Continuous Improvement – BSBMGT516 Case Study Report

ABS furniture organisation – Strategies for Continuous Improvement

ABS is a furniture-manufacturing organisation having more than 600 staffs. Despite being a large number of people working in the organisation, it is running in loss because of a new competitor has been entered in the market and selling products at lower prices. To encounter this adverse situation and to increase the sell ABS has to consider on following ideas:

ABC should focus on Increase the participation of employees in the organisation by providing them training and empower the employees and give them target to manufacture a quality product in a required quantity that meets the customer demands (Cocu?ová, 2017).). The manager should also focus on rotating the leadership across the organisation in different functions. This helps in better managing people and motivate them in producing products. Although ABS has barge number of employees, thus it is essential to give them direct participation in decision-making to increase the sale of products in the market. ABS can also focus on enhancing the employee’s skills because it is a much-needed requirement of the furniture business (Birt, 2017).

The management of ABS furniture should look on the continuous improvement in the business through the quality of production and minimise the additional cost of manufacturing furniture products. This action needs employees’ continuous training and development programs that helped them in increasing their skills to manufacture the furniture products in less manufacturing cost. It also helps in minimising the product-cost in the market, thus ABS can easily face the competition in the market. Another option that is available for the ABS furniture is to diversify the product range because with narrow product range they cannot target the mass number of customers, rather they can only target a small segment of customers. Thus, rather than taking manufacturing offshore or asking employees for laying off, they can focus on this idea because if the company provides training to the existing employees they can manufacture a variety of products. The ABS can communicate these initiatives through a public meeting to its employees and customers and ask their customers to try their new products, which is a comparatively better product in the market. To ensure these improvements ABS can give quality control and job participation responsibility to the employees and ensure them that they will responsible for their work and duties towards the organisation.

The training and development program for employees help them to implement the new skills on the job place that helps them in manufacturing products (Fallon, & Rice, 2015). Apart from these, a mentor can bring expertise, skills, and knowledge that they have acquired from long work experience. If the sales team will be motivated by rewards and benefits, they will definitely give their best in the field of marketing new products of the company (Shenoy & Aithal, 2016). Thus, mentoring also helps in boosting the employees’ confidence and their skills in the job and in the marketing of the product as well. The mentoring and coaching also helps the employees in fostering new innovative ideas that can help in reducing product cost and wide the product range of the ABS furniture company.

Herald Sun newspaper – Paper Recycling Project

Herald Sun is a famous Australian morning newspaper that is published by Herald and Weekly Times, a subsidiary of News Corp Australia in Melbourne. This newspaper has a daily circulation of 350,000 from Monday to Friday. The Herald Sun newspaper is using a high quantity of paper in printing the newspaper. The consumption of newspaper in the newspaper industry is very high, thus it required a well-planned paper-recycling project that helps this newspaper organisation to reduce the paper consumption and also recycle the old paper for fresh use and printing of the newspaper. The key stakeholders of the Herald Sun are newspaper readers, vendors, and employees who are working in printing newspapers.

After reading the newspaper, it will be treated as waste in the house and everywhere. Although, these waste of papers in form of the old newspapers and even magazines paper can be recollected by the Herald Sun and they can recycle these paper again for reuse and print it again as new newspapers. The Newspaper organisation can focus on printing short news that is precise and save the usage of papers. Apart from this strategy, the newspaper organisation should focus on its digital platform of a newspaper such as increasing the mobile app subscription that helps in reducing the people who read newspaper instead of this company can attract them towards the digital channel of newspaper such as connected them with social media page and mobile app of Herald Sun.

The Herald Sun can open the old newspaper recollection centre at some places where newspaper distribution is more, and then collect the old newspaper from the readers directly, or they can employ their newspaper vendors to collect the old newspaper at cheap cost from the newspaper readers. The organisation can hire few people for recycling old paper or can also train their existing employees for recycling the collected old papers (de Azevedo, Alexandre, Xavier, & Pedroti, 2018). Apart from, Herald Sun also usage paper cups and tissue papers within the organisation by its employees and other people that can be recycled in the same plant as well. Again, it is necessary to consider the printing quality and should focus on black and white printing rather than coloured printing on newspaper. This also helps in easily recycle the newspaper and convert it in usable papers (Rahmaninia & Khosravani, 2015).

(Source: Navarrete, Rocha, Flores, Andrade, Canto, & Rocha, 2016)

Performance Measurement

Recycling paper is almost practising in all over the world because the world knows about the problems of excessive use of papers. The recycling of papers only can be successful if it will be helpful in preventing these problems like preventing the excessive use of papers, stop cutting trees, reduce the consumption of paper, and reduce air pollution by preventing the deforestation by cutting green trees (Pivnenko, Eriksson, & Astrup, 2015). They can also check that current project gives the desired information for decision-making and it should involve environmental, economic, and social issues as well. If the Herald Sun will be succeeded in collecting 50-60% of its total newspaper distribution per day, then it will be treated successful project performance (Korhonen, Toppinen, Kuuluvainen, Prestemon, & Cubbage, 2017).   

