Push vs. Pull in Supply Chain

When designing pieces of the supply chain, managers must determine whether these pieces are part of the push or pull in the chain. Push systems generally require information in the form of elaborate material requirement planning systems to take the master production schedule and roll it back, creating schedules for suppliers with part types, quantities, and delivery dates. Pull systems require information on actual demand to be transmitted extremely quickly throughout the entire chain so that production and distribution of parts and products may accurately reflect the real demand.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir - Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Strategy Development

One useful approach to strategy development involves a five-step process in which planners answer five questions about each strategic issue. The following questions should be adjusted depending on whether the direct or indirect, goals, or vision of success approach to strategy formulation is used:

1. What are the practiced alternatives, dreams, or visions we might pursue to address this strategic issue, achieve this goal, or realize this scenario?
2. What are the barriers to the realization of these alternatives, dreams or visions?
3. What major proposals might we pursue to achieve these alternatives, dreams, or visions directly or to overcome the barriers to their realization?
4. What major actions must be taken within the next year (or two) to implement the major proposals?
5. What specific steps must be taken within the next six months to implement the major proposals, and who is responsible?

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir - Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Want Satisfaction and Levels of Living

The level of want satisfaction achieved in a given economic society is hard to measure. Ordinarily it is expressed in terms of per capita income—sometimes gross and sometimes net, depending on the availability of data. There may be a great dispersion around the average; and the average income figure may be misleading.  Nevertheless, per capita income appears to be one of the best measures available of the performance of an economy.

Sometimes people judge the performance of an economy on the basis of whether per capita incomes are at a satisfactory level. The implication is that if the level is below satisfactory, something ought to be done about it—that everyone is entitled to a satisfactory level of living. Judgments of these kinds are not very valuable from the point of view of economic analysis.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir - Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

 

Corporate Political Strategy

Corporate political strategy refers to those activities taken by organizations to acquire, develop, and use of power to obtain an advantage (a particular allocation of resources or no change in the allocation) in a situation of conflict. This definition assumes that the many interests in a society will produce conflict about what to do and how to do it. Whether the issue is as broad as global warming or as specific as the risk posed by dioxin in a particular neighborhood, government is the place where such conflicts are resolved. A corporate political strategy is an approach to such relationships in a way that will enable the company to acquire power, use it, and obtain an advantage from it whenever such conflicts affect the firm or its business activities.

The company has a clear and vital business interest in a wide range of political issues. Companies are likely to be engaged in trying to influence what government does in such areas because of their stake in the outcome. They are, in other words, stakeholders of the public policy process and the political system.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir - Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

 

Cardinal versus Ordinal

What do we mean when we say that a variable is “quantitatively measurable”?We do not necessarily mean that there is only a single way of measuring or scaling it. Temperature is certainly quantitatively measurable, but there are alternative ways of doing so. For example, 32⁰ Fahrenheit is 0⁰ Celsius, and each degree up or down of Celsius corresponds to 1.8 degrees up or down of Fahrenheit. The two scales differ, but only in zero point and unit interval. Similarly, altitude could be measured from sea level or from the center of the earth (shift of zero point) and in feet or meters (shift of unit interval). Both temperature and altitude are more technically called cardinal magnitudes, variables which have the following property: that, regardless of shift of zero-point and unit interval, the relative magnitudes of differences remain the same. In case of altitude, for example, there’s a bigger difference between the heights of the base and crest of Mount Everest than between the ground floor and roof of even the tallest building. This remains true whether we scale altitude in feet or meters or whether we measure it from sea level or from the center of the earth. If people can state that they prefer two million to one million—but not by how much—their utility is said to be an “ordinal” magnitude. Put another way, if Total Utility is an ordinal magnitude we cannot say anything about the  size of Marginal Utility but we can still say whether Marginal Utility is positive or negative.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir - Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

 

Determining Salary Range

Responsibilities and salary are always related. Once you have drawn up a list of job duties and responsibilities and have written a job description, determining a corresponding salary range should be easy.

