Colt's Manufacturing Company - Assignment Example

? Carbon Emission Company Analysis Report The application of information technology is highly important in the manufacturing and product design processes in a company. It always plays a major role in improvement of a company’s products. Information technology also enhances the use of six sigma and lean production, which reduces the cost of production and limits wastage during production. This paper will elaborate three most promising avenues for achieving best practices within Colt's Manufacturing Company. Colt's Manufacturing Company is an American manufacturing company that deals with the manufacture of firearms. Samuel Colt founded it in the year 1836. It makes both civilian and military firearms mainly used in America and other countries (Houze, Cooper, Kornhauser, & Colt, 2006). The companies most popular products include single action army, colt walker, Colt Commando, M4 carbine and colt python. The company mainly targets the United States of America government and the civilians. The company serves both the local and international firearms markets. The company split into two in the year 2002. Colt Manufacturing Company mainly deals with the civilian market while Colt Defense serves the law enforcement countries (Houze, Cooper, Kornhauser, & Colt, 2006). The separation mainly helps in increasing the quality of the products by encouraging specialization. It also enabled the company to clearly assess the performance of the two branches of their productions. This is always done with the aim of maximizing the income through separate management and attracting more investors. A company split up can also take place under the government orders mostly due to concern about monopolistic practices. The Colt's Manufacturing Company highly encourages creativity and innovation in their productions. It is due to this, that they have come up with many firearm designs over their many years in operation. It is also due to this innovation that they have managed to have a tight grip on the firearms production industry making it hard for the survival of new entrants (Groover, 2010). Innovation has also seen them come up with firearm designs that have been termed as way past their time. The Colt’s manufacturing Company mainly uses iron, brass, fiberglass, wood, ceramics, aluminum magnesium, zinc, and steel as their major raw material. Local companies either supply these materials and others imported from foreign countries (Houze, Cooper, Kornhauser, & Colt, 2006). They also reuse some of the local materials as a way of reducing the material price. The company has a huge number of qualified employees who are charged with responsibility of transforming the raw materials into finished products. The machines and equipment that are available at the company for the sake of manufacturing always help the employees. These equipments include gunsmithing lathe, drill presses, riveters, propane torches, rifling cutters; paint both, crimp tools and various others. The company also relies a lot on its researches department, which always makes sure that the necessary information is available. The Colt’s manufacturing Company greatly relies on technology and innovation maintaining their market relevance. The innovation is evident in the encouragement and support they give to their employees during the designing period. Apparently, the company has had many designs that do not make it to the market. This exhibits the level of tolerance that the company accords the designers. The fact that some of the designs by the company have been considered to be way ahead of their time show just how much the level of innovation in the company is high. The company has also avails all the resources and information that the designers might need during the process. The company has highly invested in technology. The development process is enhanced by the use of various machines that facilitate uniformity, quality standards and eliminates the possibility of defects. Such machines include the ones mentioned above. The company also uses 3D printing in enhancing their digital modeling. 3D modeling also applied in the additive processes (Bangalore, 2004). These processes include technologies like selective laser sintering, and fused deposition modeling. This application plays a big role in insuring that the qualities of the products are according to the market standards and even better. The Colt’s manufacturing Company has a website from where someone can shop for civilian firearms. At the website, someone can find information on the available products, their features and shop outlet from which they can find the products (Bangalore, 2004). The site also offer customer care services to their customers. The customer care services offered online include information on product customizing, repair and refinish inquiries, achieve inquiries and serial number look-ups. These services enhance the communication between the company and their customers. The site also gives customers a chance to communicate their feedbacks to the company. The website encourages the development of own guns by the public. This site generally gives the company a chance to produce products that will satisfy their customer and enhance public awareness of the available products. The Colt’s manufacturing Company also applies Computer- integrated manufacturing in their productions. This is the blending of manufacturing activities and information technology. Computer- integrated manufacturing allow a company to practice automate design, production planning and manufacturing and control. This involves the use of Computer aided design in product design, and Flexibility manufacturing systems in the manufacturing process. The proper combination of these technologies results into synergetic results. This ensure that the quality of their product remain completely relevant to the industry’s market. The market has been positively responding to the company’s products. This is highly evident in the capital growth and the continuous growth in sales volume. Their activities have given them advantage over their competitors. Unlike their competitors like Smith & Wesson, the Savage Arms Company, and the Marlin Firearms Company (Houze, Cooper, Kornhauser, & Colt, 2006). Their competitor have specific types of guns that they produce while The Colt’s manufacturing Company employs diversity which ensures that they have wide target market. The manufacture of both army and civilian firearms gives them a competition advantage over their competitors. Various actions would be taken to improve the design, marketing, and production processes in this company. The company would encourage taking of action on any brilliant idea that is brought to them. This will encourage