SLEEK MOTOR

SLEEK MOTOR

Introduction

Modern businesses require quality control mechanisms to achieve their strategic goals and improve customer satisfaction. There are numerous ways to implement control to ensure a company improves its processes to match industry standards. The essay explores the case of sleek motors and the various industry parameters that it ought to improve upon.

Controls

In general, control is a mechanism or a device that is used when regulating or guiding the operation of an apparatus, machine, or even a system. In a business setting, control often involves the procedures or processes that guide, regulate, as well as protect a particular organization (Androniceanu, 2017). It forms one of the four core managerial functions, along with organizing, planning, as well as leading. A common type of control that organizations employ is the setting of the financial policies. Such policies may not be communicated to all the workers, but they do exist for all but the smallest companies.

Controls often begin with managing financial resources. A good example is that a company may require two signatures to be appended on a check that is worth more than ten thousand dollars. The company may also have one person to be required to log journal entries while another one reviews the same entries. Such control policies go a long way towards preventing errors and fraud while monitoring whether the organization’s goals are being attained. In much larger firms, every departmental manager has to submit an annual budget, which includes a loss-and-profit statement. The most common approach or style, when it comes to organizational control is referred to as the top-down control (Pambreni, Khatibi, Azam & Tham, 2019). With such kind of control, decisions are usually made by senior executives, and the information flows downwards to the employees working at the lower echelons of the business (Honarpour, Jusoh & Md Nor, 2018).  The three main kinds of business control include the proactive, concurrent, and familiar feedback controls.SLEEK MOTOR

When it comes to sleek cars, the company should be concerned with the results for the electric-car standard specifications since it provides a yardstick to measure whether the company is on course to produce a viable electric car that will be a success in the short and long run. Keeping a close eye on the electric car standard specifications allows the management to ensure that the company is profitable through realizing a healthy return on its investments.

Standard Specifications

The standard overall cost of manufacturing a unit stands at 13,500. Of all the company’s manufacturing plants, only the Koenigsegg plant appears to beat the standard with a cost of 12,750. The difference in manufacturing cost may be due to differences in labor costs between the locations. The company should not alter the standard, but I believe that a deviation of +/- 10% from the standard should be acceptable. Pushing for the lowest manufacturing costs may, in the long run, lead to poor quality units. With such thinking, the plants in Lingotto, and Georgetown appear to lie well within the margin of error. Sleek motors should, therefore, try to reign in the costs through stricter controls at Fort Wayne and Kansas City, which are too high.

The standard manufacturing cycle time stands at fifteen hours. The sleek plants fare quite well with three plants in Lingotto, Kansas City, and Koenigsegg doing better than the standard. The plants in Fort Wayne and Georgetown recorded cycle times of eighteen and sixteen hours, respectively. Sleek motors should review the manufacturing processes at the two plants to do away with any unnecessary steps that lead to higher cycle times. The standard time seems reasonable since other plants managed to achieve and better it.

The standard yield is set at 98%. Only the plant at Fort Wayne achieved it at 99%. The standard yield seems to be too high and should be lowered by one percentage point since most of the plants were unable to achieve it. The defective rate standard is at two percent. The Fort Wayne plant has a rate of one percent, the only one to better it. The rate should be placed at a realistic rate of three percent to ensure most of the plants achieve it. The standard scrap rate stands at two percent. There should be tighter controls at Georgetown, Fort Wayne, and Koenigsegg plants to reduce wastage through their higher scrap rate.

The average standard production downtime stands at 0.50%/ Only the Kansas City plant marched that rate. It should be increased to at least one percent since downtime could be caused by a multitude of external factors away from the company’s control.  When it comes to training time hours per month, the standard figure is eight hours. None of the plants met the figure. The auto company should enact tighter controls to ensure the plants improve their training rates. The company should also increase its shipping problems rate to about two per one thousand items, which is a realistic figure for all the plants to achieve. The safety incidents per employee’s standard rates stand at 1.5%, with only Georgetown achieving the target. When it comes to employee safety, tighter controls should be put in place to improve the rates in the other plants. The standard number of units produced per annum stands at 45,000. Production should be ramped up at Fort Wayne, Georgetown, and Koenigsegg since these plants are also falling way below the standard facility utilization rate of 82.82%.

Corrective Action

Implementing total quality management at sleek motors will enable the plants to produce quality work. The principles of quality management will give the plants a strategic approach to improvement (Ross, 2017). All these factors will enable sleek motors attain the standards it ought to achieve in the auto manufacturing sector.

Conclusion

Sleek motors have five plants that record different results on its industry quality standards parameters.  From the figures provided, the firm needs to implement some tighter quality controls on parameters such as employee safety and manufacturing cycle times. These could be achieved through incorporating total quality management systems.

References

Androniceanu, A. (2017). The three-dimensional approach of Total Quality Management, an

essential strategic option for business excellence. Amfiteatru Economic, 19(44), 61-78.

Honarpour, A., Jusoh, A., & Md Nor, K. (2018). Total quality management, knowledge

management, and innovation: an empirical study in R&D units. Total Quality

Management & Business Excellence, 29(7-8), 798-816.

Pambreni, Y., Khatibi, A., Azam, S., & Tham, J. (2019). The influence of total quality

management toward organization performance. Management Science Letters, 9(9), 1397

1406.

Ross, J. E. (2017). Total quality management: Text, cases, and readings. Routledge.