Roughly speaking, all jobs can be sorted into three categories:

1. Nonexempt jobs are those that involve performing prescribed, internal tasks and include little problem solving.
2. Exempt jobs are those associated with supervising the performance of internal tasks and dealing with problems related to those tasks. These employees do not need to be overpaid overtime for extra hours. A good rule of thumb for determining whether a job is exempt is this: if you miss a day of work and someone else does your work for you during your absence, your job is probably nonexempt. But if you return to work and find your work waiting for you, you’re probably exempt.
3. Management positions are those involving responsibility for addressing internal and external problems and programs, such as business objectives and challenges.

Avoid the temptation to inflate a job’s title by pasting the management label on a task-based job. People with management skills cost more money in the job market and are harder to hire. Let’s say you decide to speed up your company’s inefficient employee healthcare claims handling process by creating a new position: someone who will collect claim forms and coordinate with your insurance carrier. Don’t lose sight of the fact that you are hiring someone to perform a series of tasks, not to address a management problem. Advertise for a clerk or coordinator, not a manager.

Always establish the correct responsibility level and salary range for every opening you advertise. Doing so will provide consistency throughout your department and maintain internal equity in the structuring and compensation of jobs.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir - Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Productivity Measurement System

One of the important steps in productivity improvement is establishing a productivity measurement system with the enterprise. This in itself brings some improvement in performance by making people more aware of the meaning of productivity. The following advice could be useful in setting up the measurement system:

• Determine the elements of the enterprise that most need to be monitored.
• Determine the types of measure to be used.
• Select perfect concepts and units of measurement for the output and input of the company as a whole, and for the critical sub-activities.
• Ascertain the availability of data and make necessary compromises.
• Select a post activity, section or group within the organization, and test the measurement system to obtain periodic feedback on the results.
• Assess the system’s value, make any modifications and conduct a new pilot activity if the modifications completely change the original system design.

A measurement system must consider cost effectiveness, the limitations of productivity measurement and whether total factor measurement is necessary; in other words, it must determine the range and terms of the measurement system tasks. It must be easy to use and serve to identify the reasons for the organizational changes.

The general consideration on productivity management helps in identifying the so-called organizational meta-structure of productivity improvement process. Every given method of productivity improvement covers:

1. Organizational forms of productivity improvement
2. Productivity improvement areas
3. Productivity improvement techniques

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir - Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Handling Delays

In the sales process, especially in the final phases, delays can represent a frustrating gray area that leaves you hanging, wondering whether or not the customer will buy. After you have proposed a solution, one of three outcomes could take place:

• Decision pending
• Continuation
• Stall.

Decision pending is a waiting period in which the decision has not been made. The reason could be that a key decision maker either was not present when the proposal was made or has not yet made up his mind; or that other, more pressing issues have arisen.

Continuation means that the customer seems to be interested in continuing the relationship with you but makes no specific commitment regarding your proposal.

Stall is a situation in which the customer puts you off or seems evasive. A stall usually indicates a hidden objection. Stalls typically occur after you have asked for a commitment. Use the following tactics to handle a stall:

• Try to find out the real reason for the stall by using your questioning skills.
• If the customer does not buy, find out why.
• Get the objections out in the open and handle them, to determine the real reason for not buying.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir - Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Organizational Objectives

Objectives are guideposts used by managers to define standards of what the organization should accomplish in such areas as profitability, customer service, and social responsibility. Managers can continually evaluate performance in terms of how well the organization is moving in the direction of its objectives.

Objectives often become standards of the manager by their definition of excellence in organizational performance. Without such standards, the manager possesses no tools for evaluating performance – no means of deciding whether work is good or bad. Thus, objectives provide not only a definite statement of what the organization wants to accomplish but also a means of evaluating progress toward a goal. If performance appears unsatisfactory, management can take corrective action, refocusing the organization in the direction of the objectives.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir - Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Trend Analysis

Managers must often determine whether the variations in business activity indicated by statistics have any regular pattern.

Trend analysis, also known as time-series analysis, is the examination of data over a sufficiently long time so that regularities and relationships can be detected, interpreted, and used as the basis for forecasts of business activity. Such an analysis generally explains changes in terms of three factors: seasonal variations, cyclical variations, and secular (or long-term) trends in business growth.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir - Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.