Stakeholders refers to those individuals or a group who has vested interest in the outcome or the results of the body of a work in an organisation. The term “stakeholder engagement” is budding as a means of describing a broader, more inclusive, and continuous process. It takes place between the company and the potentially impacted stakeholders that encompasses a range of activities, approaches and, the entire span of a project. The change that is likely to occur reflects the broader change in the business and financial worlds. It increasingly recognizes the business and reputational risks that may occur as a result of poor stakeholder relations. It also places a growing emphasis on corporate social responsibility, transparency and reporting. Stakeholder engagement can therefore be defined as the process of effectively eliciting the stakeholders’ views on their relationship with the organization. Stakeholder engagement is increasingly becoming a part of mainstream business andContinue reading
Modern Management Practices
The Toyota Way Philosophy
Japanese quality movement was a miracle and created world-class products. All these methodologies and concepts developed these quality gurus for internal process and quality improvement crisis are still practiced in various companies. These have become universal approach to improve the quality and manage performance crisis. Quality gurus created work culture and dedicated teams, which developed Japanese production systems through group activities. Toyota Corporation developed a new philosophy to create major change in manufacturing systems and delivered world-class products with internal benchmark for quality of vehicles. In reality, Toyota changed external business environment for competitors and created a long-lasting impact on automobile industry. The Toyota Way is a set of principles and behaviors that underlie the Toyota Motor Corporation’s managerial approach and production system. It consists of principles in two key areas: continuous improvement, and respect for people. Toyota use operational excellence as a strategic weapon. Company places the highest valueContinue reading
Background of Lean Manufacturing
Lean is a philosophy that spurred from the Toyota Production System (TPS). TPS was created by Toyota’s founder Sakichi Toyodo, Kiichiro Toyoda, and Taiichi Ohno. Much of TPS was also influenced by W. Edwards Deming’s statistic process control (SPC) and Henry Ford’s mass production lines. However, the Japanese were not impressed with Ford’s approach because it was filled with over-production, lots of inventory, and much waiting. Toyota identified these weaknesses in Ford’s production line and adapted the production line to create a more productive and reliable production line. TPS and lean also use just-in-time inventory where only small amounts of inventory were ordered and very little inventory was left waiting in the production line. This also was very different from Ford’s production line which usually bought high volumes of materials and had high inventory levels to lower costs. After TPS proved to be successful for Toyota, many companies adapted theirContinue reading
The Relationship Between Creativity and Innovation
Creativity and Innovation are two different terms and they technically have different meanings. Creativity means originality, imagination and inventiveness that are brought out through resourcefulness. Innovation, on the other hand refers to modernization and improvement over an existing idea. In this way, it is true that creativity and innovation are two different terms and cannot be used interchangeably. Yet, they have been used interchangeably in several areas or walks of life, including business and management as well as technology. In this way the main distinction between creativity and innovation, being the originality has been ignored and as the line between creativity and innovation is thin, it becomes even more difficult to distinguish between these terminologies. Innovation is an important aspect of growth and development of individuals, organizations, cultures and societies. Innovation and creativity refer to bringing in new ideas to life. Innovation can be achieved strategically through a process ofContinue reading
Using Information Technology to Achieve Competitive Advantage
The world has grown more than enough in the context of information technology in such way that organization work more efficiency to enhance and maximize their daily productivity. Storage devices, data protection, cloud application and faster communication are the main advantages that information technology can provide to businesses. IT/IS has big impact in computer application on which nearly every work environment is dependent, therefore, since those applications are computerized and widely used, it is advantageous to incorporate IT into business. Information technology is categorized into major three group known as operation, financial and strategic system. If the operation and financial system are well integrated may result strategic system for other enterprises, however, it depends on the core business objective of the enterprise. For instance, cloud application and cloud storage are advance technology where most of the organizations are not aware of it, organization don’t consider much about technology even thoughContinue reading
Concept of Agile Manufacturing
The Agile Manufacturing was presented in the first time at the publication in the USA of a report entitled 21st Century Manufacturing Enterprise Strategy. So, it has been introduced as a method of increasing competitive advantage in response to increasingly competitive global markets. Agile concept focuses on the fast response to changeable of customer demand. The key component in agile manufacturing is flexibility. The agile manufacturing methods can be adjusted and consolidated into companies of any size to ensure the growth and success. The changeable of customer and technological requirements that make the manufacturers develop agile supply chain capabilities in order to be competitive. So, many companies use the flexibility and agility to respond the customers’ requirement and markets demand in real time. The new concept of agility manufacturing need to secure competitive advantage from the production process that can be both efficient and responsive. Agility can be defined asContinue reading