the government to sub contract some of the work or all of the work and also in tune with the company’s policy of cost control, we suggest sub contract for providing fleet of trucks built for rubbish collection. This will avoid engaging more number of workers like drivers and also maintenance cost of the trucks. Computer systems required to have the data of number of loads, or in terms of weight of tones per truck per trip, total tonnage of rubbish collected per day, follow up and monitoring the trucks that they do the job to the expected level, feed back to be furnished to the government, payment details, dues by the company and to the company etc. Teams involved in the job Truck drivers and assistants for collecting the rubbish. Staff at the dumping yard to monitor the loads of rubbish dumped by each truck and total tonnage of rubbish dumped in a day by all trucks. Reporting, the above said details to the coordinator. Supervisor/coordinator : to oversee the work of truck drivers by monitoring rubbish collection points and time taken for dumping the rubbish for each trip and the number of trips made by each truck. He will also coordinate the functions of various teams and motivate them to give their best output and ultimately accomplishing the task effectively and smoothly. Reporting staff will collect the data and submit the same to the finance department and the audit department. He will also send the feed back required by the government. Follow up staff required for the purpose of analyzing the various data collected, take up with the various departments for any deficiency and also follow up with government agencies to ensure submission of bills reports of feed back to the government and also getting the payment the payment from the government in time. After analyzing the nature of job and requirement of various skills now we have identified the type of staff required for the job. Different staff should have different skill sets such as thorough knowledge of bidding/tendering for contracts, drafting of legal documents of contracts, should possess computer knowledge, expertise and experience in dealing with the government departments. We recommend functional organizational structure as it is best suited to this company in view of the nature of job involved and the number of staff employed will not be more than twenty. In order the implement the strategy it is necessary to group the activities based on the functions. There will be three types of functions a) basic b) secondary and c) supporting function (Prasad, 1995, p. 268). The basic function of the company is collection of rubbish; the secondary function is engaging trucks through contracts. The supporting function is coordinating various teams involved and ensuring effective implementation of strategy. In the functional organizational set up the top management will continue to control decision. This system will have the advantage of specialization of staff as they are required to do a particular job. The organizational chart will be as follows: Roles duties and responsibilities of executives, management of work and analysis of controls and their applications President: his job involves overall supervision of various functions to achieve the objective of efficient collection of rubbish, set time limits and ensuring complaint free environment. He is responsible for profitability of the company. He will directly report to the board. He will coordinate, and guide his team of senior vice president and three vice presidents. Senior vice president: he will function as a bridge between the three vice presidents of Operations, Finance and Audit. He will coordinate between the Operations and Finance departments to ensure the smooth functioning of work and also ensure that the work does not suffer on account of any lack of communication between the two. He will ensure that the requirement of Operations department are properly met by the Finance department for instance, if the Operations department require additional truck the Finance department should be able to provide the same by ensuring that contractors provide additional truck in time. He will get clarifications from both the departments regarding remarks of audit department. He will also ensure that both the departments comply with the rectifications of remarks pointed out by the audit department. He will directly report to the president. Vice President Operations: He will be responsible for clearing the rubbish and will decide the number of trucks required for clearing the rubbish and ensure that the establishments under the Finance department supply the requirement by placing his indent sufficiently in time. He will check and interact with the supervisor/coordinator and with the field staff. He will also ensure that the staffs under him including those outsourced through contracts do their job to the expected level. He will motivate his team by periodically conducting staff meetings and will redress their grievances if any and will counsel the staff to ensure maximum output. Vice president Finance: He will be responsible for engaging contractors for operations of fleet of trucks by bidding and tendering so as to ensure competitive rates to reduce the cost to the company. He will provide sufficient number of trucks to the operations department by having proper arrangement with the contractors. Mobilizing resources of finance from various sources approved by the company is also his function. He will ensure payments are received from the governments for the works done. Preparation and finalization of accounts will also come under his portfolio. He will submit statuary reports to the government