mmsuga
You have been called in to perform an internal audit for the…
You have been called in to perform an internal audit for the manufacturing department in your company, PG Industries. The new department VP, Laine Finnegan, has expressed concerns that the department is lacking clear goals, so she is unsure how to tell if the work they are doing is contributing to the overall mission of the organization. Finnegan says she would like to understand where the department stands in terms of efficiency of operations, so she is asking for your help in understanding how quickly products are manufactured, what the defect rate is, and if all staff have appropriate training.
Using the material from Chapter 14 of the text, select one of Finnegan’s concerns and address the following questions in your response:
Describe the steps in a formal control process.
What goal would you select to evaluate in this process?
What control could you use to measure progress toward the goal?
If you realized that performance was not matching expectations, what steps might you take to get things back on track? Be as specific and concrete as possible.
How should I respond to my classmates post below?
Post 1
Hello, class,
I am happy to assist with auditing PG Industries’ manufacturing department. To follow up on your request, VP Laine, to provide information on production speed, defect rate, and staff training, we will implement a control process to help improve performance and meet expectations.
To make sure your department meets the organization’s goals, you should start by setting performance standards and providing guidance to your team. You can measure performance using four common metrics: quantity, quality, cost, and usage time. Collecting data on your department’s performance will enable you to manage production and make necessary corrections to address any discrepancies that may arise.
To evaluate your department’s performance, assess the time it takes for employees to produce products, the quality of the products, the number of units produced, and the number of days absent. Additionally, conduct on-site visits or counseling sessions with each employee every two weeks or month to review their performance and offer guidance if needed.
If you find that your department’s performance is not meeting your expectations, it’s important to compare your employees’ performance with the standards you established for evaluation. Then, make necessary adjustments to improve their performance by using exception principles to determine any significant deviations from your expected results.
Post 2
Hello Class,
There are four steps to the control process.
Setting Standard Performance – Setting the standard for you to control the expectation. This is the benchmark that you will be comparing performance to.
Measuring Performance – Tracking and analyzing data that is being produced to what the standard is.
Comparing Performance with the Standard – Comparing the results of the performance to what the standard is and ensuring the expectation is being met.
Take Action to Correct Problems and Reinforce Standards – Creating action plans and using tactics like SMART goals to be able hold accountability to the standard that is expected.
In my line of work training is everything. If you do not invest in your team’s training, you cannot hold them to the standard that is expected from the company. I believe this would be a feedforward control due to training usually taking place before the actual performance is being evaluated.
If I realized that training is not being completed per the company standard, I would conduct an internal audit on how this training is being completed. There have been multiple times where I would walk up to one of employee’s and ask them a basic question on an initiative and they would give me the deer in headlights look. This showed me that my leaders are not properly training my partners and therefore I cannot hold the partner accountable due to the lack of performance from my leaders. I would ask a department head to lead observations, which is basically an audit to watch and coach my leader on how to better perform training. Set a timeline and checkpoints to evaluate progress.
