a. Read the case carefully and answer the questions thatfollows:
Solomon is trying to reduce wastage of resources in his company.He is trying to do it in the best possible manner. He has setstandards for performance of different types of activities and isdoing his level best to perform according to these set standards tominimize wastage of resources. Things are not going to be over forhim as he will have to look into other aspects too. He has set up agood monitoring system which helps him know how to employees ateperforming according to set standards as when the employees meetthese standards they will be given incentives. He is hoping to pullout a good performance from his team this year.
i) Which function of management has been referred to in the abovecase?
ii) Explain the identified function and state why you thinkso.
iii) Which benefits of this function of management have beenhighlighted in the above case?
b. Identify the step of controlling process applicable in thefollowing cases:
i) Mrs Betty is keenly observing the quantity of capsules producedin a pharmaceutical company. She realizes that there is no need forany action to be taken as the deviations are within the acceptablelimits. A day later when she comes to work she finds the situationopposite to that of the previous day. This lime the deviation wasbeyond the acceptable range and needed immediate action. She calledher subordinates and told them that this should not happenagain.
ii) Michel, who is the owner of a company has decided to focus onlyon a few activities of his business. He considers that the rest ofall activities are not critical to the performance of his company.One such area he finds is of labour. The labour cost recently wentup by 4% sending signals of coming danger. Now he will put hisefforts to control this variation by arranging labour at a cheaperrate.
iii) In a company a manager is trying to find out the deviationbetween the actual number of fans produced and the desired number.He already knows about the standard as the company has assigned hima definite quantity of fans to be produced.
iv) Karen a senior experience manager is concerned about the 2%rise in the raw materials. However he knows that this is anacceptable range. He tells his staff that if this rise goes beyond2% it should be brought into the notice of management. Then he setsa limit of 5% when the management should give it the priority overother activities.
v) Alexander wants to ran his company in a different manner. Hewants to set standards to be achieved in both qualitative as wellas quantitative terms. He wants to judge the motivation, skilllevels and satisfaction of the employees. All these things willrequire qualitative standards. On the other hand the company willhave to set quantitative standards for the number of unitsproduced.
vi) Some employees have been assigned the job of judging the outputof production in a neutral and reliable way. They are applyingdifferent techniques for achieving this aim. Some of these arepersonal observation, sample checking, etc. They are also keepingthe units of measurement same to that of the units of setstandards