creativity and innovation, which will add their advantage over their competitors (Halevi, 2001). Creativity and innovation will help the company in coming up with products that will be relevant to the new trends in the firearms production industry. Innovation also posses a major challenge to product design status quo thus encouraging product improvement. It also encourages originality in product design as opposed to conforming to the current market situation. Through tolerance, and constructive inquiries on the innovations, the company can make maximum use of the intellectual resources at their disposal. Due to the levels of tolerance of innovation at the Colt’s manufacturing Company, they have enjoyed an advantage over their competitors who are less tolerant to new ideas. The Colt’s manufacturing Company highly applies information technology on the production, marketing, and distribution of their products. This has highly enhanced the uniformity and quality of the products. The use of the website helps them in ensuring detailed communication between them and their customers. This information makes them aware of the market demand while at the same time making their customers aware of the various products they have, their details including the prices. This leads to a good business relation between the company and their customers. It also leads to an increase in the sales volumes, which increases the company’s total income. However, the sight could be improved to allow easily accessible information on the procedure of acquiring a firearm. This will mainly apply to the civilian users. The company should also include information on the precaution involved in the use of the products. In production, The Colt’s manufacturing Company uses Computer aided design in designing of their products. This is further boosted by the use of 3D printing, which ensures that the products designed are of excellent quality. The company also applies Flexibility manufacturing systems in their manufacture to ensure that the goods are produced uniformly and in good time. This helps them in ensuring quality. The application of this technology also reduces the total production cost. This is done through reducing defects and minimizing the amount of human power required. However, The Colt’s manufacturing Company can improve their application of information technology in production by involving information technology in the whole supply chain (Bangalore, 2004). This would be possible through the introduction of an enterprise resource planning system. This system integrates all the components of product manufacturing. The enterprise resource planning system is able to control the cost of production by using modules that creates employees’ schedules, help in ordering raw materials, and monitoring the flow of production and the quality of production. This enables accurate inventory keeping. The improvements mentioned above can highly benefit the customers of Colt’s manufacturing Company. The upgrade of the company website will enable the public to get details on the products they intend to purchase. This will reduce the possibilities of dissatisfaction with the products. This will specifically apply in the case of making the customers aware of any precautions they should take while using the products. The upgrade will also enable the customers get to know all terms and conditions for the purchase to take place. The use of the enterprise resource planning system will also highly benefit the customers. Since it touches on all the component of the supply chain, it will improve the quality of the products that they buy. High quality products will ensure that the customer gets the value they are paying for. The application of this technology is also likely to reduce the total production cost. A reduce of the total production cost will automatically result into a reduction in the market prices. The improvements above are capable of increasing the value position of the company. This is because the application of the enterprise resource planning system which mainly aims at increasing the quality of the products (Halevi, 2001). The improvements are also likely to highly affect the company’s competitive position. This is because the improvement in the quality of their products will automatically lead to an increase for their demand. The reduced production price will also lead to abatement in the market prices. The affordability of these products will give them an advantage over their competitors. These changes will bring a lasting impact on the nature of product production in the company. This is mainly because the adoption of the enterprise resource planning system is likely to totally change the whole supply chain of the company. This is because it will integrate the whole chain supply process. This will be beneficial to the company even many years after now. The upgrading of the website will also highly widen the company’s market base. The use of these technologies will therefore be of long term benefit to the company. These developments will highly affect the human resource department. The effect might be either positive or negative. The positive effect is that the employee will have an easier time carrying out their duty due to the application of this technology. This will further improve the working conditions of the workers. The negative effect will be that some of the employees might lose their jobs (Bangalore, 2004). This is because the introduction of any technology always leads to a decrease in the need for human power. The developments will also call for training of the employees that will be directly operating with these systems. This is mainly to ensure that the systems operate under the control of the employees. However, the company would increase their production volume to ensue that the rising demand is met. The increased production will also help the company control attrition. The Colt’s manufacturing Company will highly benefit from these improvements. Businesses have the main aim of certifying their clients and earning profits. These improvements have proved beyond reasonable doubts that they can contribute to the company in both ways. Thus we can conclude that they would be of significant importance to The Colt’s manufacturing Company. References Bangalore, H. M. T. (2004). Production technology. New Delhi: Tata McGraw-Hill. Groover, M. P. (2010). Fundamentals of modern manufacturing: Materials, processes, and systems. Hoboken, NJ: J. Wiley & Sons. Halevi, G. (2001). Handbook of production management methods. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann. Houze, H. G., Cooper, C. C., Kornhauser, E. M., & Colt, S. (2006). Samuel Colt: Arms, art, and invention. New Haven [u.a.: Yale Univ. Press [u.a.. Read More