Herald sun can measure the performance of the project on regular basis. For the above purpose, they can set a target for their paper collectors and provide the facilities to collect the newspapers from door to door visits. It also helps in managing the daily report about the collection and performance of the project as well that how much paper collected each day. If any deviation is found related to less collection or price of the old newspaper then it can be handled as early as possible.

To ensure the positive involvement of employees and staff it is necessary to train and mentor the employees, vendors, and people about the importance and necessity of recycling old paper. This can be possible through an advertising campaign in its newspaper as well. Herald Sun can aware people through a news article in their paper and aware people about its importance that how they can save their environment and reduce the pollution if they recycle the old paper and reduce the use of papers in their daily life. Staff and employees should encourage for not using the paper material in the organisation, and they should also work on to aware people and their society about the importance of paper recycling (Chang, Graves, Kirchain, & Olivetti, 2019).

Herald Sun can also record the performance of their project by continuously maintaining data related to the collection of old newspaper. The Herald Sun can also measure the total usage of newspapers contribution of recycled papers in the freshly printed newspapers. This helps in measuring the performance of the project of recycling old newspapers (Pivnenko, Laner, & Astrup, 2016).

Conclusion

If the Herald Sun fail to properly implement the recycle plan they should review the plan that where they lack. If the total number of collected old paper is not at the expected target, they should invite people to sell their old papers to the organisation of the fair price of the paper. An awareness program and social activity conducted by the Herald Sun also helps in increasing awareness among people about the recycling old newspapers. The organisation can also open a weekly stall at few places in the different city where they can collect the old newspapers on giving them appropriate prices for the paper (Ervasti, Miranda, & Kauranen, 2016).

Thus, the above plan helps the organisation to implement a paper recycling plan and its continuous improvement process that helps the world as it helps in reducing pollution and preventing air pollution. Natural resources are limited in our world, thus it is necessary to use it wisely and stop the misuse of these resources. Reducing the usage of paper and recycling old paper help a lot in this mission if we unite the whole world towards the use of recycling papers and reduce the mass use of paper that causes deforestation.   

References

Birt, M. (2017). Recycling key to cleaner air, saving water, less wasted energy. Planning News, 43(8), 22.

Chang, J. C., Graves, S. C., Kirchain, R. E., & Olivetti, E. A. (2019). Integrated planning for design and production in two-stage recycling operations. European Journal of Operational Research, 273(2), 535-547.

Cocu?ová, J. (2017). The Analysis of the Selected Factors Influencing the Selection of Employee Training Methods. Journal of Human Resources, 5(2), 7-14.

de Azevedo, A. R., Alexandre, J., Xavier, G. D. C., & Pedroti, L. G. (2018). Recycling paper industry effluent sludge for use in mortars: A sustainability perspective. Journal of Cleaner Production, 192, 335-346.

Ervasti, I., Miranda, R., & Kauranen, I. (2016). Paper recycling framework, the “Wheel of Fiber”. Journal of Environmental Management, 174, 35-44.

Fallon, B. J., & Rice, S. M. (2015). Investment in staff development within an emergency services organisation: comparing future intention of volunteers and paid employees. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 26(4), 485-500.

Korhonen, J., Toppinen, A., Kuuluvainen, J., Prestemon, J. P., & Cubbage, F. (2017). Recycling, certification, and international trade of paper and paperboard: Demand in Germany and the United States. Forest Science, 63(5), 449-458.

Navarrete, R., Rocha, M. F., Flores, Z. C., Andrade, E., Canto, C., & Rocha, M. E. (2016). Automation of Production and Recycling Paper Tissue Using PLC, PAC, HMI and Ethernet/IP. Journal of Industrial and Intelligent Information Vol, 4(2).

Pivnenko, K., Eriksson, E., & Astrup, T. F. (2015). Waste paper for recycling: Overview and identification of potentially critical substances. Waste management, 45, 134-142.

Pivnenko, K., Laner, D., & Astrup, T. F. (2016). Material cycles and chemicals: dynamic material flow analysis of contaminants in paper recycling. Environmental Science & Technology, 50(22), 12302-12311.

Rahmaninia, M., & Khosravani, A. M. I. R. (2015). Improving the paper recycling process of old corrugated container wastes. Cellulose Chemistry and Technology, 49(2), 203-208.

Shenoy, P., & Aithal, P. S. (2016). A Study on History of Paper and possible Paper Free World, 16(4), 88-96.