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ANSWER 4.1
The director should take the following actions: (a) schedule
overtime to conduct as much testing as possible before product
shipment; (b) ship the product on time; (c) conduct a risk
analysis to identify conceivable failure modes and their
respective remedial solutions based on the best understanding of
the production team at this time; (d) get the team prepared to
respond to customers service needs; (e) review causes for
product delays and initiate a program to speed up the product
development process.
ANSWEER 4.2
The sales manager should proceed as follows:
A. Call a staff meeting, disclose the need of improving sales
effectiveness, review the specific recommendations of the
management consultants, and solicit the opinion from everyone.
B. Recite the advantages and disadvantages of the
recommendations from the viewpoints of the sales staff.
C. Invite ideas to promote sales effectiveness beyond the
consultants recommendations. Also solicit recommendations
regarding metrics to measure sales effectiveness in order to
monitor progress (e.g., sales dollar per staff, sales growth rate
per region, ratio of sales revenue to sales cost, number of sales
visits per staff, etc.).
D. Point out to all at the end of staff meeting that a careful
evaluation will be done to include all inputs provided by the
sales staff, that a decision on changes will be forthcoming, and
that everyone is requested to cooperate in implementing the
changes to be announced.
E. Decide on the changes to implement, either all or part of
consultants recommendation, with or without modifications based
on staff inputs. Select the metrics to measure progress.
F. Report back to the company president and implement the
changes.
ANSWER 4.3
The director should follow the steps enumerated below to make
a choice:
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A. Talk with the three managers separately and inquire about (a)
how their projects are coming along, (b) how their projects will
be adversely affected should one of their engineers be pulled
away for one month for a critical overseas installation job, and
(c) how they would manage to substitute staff to fill in the gap
from behind.
B. Listen carefully to understand the perceived adverse impact
and assess its significance from the departmental stand point;
what is important to the managers may not be as important to the
director who oversees the entire department. Assess the relative
feasibility of the recommended steps to substitute support.
C. Tell the managers that their inputs will be reviewed and he
will make a decision soon.
D. Compare the relative impact and feasibility of the three
options and choose one with the least impact, from the
departmental viewpoint, and with the most feasibility for
rearranging substitution.
E. Inform all managers of the decision and propose an engineer
who should be sent to assist. Check with the engineer involved to
secure consent before formally announcing the decision.
ANSWER 4.4
Situations like this happen in industry due to narrow-minded,
righteous people with a strong technical background and no sense
of perspective; these people may also have a hidden agenda to
upstage their boss. Managers need to properly deal with these
people.
A. Bill should ask Stanley to reprimand Henry for his righteous
and untactful disputes over technical issues raised before
Marketing, the internal customer.
B. Stanley should call Henry in and restate to Henry the
following points:
(a) Design was under a severe time constraint to respond.
(b) To satisfy Marketing, an internal customer to Design, a
reasonably good design is much better than no design at all.
(c) He is proud of Bill, who was able to work through the
night and come up with a design at such a short notice.
(d) Being one of the best designers on staff, Henry may
technically have a point in questioning the design simplicity and
performance expectation of the current design.
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D.
Review in 6 Months
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E.
F.
I.
J.
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C. By not having walked around the shop floor, the plant manager
failed to notice early on the negative attitude of workers toward
the task force, causing their final recommendations to be dead
on arrival.
The plant manager should have done the following:
A. Set up a quality circle type of team comprised only of shop
floor workers of different operations who have direct hands-on
knowledge of production and materials handling.
B. Delegate the responsibility of eliminating waste materials to
the team, specify objectives, assign a budget and offer needed
support (e.g., time off).
C. Announce the team membership and project objectives in a town
meeting, answer questions to clarify objectives and invite all
workers to make contributions.
D. Receive reports regularly and offer encouragement.
around the shop floor to stay in contact with workers.
Walk
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ANSWER 4.13
It is a major decision for Company X to consider switching
material type. Key decisions factors involved may include the
following:
A. Customer preference - affected by considerations related to
weight, cost, competitive pressure and delivery schedule.
B. Supply sources long term procurement contract at favorable
financial terms.
C. Technologies advancements in methods for manufacturing
aluminum parts, pointing the way to better quality, lower unit
costs, or better corrosion characteristics of parts.
Such a decision is likely to be made at the level of Vice
President/Director of engineering in the absence of major
investment requirements for new equipment. Otherwise, a capital
budgeting proposal is needed to request for new funding which
must be approved by the company president or the company board of
directors.
ANSWER 4.14
Selecting employees is a major management responsibility
which must be carried out carefully. Each of the three candidates
has strengths and weaknesses. A practical way to select
employees is to decide on a rational basis the Kepner-Tregoe
Method:
A. Define the relevant decision criteria which are mutually
exclusive and collectively exhaustive. To be mutually exclusive
the criteria must be independent from each other in order to
avoid doubling counting. To be collectively exhaustive no
important criteria must have been excluded.
B.
C.
D. Compute the weight score and choose the one with the highest
weighted score.
The person to be selected needs to coordinate work inside and
outside of the department. Certain traits and capabilities are
more important than others. Some are learnable while others are
not readily modified or improved. For the candidates on hand,
Table 4-1 outlines the appropriate decision-making process.
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WEIGHT
10
10
10
Coordination Experience
10
10
180
204
165
Weighted Score
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