The Top Management Commitment

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Introduction 

In this project I hope to explain how good Human Resources Management practice can contribute towards the success of engineering or supply chain. First of all I will have to define the term Human resource management, ‘ HRM is a strategic and coherent approach to the management of organizations most valued assets, the people working there who individually and communally contributes to the achievement and its objectives’. Although there is no universally agreed definition of HRM and definitions can refer to people management activities in the broadest sense or in the specific meaning of high-commitment management or a strategic approach of people management. Here are the key objectives in HRM

Employing the most suitable people to meet the job required.

Increase obligations in job description in the work place.

Assessing of performance and providing feedback to the organization and the workers.

Rewards for appropriate performance.

Development of the skills and knowledge required to meet job descriptions.

Create a cooperative relationship within the worker in the organization.

The four main HRM practices I will be describing to show how they can contribute to the successful engineering or supply chain are:

Top management commitment.

Communication of goals

Employee Training

HR recruitment of exceptional talent.

The reason I choose these three is because I feel these practices are very effective when using HRM in an organization.

Top management commitment:

According to (MacDuffie 1995) who observed that organizations with Elastic production plant regularly surpasses firms with standard mass production plants on the measures of productivity and quality performance. Under mass production, disruptions to the production process (sales fluctuations, supply interruptions, equipment break- downs) prevent the realization of economic of scale. Accordingly, buffers such as extra inventories or repair space are added to the production system. These buffers essentially create organizational slack as a reserve against unforeseen contingencies. But under flexible production, such buffers are seen as costly for several reasons. First, the buffers represent an obligation of resources not directly dedicate to a production. Inventory buffers in particular are costly to store and handle and can hinder the move from one product design to another. Most important, buffers can be used to hide production problems. When inventory stocks are high, a defective part can simply be scrapped and replaced. But when inventories are very low, as with a Just-in Time inventory system, a bad part draws immediate attention, and must be dealt with, to prevent the production system from grinding to a halt. Buffers of in-process inventories are kept low and lot sizes are small, so if a problem is discovered by a "downstream" process, there are few defective parts that must be discarded. Shrinking the size of the final repair area has a similar effect, since a small area will over- flow quickly if defect levels rise. The minimization of buffers serves a cybernetic or feedback function, providing valuable information about production problems (Ono 1988; Schonberger 1982). Having common qualities, top management commitment to quality was significantly related to quality performance (Powell, 1995). In a Meta analysis of 70 management by .objectives MBO studies, (Rodgers and Hunter, 1991) reported that the most essential success factor for implementing MBO programs was top management commitment. The results showed that when top management commitment to specific performance objectives was high, organizations experienced an average gain in productivity of 56%. When top management commitment to organizational objectives was low, the average gain in productivity was only 6%. (Ansari, 1986) found that top management commitment to JIT purchasing implementation was critical for JIT purchasing success. Finally, (Cooper and Kleinschmidt, 1995) found that top management commitment to new products was significantly related to new product lead time performance.

Communication of goals:

