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Production and Operations Management, 3/e Kanishka Bedi

Copyright @ Oxford University Press, 2013

two counts: one on the quantity of work done e.g. number of rooms cleaned in a

day by an employee and two on the promptness and quality of work performed in

certain type of tasks e.g. time taken a bell boy to respond to a call from a room

(stop-watch time study would be helpful in this regard to establish standard

times, which may form the basis of creating some benchmarks). The customer

feedback forms (if designed on SIT techniques explained in chapter 2) may

also help in gauging the quality aspect of services executed by employees. It

should be emphasised here that quality and quantity are intertwined in

productivity measurements of service tasks.

Case Study 2: Volvo Truck Corporation

Hints to Case Questions

1. The foundry department is the only one amongst the three departments, which is

based upon JIT production. It is highly automated production and quick

maintenance of the breakdowns in machines is the key operation. Thus, a lot of

coordination is required between operators and quality responsibility is upon the

supervisors rather than on operators. The employee-supervisor ration 50:1 is

also high. Job rotation of workers takes place but job enrichment is confined to

formation of teams though even the teams do not have much of responsibility.

The system works fine because of much less number of workers compared to

manufacturing department due to foundry being a capital intensive operation

rather than labour intensive.

8/9/2019 Work Design Case Study of TAJ HOTEL

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Production and Operations Management, 3/e Kanishka Bedi

Copyright @ Oxford University Press, 2013

On the other hand, we find that in the manufacturing department workers are

involved in decision making, quality improvements, even materials management

etc. in the form of teams. This is made possible by automatic machines which run

themselves and operators may be involved in other activities for job enrichment.

In the assembly department, the main flowline is completely automated. Only at

the end of the automated flowline, the operators have to perform manual fittings

according to the customized requirements. Again the number of operators are

lesser compared to the manufacturing department. The work responsibilities are

loose enough to meet the customized requirements of the customers.

2. Undoubtedly, the job design in the manufacturing department is the most

contemporary and best amongst the three departments.

3. Appointing a team leader may be suitable for a short duration of time especially

as a precursor for implementing the concept of self-directed teams. In the long

run, allowing the teams to select their team leader at regular intervals of time is a

much better form of job enrichment. Also, there is no harm in a rotating ninth

worker concept especially if it helps to reduce the number of supervisors. The

ninth worker may perform dual duties that of a plain worker as well as that of a

supervisor. Workers will definitely take his word more seriously than that of an

appointed supervisor.