Sam Nolan clicked the mouse for one more round of solitaire on the computer in his den. He’d been at it for more than an hour, and his wife had long ago given up trying to persuade him to join her for a movie or are Saturday night on the town. The mind-numbering game seemed to be all that calmed Sam down enough to stop thinking about work and how his job seemed to get worse every day.
Nolan was chief information officer at Century Medical, a large medical products company based in Connecticut. He had joined the company four years ago, and since that time Century had made great progress integrating technology into its systems and processes. Nolan had already led projects to design and build two highly successful systems for century. One was a benefits-administration system for the company’s HR department. The other was a complex Web-based purchasing system that stream-lined the process of purchasing supplies and capital goods. Although the system had been up and running for only a few months, modest projects were that it would save Century nearly $2 million annually. Previously, Century’s purchasing managers were bogged down with shuffling and processing paper. The purchasing process would begin when an employee filled out a materials request form. Then the form would travel through various offices for approval and signatures before eventually being converted into a purchase order. The new web-based system allowed employees to fill out electronic request forms that were automatically e-mailed to everyone whose approval was needed. The time for processing request forms was cut from weeks to days or even hours. When authorization was complete, the system would automatically launch a purchase order to the appropriate supplier. In addition, because the new system had dramatically cut the time purchasing managers spent shuffling paper, they now had more time to work collaboratively with key stakeholders to identify and select the best suppliers and negotiate better deals.
Nolan thought wearily of all the hours he had put in developing trust with people throughout the company and showing them how technology could not only save time and money but also support team-based work and give people more control over their own jobs. He smiled briefly she recalled one long-term HR employee, 61-year-old Ethel Morre. She had been terrified when Nolan first began showing her the company’s intranet, but she was now one of his biggest supporters. In fact, it had been Ethel who had first approached him with idea about a web-based job posting system. The two had pulled together a team and developed an idea for linking century managers, internal recruiters, and job applicants using artificial intelligence software on top of an integrated web-based system. When Nolan had presented the idea to his boss, executive vice-president Sandra Ivey, she had enthusiastically endorsed it, and within a few weeks the team had authorization to proceed with the project.
But everything began to change when Ivey resigned her position six months later to take a plum job in New York. Ivey’s successor, Tom carr, seemed to have little interest in the project. During their first meeting, Carr had openly referred to the project as a waste of time and money. He immediately disapproved several new features suggested by the company’s internal recruiters, even though the project team argued that the features could double internal hiring and save millions in training costs. “Just stick to the original plan and get it done. All this stuff needs to be handled on a personal basis anyway,” Carr countered. “you can’t learn more from a computer than you can talking to real people – and as for internal recruiting, it shouldn’t be so hard to talk to people if they’re already working right here in the company.” Carr seemed to have no understanding of how and why technology was being used. He became irritated when Ethel Moore referred to the system as “web-based”. He boasted that he had never visited Century’s intranet site and suggested that “this internet fad” would blow over in a year or so anyway. Even Ethel’s enthusiasm couldn’t get through to him. She tried to show him some of the HR resources visible on the intranet and explain how it had benefited the department and the company, but he waved her away. “Technology is for those people in the IS department. My job is people, and yours should be, too”. Ethel was crushed, and Nolan realized it would be like beating his head against a brick wall to try to persuade Carr to the team’s point of view. Near the end of the meeting, Carr even jokingly suggested that the project team should just buy a couple of filing cabinets and save everyone some time and money.
Just when the team thought things couldn’t get any worse, Carr dropped the other bomb. They would no longer be allowed to gather input from uses of the new system. Nolan feared that without the input of potential users, the system wouldn’t meet their needs, or even that users would boycott the system because they hadn’t been allowed to participate. No doubt that would put a great big “I told you so” smile right on Carr’s face.