In this subtitle we talk about JIT, according to (Vokurka and Davis, 1996) JIT is to provide the right materials, in the right quantities and quality, just in time for production. Implementing just‐in‐time (JIT) management in the ready mixed concrete (RMC) industry seems viable. It has been observed previously by others (Chongqing Construction Committee, 2000, p. 1) that the current practices for managing the concrete supply chain upstream in terms of raw materials acquisition or prerequisite work on site were not geared toward JIT production. However, it is unclear if this observation is also relevant for the procurement of raw materials in the RMC industry in Chongqing (in China) and Singapore. However, the purpose of this study is to investigate the implementation status of JIT in the RMC industry in Chongqing and Singapore. The field study conducted found that all the RMC suppliers surveyed were using the demand pull system to manage RMC production and delivery to sites. However, the study also found that the raw materials could be purchased either using the JIT purchasing method or the traditional economic order quantity (EOQ) purchasing method. Through my understanding of the attribute of the RMC industry, various JIT elements for proper implementation in RCM batching plant were recognized and arranged in five factors. These factors are; JIT customer strategy, JIT vendor strategy, JIT production strategy, quality control strategy and management commitment & employee involvement. Whereas, according to (Low and Chan, 1997) JIT customer strategy is a group of component that is directly related to the process of delivering RMC from batching plant to contractors, these components are long-term relationships with the contractors. JIT vendor strategy is a group of component that is directly related to the procurement of aggregates, cement, sand and admixtures, these components include small lot size, sole sourcing vendor, reducing vendor time, quality certificates from vendor, vendor training and communication with vendors(Andrew, 1984; Crosby, 1984; Finch, 1986). Also according to (; Nakane and Hall, 1983; Novitsky, 1984; Raia, 1986) JIT production strategy is a group of component that is directly related to the RMC production process. These components are reduction in machine set-up time, automation, reduce in-house lot size, group technology, cross-training, preventive maintenance and schedule stability. Quality control strategy is the group of component that is directly related to the issue of RMC quality improvement. These components are quality circles, statistical process control (Hall, 1983; Kolodiejski, 1984; Loebel, 1984). Management commitment and employee involvement Strategy is the group of component that is directly related to management issues in JIT implementation. These components are the suggestion system, co-worker relation, JIT team, JIT education, JIT champion and outside consultant (Crosby, 1984; Harrison, 1984; Kolodiejski, 1984).

Employee training:

employee training: In this context I am going to use a case study by W.L GORE i.e. Gore-tex manufacturers for examples, a company that is famous for ‘inventing world-renowned high-performance fabrics for leisure, industrial, electronics and medical purpose’. To achieve great success in an organization HR managers need to be training there workers consistently, updating them to a new system of working skills and technologies, these are selected by the associate, and there main purpose is to help develop the person within the organization, these are done by sending them to network within the organization, to acquire appropriate skill and boost their performance, the sponsor helps the associate raise a development plan and get feedback from colleagues to identify areas for further development.

In terms of personal motivation, the principle belief is that employee wants to perform well, they don't want to work as an individual, they want to work as a team where they can communicate and feel good about them self. In W. L Gore case study, he made a new rule which depend on individual associate to identify and act on what is best for the achievement of company objective. e.g. when it come to bereavement leave, it was ruled that when a near relative dies, some people might have to take five weeks off, but when a distance relative dies they take a day or two days off. The belief is that in such circumstance the effected individual has to make his own decision. As the associates are highly committed to meeting organizational objectives and have the knowledge to do so, so literally there’s no need writing rules. In a situation like this, where individual are allowed to exercise their own judgment, it is very necessary that staff are not highly skilled and well informed but also that the link between individual achievement and business performance are easily understood. At Gore, this is achieved through a system of payment that is 100% performance related. Therefore, when in determining individual earnings, these are achieved through process of evaluation conducted by colleagues. They are asked to grade themselves in their respective contribution to organization performance and determine their earnings. In conclusion, In order to ensure that the resultant pay is competitive, each year the pay of a number of associates, from a range of roles and functions, is compared with peers in other companies.

HR recruitment of exceptional talent: In the subtitle, I am going to explain how HR manager can recruit the right candidate for the right job. Data connection is engineering software that is used to set/mark aptitude test questions, although to become a data connection employee is not easy, for example, where there’s over 5000 applicant for a 25-30 vacancies in an organization. At first candidates attend a preliminary interview, which is taking electronically with the use of data connection, candidate who passes the first interview are re-invited for a second interview face further test. These include attending a social gathering organized on their behalf. Where candidate spend time on a data connection with a staff and then they are taken out for a meal. Where the purpose of the meal is to use the opportunity to get to know the potential candidate socially after which the candidate spends the following day on the data connection and then interviewed by a senior managers. Data connection software’s are now been used in most large organization for recruitment process, companies like, chevron, shell and so on. Data Connection, recruitment is almost

entirely for entry positions as they believe that it is of utmost importance for future success, to identify young talent and train them in the company’s culture.

Conclusion:

I hope from this article you will take into consideration how good human resource practices can play in ensuring the success of engineering or supply chain business.