Introduction
The difference between a successful business investment and an ordinary one depends on how their managers develop and execute their operation designs (Schroeder and Goldstein 2010).
There is the need for aligning all the aspects of an organization with the needs of its customers to ensure an investor gets reasonable returns on his capital. This discussion presents various operation management issues at the Portland Plant.
Operations Design, Planning and Control
The operational management crisis facing this company stems from its design and functions that are assigned to different departments. Nobody is responsible for poor quality produced in various occasions. This explains why Hewlett Packard played the role of checking the quality of this company’s products.
The existing quality assurance department was ornamental and its role has been to inspect the company’s products instead of testing its features (Slack, Chambers and Johnston 2009). The Quality Manager of this plant Admits that nobody cared to look beyond the data presented to the production meeting.
In addition, the department was neither used to nor prepared to manage a crisis and when this one occurred it was not prepared to control it. Paper curling became a serious problem in the company’s ink jet products, but this did not arouse the need for immediate action by the company (Slack, Chambers and Johnston 2009).
In addition, it approaches its problems from the customer’s point of view; therefore, it concentrated on satisfying the needs of one customer and ignored the importance of improving the quality of its products for other clients.
This explains why the plant made losses of about $1 million in 1998 even though HP regarded its products as acceptable (Slack, Chambers and Johnston 2009). Moreover, the plant took a wrong approach in managing the problems witnessed in 1998.
It registered poor quality in productivity, scrap and re-work and instead of focusing on improving these issues it shifted its attention to increasing productivity.
Tom Bickford admits that there was no discipline in making changes and real concepts were ignored by the plant; therefore, the company worsened its problems by ignoring the need to meet customers’ demand and concentrating on product specifications (Slack, Chambers and Johnston 2009).
As a result, jumbo rolls were thrown away as the staff at the operations department became rude and ignored the demands of the plant’s chief client.
The Need for Changes
The Portland Plant needs to make urgent changes to ensure it satisfies the needs of its clients. First, it is necessary to explain that clients demand quality products from producers and when they notice some weaknesses they communicate with the relevant departments to ensure the problems are fixed (Schroeder and Goldstein 2010).
The Quality Management Department focuses on supervision of other sectors yet this is not sufficient to guarantee the plant the production of quality services. Its responsibilities have not been outlined clearly and this explains why it is not keen on looking beyond the data presented to it from the quality sector.
The staffs of this company will contribute to its collapse if they continue arguing and denying that their products do not meet the required standards. HP presented its queries, but the staffs at the quality department were rude and denied that there were weaknesses in its products.
This is an unprofessional approach to issues that are central in determining the future and relationship of a company and its clients.
New Operation Design, Planning and Control
There is the need for this company to adopt new operation designs, plans and control approaches if it wants to retain its clients. First, the roles of all departments, including the production and quality assurance should be outlined to ensure everybody knows his responsibilities.
The plant should strengthen the functions of its departments to ensure they do not sit and look at figures without understanding their meanings (Schroeder and Goldstein 2010). This will help the company to understand its performance and make necessary changes to satisfy the needs of its clients.
Secondly, this plant should outsource the quality assurance department to ensure it gets quality services by identifying weaknesses in its products. This will help the company to get an objective understanding of its production processes and quality.
Thirdly, the human resource department should train its workers on how to respond to negative feedback from clients (Stevenson 2011). This will reduce instances of making negative remarks when clients complain about the quality of products supplied to them.
Lastly, the plant should focus on producing products that meet the needs of all customers and avoid concentration on HP alone. HP is focusing on introducing new generation ink-jet printers depending on its customers’ needs and changes in trends and Portland Plant should follow suit.
There is the need to ensure the tastes and preferences of all clients are put into consideration and no client should be given special treatment at the expense of the objectives of this company (Stevenson 2011).
Conclusion
Portland Plant lacks robust, active and dedicated departments that can look beyond operation statistics and develop strategies for improving production and quality.
It has rude staffs and uncaring managers that do not have time to evaluate clients’ comments about the quality of its products.
There is the need for this company to adopt a new operation design, plan and control measures to ensure it maintains its clients.
References
Schroeder, R. and Goldstein, S. (2010). Operations Management: ContemporaryConcepts and Cases. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Slack, N., Chambers, S. and Johnston, R. (2009). Operations Management and MyOMLab. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
Stevenson, W. (2011). Operations Management (Operations and Decision Sciences). New York: McGraw-Hill.