Nolan sighed and leaned back in his chair. The project had begun to feel like joke. The vibrant and innovative human resources department his team had imagined now seemed like nothing more than a pipe dream. But despite his frustration, a new thought entered Nolan’s mind: “Is Carr just stubborn and narrow-minded or does he have a point that HR is a people business that doesn’t need a high-tech job posting system?”
questions:
In: Operations Management
Debate the inputs, tools and techniques, and the outputs of the risk management process as prescribed by the PMI. Your discussion must reference the case study even if you have to make some assumptions.
In: Operations Management
What are Goleman’s six leadership prototypes? Are there any other leadership prototypes that could be added to Goleman’s list? Explain.
In: Operations Management
Examine the launch of Coke Life from an ethical perspective.
In: Operations Management
Marketing
i. Services differ from goods in terms of Intangibility, Inseparability, Inconsistency and Inventory.
Explain and provide an example of Intangibility
Explain and provide an example of Inseparability
Explain and provide an example of Inconsistency
Explain and provide an example of Inventory
In: Operations Management
When was the AAA formed and what was their first order of business?
In: Operations Management
The actual demand data for an item at a local retailer
during the past six weeks are shown below:
WEEK
ACTUAL DEMAND
(number of units)
Six weeks ago
202
Five weeks ago
201
Four weeks ago
199
Three weeks ago
200
Two weeks ago
203
One week ago
198
THIS WEEK
ACTUAL DEMAND NOT KNOWN
Determine the demand forecast for THIS WEEK using each of the following methods:
a. A 3-week moving average.
[3]
b. A 4-week weighted moving average using weights of 15, 5, 3, and 2 for one week ago, two
weeks ago, three weeks ago, and four weeks ago, respectively. (
Hint
: the higher weights
are applied to the more recent time periods.)
c. Exponential smoothing using the following: smoothing constant,
α
= 0.4 and the demand
forecast for three weeks ago = 199 units.
In: Operations Management
Write a business letter.
Example:
Staples, Inc. 7661 Arundel Mills Boulevard Hanover, MD 21076 October 18, 2019 Mr. Jason Rapinoe Warehouse Manager Leonard Paper Company 725 North Haven Street Baltimore, MD 21205 Dear Mr. Rapinoe, I am writing to you concerning a recent order that was placed for 5 pallets of white printer paper, approximately two weeks ago, October 4 for Staples, Inc. I received an email two business days later confirming the receipt of payment and the shipment of the pallets of printer paper. Shipments from your company should reach the specific destination within 4-6 business days of being ordered, and I have yet to receive the pallets. Do you have any information on what my have potentially happened to delay the shipment or where the shipment would be currently? I am very confident in your products and customer service. The shipment of printer paper is needed soon, and I am hopeful that you may be able to provide me with an estimate of when I would receive them. Thank you in advance for any help you might be able to offer.
|
In: Operations Management
In: Operations Management
In: Operations Management
Why tourism manager need to understand consumer behaviour?
Use at least 300 words to answer this question, preferably with POINT
In: Operations Management
Note: You can consider any IT company and India as work place OR YOU can chose based on you choice with assumption.
Note: You can consider any IT company and India as work place OR YOU can chose based on you choice with assumption.
In: Operations Management
Training and development and workers safety
Our University is currently focusing on geographic expansion/growth
by establishing and opening 2 new colleges which are College of
Medicine and College of Architecture as well as hiring 50 more
extra workers and 4 extra supervisors.
The College of Medicine will be located in Dammam, 30 workers
instructors and administration people and 2 supervisors
the College of Architecture will be located in Khobar, 20 workers
instructors and administration people and 2 supervisors
By the expansion of growth 2 locations, 50 extra workers, 4 extra
supervisors.
What behaviors will you train for in workers and supervisors?
How will you measure the success of worker training?
How will you improve the worker safety?
Note do not focus on the locations where it will be it does not
matter
It should be around 1000 words
In: Operations Management
In: Operations Management
In: Operations Management