Acorn Industries Case Study

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The company relied a lot on the marketing unit that brought contracts in the past and did not have proper TQM ,customer service as its philosophy.

In the casestudy,it’s stated that the programme manager was concerned with profits and did not closely interact with customers.Although,Acorn stated their philosophy of knowing what customers want,when submitting proposals,there seems to be no evidence that infact they implemented proper customer service.

No advance production planning was done and this would have ensured that the products are delivered timeously to the clients.

The G.M that was leading during 1996,reinforced a bad performance culture of meeting only the minimum level of performance as required by the contract .

-COMMITMENT TO CONTINUOS IMPROVEMENT

Organisations should measure,appraise and review the strategic benefits delivered by all the processes,on the basis of critical success factors and key performance indicators,which are linked to the balanced scorecard.(Steyn,P and ano,2006;31)

Organisations should embrace practices that encourage employees to identify and act upon opportunities to enhance and provide feedback on a regular basis.

Poor appraisal systems

There is no evidence that the critical success factors and the key performance areas were identified for the whole organization. There were no proper evaluation systems for evaluating the performance organisation wide based on the CSF ‘s,KPI’s and the extent to which the benefits of strategic importance were achieved.

There seemed to be no clearly set objectives, upfront as such the allocation of bonuses, basis seemed questionable.

Only the minimum level of performance as required by the contract was encouraged as adequate performance.

It is questionable that the incentives were linked to the actual realistic performance,as there seemed to be no co-ordination of the efforts/and or goals,that would in the end determine the performance of the organization.

There seemed to be no clear cut procedures as to the performance management of staff that was allocated to the projects. The reward system was not a fair and credible one, as it is stated that ratings were allocated to retain some individuals within the project.

-QUALITY ASSURANCE SYSTEMS

The TQM philosophy focuses on continuos improvement of systems,processes and products,in order to prevent the defects.(Steyn,P and ano,2006;31)

In programme management setting,this is achieved through the management of innovative project portfolios.

There is no evidence that the programme management was practiced in the organization .

There is no evidence that the processes were improved,and the organization had not adopted a TQM philosophy.

-HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT

Organisations should commit themselves to continuosly improve the skills of their employees,in order to meet the changing needs of the environment(Steyn,P. and ano,2006;31).

When organizations are re-orgarnising the work ,they must accordingly,attend to the needs of human resource development,as such,proper HR planning and development programme should be in place

Brain drain

Although the project management was still at the infancy stage at the Acorn, there was no experienced pool of project management, skills was required as the firm was servicing external clientele.

The organization lacked skills of people that had operated under programme management aspects and could not cope with the task.

Poor HR practices

It seemed that there was no proper HR planning, as, as part of the HR functional strategy,for forecasting the required levels of skills and numbers of manpower that would be required to meet the demand seemed not to have been planned for.

The expansion strategy was not matched with the requisite HR planning. The functional managers did not want to have the young talent allocated to the project. This indicated poor HR practices. There were poor career management practices as the progression into higher levels of the organization was not controlled (in terms of proper development stages) as encapsulated in policies.

The manipulation of the evaluations to facilitate that individuals remain in the scheme constitute poor HR practices. This is also demotivating to the others who did not get the rewards in the unfair manner.

-EFFECTIVE INFORMATION AND MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

Management systems that integrate and co-ordinate the current chaordic and operational dimensions, enable management to deal with the needs of modern businesses.TQM is premised on the decision making that utilizes reliable information and analysis to facilitate better decision making.(Steyn,P. and ano.2006;31)

The TQM application deals with the architecture,the operation of the organization as well as the behavioral aspect of attitudes and values.(Steyn,P. and ano.2006;32)

As the project management was relatively new in the organization,there was little data available to the organization for it to fully assess whether the operations were successful.It would seem that there were no information systems for supporting decision making within the organization.The BSPM system ,no any credible management system seemed was used in the organization.

BSPM system provides a management system for managing the result based on plans.

-LEARNING AND GROWTH STRATEGIES

Organisations should create strategies which address training and development of employees,relationships with suppliers and customers as well as other factors relating to quality(Steyn,P. and ano.2006;32).

The mistakes should be seen as opportunities for learning and growth.

It seemed that there were no such strategies in place,as the evaluations for the employees on the project scheme were not realistically done as such the deficiency aspects were overlooked.No interactions were done with suppliers,as such the opportunities fot the feedback were missed.There is no evidence