What are the 3-4 chief elements of your company\'s production strategy (as conce

Question

What are the 3-4 chief elements of your company's production strategy (as concerns number and location of plants, making plant upgrades, worker compensation, use of TQM/Six Sigma programs, use of overtime, and so on)? Also, is your company employing a global strategy or a strategy that varies significantly from geographic region to geographic region? Why is that strategy being employed? Support your answer with research from at least three scholarly sources. Your initial posting must be a minimum of 250 words.

Explanation / Answer

Number and Location of Plants

The location of plants should be closer to the mother warehouse or the regional warehouse so as to be able to ship the product to customers faster with lesser overall lead time of supply. The number of plants depends upon the manufacturing capacity of each plant, the type of product manufactured at a given location, the capital expenditure plan of a company and the distribution strategy of a company. Usually, any organization expands its capacity gradually and therefore either they expand the capacity of the existing plant or set up a new plant depending upon the situation.

Making Plant upgrades

Plant upgrades is a very important focus area to ensure that a company is using the latest technology, machinery and process to service the customer. Regular and Preventive Maintenance is also an important activity which is necessary for good functioning and effective management of a plant.

Worker compensation

In order to remunerate workers for their role at plant, fair and equitable salaries complying with the regulation needs to be ensured. This can be a mix of both fixed, vairable pay and overtime providing flexibility and encouragement depending upon business situation and priorities.

Use of TQM/Six Sigma

Use of TQM and Six Sigma tools is an option for any manufacturing plant to reduce errors, defects, wastage and improve efficiency, productivity and effectiveness of manufacturing operations. However, these are very specialized tools and techniques that need great amount of focus and commitment from the top management and from the employees who are a part of these initiatives. A lot of effort on training, motivating and driving teams is required to achieve desired results from such projects.

Companies generally employ a two pronged strategy where global strategy is the guideline and the local strategy is aligned with global strategy but local strategy is designed to meet the requirements of a particular market which can be different or similar to another market. The strategy can't be generalized as there are many variables and factors that come into play while deploying the right and most appropriate strategy to yield desired results.

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