Question

Scenario:
You have recently gained employment as a Trainee Engineering Manager with a large multinational company which manufactures electrical machines and transducers, including transformers, motors, generators, sensors and actuators.
Your line manager has tasked you with creating a report to indicate your level of knowledge in engineering management.

Activity
You have specifically been instructed to provide written solutions to the following questions.
Tasks:
a) Investigate at least THREE Management theories and techniques which are used within engineering organisations. Be sure to reference your theories clearly and justify how the techniques could influence operational planning, managerial process and the organisational culture and communication practices.

b) Analyse at least THREE Leadership theories and techniques which are used within engineering organisations. Consider using real life examples to demonstrate your understanding of the different theories, techniques and identify their impact on behaviour, culture and effectiveness.

c) Explain the effects of change within an organisation on its culture and behaviour.
Consider the importance of communication and the impact on performance.

d) Describe the role of Risk and Quality management and assess their impact on organisations. How do these processes encourage performance improvements? Consider risk mapping and risk matrix, how they contribute to quality management and continuous improvement? Justify why some of these processes are better than others in certain circumstances.

Answer 1

Part 1:

Three management theories used in engineering are as follows. The first theory used quite often in Taylor’s theory of management. According to this theory optimizing the processes is more efficient than making the workforce work as hard as possible. This theory suggested to ditch the rule of thumb and start using scientific methods. Also, jobs must be allocated to people after assessing their skills. Motivating an employee can also play an important role in his performance improvement. The nest theory is the Just in Time method. This focuses more on producing only what is required and avoid extra production. In this theory the management has to make sure that the communication among various departments is very well established so that the delay in process can be avoided and also extra production can be prevented. Third theory used in engineering is the systems theory. This theory explains how the systems affect workers and the workers affect the system. Understanding this makes it easier to optimize processes and achieve goals.

Part 2:

The leadership theories used in engineering are as follows. First theory is the Henry Fayol Theory. According to this theory, a leader has the following tasks to do in an organisation. These are planning, forecasting, organising, commanding, coordinating and controlling. All these are to be done by an effective leader to take an organization to success. Next is the Trait Theory. According to this theory, leaders are the ones who possess some specific personality traits. These traits are, honesty, competence, intelligence, courage, imagination, etc. The next theory is the theory of transformational leadership. According to this, leaders communicate with their employees and motivate them to advance together. The people are transformed due to the leader’s capability of conveying the goals to his employees.

Part 3:

Change in an organization can effect it in various ways. It can lead to stress, increased turnover, lack of motivation to work and various life changes for employees like salary cuts. Change can drastically affect the performance of the employees if not communicated properly. In case a company is planning to bring in change it can first train the employees for it to prevent any future problems. The culture can also get affected by the change as the employees will lack motivation and spend more time away from work.

Part 4:

Risk and quality management are really crucial for the organisations. If a firm is capable of assessing and manging risks and quality a lot of problems can be solved. The employees will also stay motivated if there are no loopholes in the system and their work goes on smooth. Risk mapping is the process of using data visualisation to communicate the risk organization faces. Whereas, risk matrix is used in risk management to determine the level of risk in some activity. Risk matrix seems to be better than the risk map as it tells how much a certain factor can affect the organization, so using this we can distinguish between high and low risk factors and work on only which is more significant for the company.