Within the global context critically assess the following major manufacturing decision categories and evaluate its impact on the manufacturing industry.

1. Facility (size, location and focus)
2. Capacity (amount, timing, type)
3. Vertical Integration and Partner management (direction, extent, interface, collaboration)
4. Production Technologies and Processese (equipment, automation,interconnectedness, scale, flexibility)
5. Workforce and Management (wage policies, security, skill levels)
6. Logistics and supply chain (logistics facilities and methods, inventory and policies, vendor coordination, production planning)
7. Organizational and incentives (structure, reporting levels, degree of centralization, role of staff, control and reward systems)
8. Business processes (interfaces and responsibilities, responsibilities, vendor development, monitoring and intervention

Question One

Hotbed Limited is trying to decide whether to sell up and build a new factory at a new site or rebuild its current facility. It has evaluated some of the costs and probabilities of its options, as well as some of the ‘what-if’ scenarios. It now wants to prepare a decision tree to assist with its decision making.

Prepare a decision tree to clarify the issues and present a recommendation.

Question Two

You are redesigning the company structure of an old established construction company to meet a growing need for project-based business. The business has to manage projects via project managers and teams allocated to each project. The business also has architects and structural engineers; purchasing staff for buying materials; pools of labour with specific skills such as brick laying, plumbing, etc.; and business development, sales/marketing, and finance departments. The company also has access to a large supply of subcontractors such as painters and electrical technicians.

Propose an efficient company structure that will be responsive to new growing demand for projects and discuss why you have chosen this structure.

You are approached by the Operations Manager of a small manufacturing facility where they are looking to implement self-driving vehicles known as AGVs (Automated Guided Vehicles) to improve material handling and inventory control (on site). You are asked to review a survey that has been drafted to elicit employee viewpoints about this operational change. The survey comprises tick boxes for staff to quickly complete, where they score their views on a numerical scale (known as a Likert Scale). Based on your studies of research methods, you feel that this quantitative research approach has limitations (and even potential downsides in terms of staff attitudes). What improvements to this field research might you propose? Provide some supporting text giving your rationale.

Case study:

One of the new ventures that Health Buddy Shop is providing prepared food for people who are into keto diet. The management will have its operations meeting sometime next time and it needs to approve its operational expenses which will include the budget for eparing their meal according to the required calaries per person  to attain a particular weight.  Mr. Angelo  has been tasked to handle the operations including the logistics part  which includes  the supplies and raw materials.  Initially, Mr Angelo has come from similar restaurant where ordering on a monthly basis is effective for them in terms of meeting customer requiremnets and meeting the least cost. With this experience, Mr Angelo followed the  same practices from that previous experience and began ordering  food boxes, disposable spoon and fork and paper cups monthly  with a fixed  order quantity of 2,000 pcs per order. Annual demand for the food is also equated to the usage and demand for the said materials which is 24,000 pcs annually.  Food boxes costs  BD 0.150, spoon and fork is BD0.30 while paper cups cost BD 0.20 Maintaing such a volume of materials costs the company BD 5.00 while the cost of ordering from supplier is Bd 12. Mr Angelo wants to ensure that what he will present to the management is correct so he has asked his other friends to  check and validate which in return agreed with his strategy. At its operations meeting, Mr. Angelo intend to declare that the practice is going to save money for the company. However, just before the operations meeting, a trainee named Mr. Rey has come and has been instructed to assess the operations and propose possible improvements that will ensure product quality and at the same  time saving money . Mr . Rey, who is a graduating student of MS Manufacturing  Management saw that there is something wrong with the proposed strategy that Mr. Angelo will implement in terms of order quantity. He objects the practice that is being done when it comes to ordering the food boxes, spoon and for and paper cups.

Answer the following Questions.

1. What is the impact that Mr Angelo’s strategy on the total cost   
2. What is the impact of Rey’s  idea in terms of ordering  inventories. 
3. Having seen the results in Q1 and Q2, what can you conclude to be the best strategy that the company should use? Support your answer with  data