Question

You are the Finance Director of medium size clothing company. Performance of directors are evaluated based on amount of profit generated as their compensation is linked to that. However, the company’s profit has dwindled over the past two years due to increasing cost of production.

The company’s handmade clothing line is one of the most celebrated clothing lines around the world, and that has been a source of pride for many years now. However, production level for the handmade clothing line has been reducing due to increasing labour costs. Labour unions have pressured policy makers into amending labour regulations, particularly those relating to pension and minimum wage, to provide more benefits and protection for workers. In the last quarterly review meeting of the board, the Managing Director gave a hint about a plan to invest in new equipment for use in the production process to replace work currently done by hand.

The current financial year is about to end, and management will be finalising the strategic document for the coming year in the next board meeting. An issue that is likely to dominate discussions at the upcoming meeting is the plan to invest in new equipment to mechanise work currently done by hand.

In the last quarterly review meeting when the issue of automating production processes to replace work done by hand came up, the Marketing Director showed concerned about likely drop in patronage if customers get to know that the celebrated handmade clothes are no longer handmade. She is likely to lay before the upcoming board meeting a proposal for an aggressive marketing campaign that will cost twice the budget allocation to marketing efforts.

Required:

Prepare a paper for presentation at the upcoming board meeting:

1. Suggesting likely sources of conflict in relation to the following issues:

2. the plan for investing in equipment for use in replacing work currently done by hand
3. the Marketing Director’s proposal for an aggressive marketing campaign

2. For each scenario suggest ways through which the conflicts could be avoided or resolved.

Answer 1

answer;-

a(i) plan for investing in equipment for use in replacing work currently done by hand

advantage of automation;-

• Reduction in production time – having a machine that is automated definitely speeds up the production time since no thinking is needed by the machine, there is better repeatability, and less human error.
• Increase in accuracy and repeatability – when an automated machine is programmed to perform a task over and over again, the accuracy and repeatability compared to an employee is far greater.
• Less human error – no one is perfect, and we are all prone to making mistakes. Which is why a machine that performs repeated tasks is less likely to make mistakes than an employee.
• Less employee costs – by adding automated machines to an operation, means less employees are needed to get the job done. It also indicates less safety issues, which leads to financial savings. With having less employees, there are numerous costs that are diminished or reduced such as payroll, benefits, sick days, etcetera.
• Increased safety – having automated machines means having less employees who perform tasks that can be dangerous and prone to injury, which can make the work environment safer.
• Higher volume production – investing in automated equipment creates a valuable resource for large production volumes, which in turn, will increase profitability.

a(ii) The best marketing teams use marketing automation to make their campaigns more accurate and to empower their sales team with better leads, and achieve greater ROI. Using marketing automation, marketers are better able to qualify leads and pass them onto sales, resulting in higher revenue and greater growth. Automation is not Marketing Director’s proposal for an aggressive marketing campaign.

a.Automation, or Labor-saving technology is the technology by which a process or procedure is performed with minimal human assistance. Automation or automatic control is the use of various control systems for operating equipment such as machinery, processes in factories, boilers and heat treating ovens, switching on telephone networks, steering and stabilization of ships, aircraft and other applications and vehicles with minimal or reduced human intervention.

The conflict should be avoided finance director has to collaborate with labour Union and staff , finance director has to understand and try to resolve how the resist towards automation of process and handmade worker shall be trained according with new technology handmade worker shall have to confirm by finance director that their job shall not be loose and they will receive an adequate training for process automation.