and also financial reports to the audit department and will report to the senior vice president. Vice president Audit: He is in charge of audit department. The audit consists of two aspects, one is audit of operations and the other is audit of financial aspects. The audit department gets report from both the operations and finance by effectively cross checking the reports he will ensure that there is no mis-match between the reports of the two departments. For instance, if as per report of the finance department, ten trucks have been provided to the operations and payment had been made for ten trucks to the contractors, however if as per the report of the operations department for that particular day, only nine trucks are provided, the audit department can immediately swing in to action by verifying the actual facts and detect where the problem lies and take suitable remedial action. The audit department also inspects the financial statements submitted by the finance department and verifies its veracity. This internal control system will not only ensure that no mal practice is followed but also avoids any adverse remarks of external auditors. The audit of operations ensures that the operations department is able to get the maximum tonnage of rubbish by each truck and no laxity is shown in the functions. “Lean as a concept or brand, has captured the imagination of many in different spheres of activity” (Wikipedia) and “rubbish is Us in no exception hence, we have dispensed with the position of Vice President Human resource instead the functions of the HR department such as selection, recruitment and training can be outsourced. The company will have suitable mechanism to redress the grievances of the staff members by senior vice president duly assisted by the three vice presidents in respect of staff involved in their respective departments. Each vice president will have a complement of staff as per the following requirements. Vice President Operations will have three assistants (one supervisor/coordinator, one dump yard clerk and one office assistant) vice president finance will have two assistants for contracting work and two for preparation of financial statements and one for reporting to the audit department and submission of reports to the government. Vice president Audit will be assisted by two assistants, one for auditing operation department and the other one will take care of the finance department. Thus the total strength of the personnel will be only 15. The above organizational structure will have adequate checks and controls and also the avoiding leakage of income by system of counter checks to ensure smooth functioning, optimum utilization of resources maximizing profitability. Analysis of motivators required and their operations “What blood is to the body, motivation is to the worker”. “A management’s job is to identify and activate employee motives towards task performance (Davis, 1984, P.43). We have suggested in built mechanism while defining roles and responsibilities of the Executives. One of the main functions of the executives is to conduct meetings and interact with ground level staff to get feedback from the staff regarding various aspects, take their suggestions, reward good performance and redress their grievances. Since the total strength of the company is just 15 excluding the drivers and cleaners engaged by the contractors, it is easier for the company to work as a close knit family. Hence, we do not anticipate any problem of motivation in respect of company staff. But, the main of job clearing the rubbish is done by the truck drivers and cleaners who are not company employees. But motivation does not distinguish a contact worker from the company worker. Money is one of the main motivating factors. We suggest that the company should formulate scheme of awarding prizes, incentives for the best drivers whom are able to dump maximum rubbish beyond their targets. “The aim should be to attain the highest level of group efficiency and they should not compete with each other” (Rustomji & Sapre, 1988, P.76, 77) Adequate checks should be there to avoid violation of traffic rules and accidents. Contractors should be encouraged to improve life style standards and also share the cost of expenses like Group Insurance, etc. Conclusion The above structure of organization recommended, methodology of procedures suggested for having proper controls and checks will be best suited to the company under reference to achieve its objectives of clearing the rubbish in the city of Derby. We have devised internal control mechanism which will have three tier checks so as to ensure maximum safeguards against malpractices, leakage of income. Taking into the company’s policy of lean management and cost control practices, we have restricted the staff to 15 without sacrificing any of the essential requirements for the efficient functioning of the company. “In services marketing today, service brand is built by taking the process perspective” (Saxena, 2007, P.617). The above system and processes would ensure maximum efficiency and hence would result in customer satisfaction. Works cited: Keith, D, 1964, Human Behavior At Work, 6th ed., Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing Company Ltd. Prasad, L.M, 1995, Business Policy and Strategy, 2nd ed., Sultan Chand & sons. Rustomji, M.K & Sapre, S.A, 1998, Art of Management, Macmillan India Limited. Saxena Rajan, 2007, Marketing Management, 3rd ed., Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing Company Ltd. Wikipedia, Lean manufacturing, Dec 12, 2008 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_manufacturing Read More