Functions of Managemant

Management involves the four-fold process of controlling, leading, organizing, and planning. Since this scenario involves a person who has poor financial skills, little net worth, weak management skills, and inadequate manufacturing knowledge -- apparently, his only resource being his invention - his best bet in optimally marketing and producing his inventions lies in outsourcing the entire manufacturing operation to an offshore company. This is because, here, another company will produce the entire work for him in all its involved four categories: controlling, leading, organizing, and planning, whilst his financial input (although not necessarily) may be smaller. There are disadvantages, however, too, primarily in that his objectives may not be met and output of work may be shoddy. Choosing outsourcing, the inventor's duties would be confined to being in touch with the organization to ensure that his objectives are met whilst helping company plan project mission and objectives and how to slant specific tasks to their optimum fulfillment. In this way, he would be liberated from the leading and organizing fields and partially liberated from the other two.

Management is broken down into four functions: controlling, leading, organizing, and planning.

Describes the characteristics of the four functions of management.

Controlling involves four distinct elements: establishing performance standards based on the firm's objectives; measuring and reporting performance of those standards; comparing gap (if any) between the latter and former; taking remediation steps (if necessary) to correct the latter, modifying, altering, and improving one's objectives and performance as necessary.

Leading involves hiring, and training (if necessary) employees, delegating duties, and motivating them to do their specific tasks. Involved, too, are other dynamics such as communication, negotiation, conflict-management, and discipline. The objective is to channel the behavior of the team as a whole to accomplishing the leader's objective, whilst ensuring that each and every individual is satisfied.

Organizing would entail planning the internal organizational structure of the organization. Here, focus would be on division, coordination, and control of tasks and flow of communication within organization.

Planning would involve demand-forecasting I.e. keeping a tag on market predictions and financial forecasting so s to meet product demands to market requirements and prepare ahead for problems. This is the ongoing process of determining the business mission and objectives and how it will be accomplished ranging from the broadest i.e. it's mission, to the narrowest i.e. planning specific tactics.

b.Describes your manufacturing option decision.

The options are:

1.Establish manufacturing of all components and final assembly.

2.Establish assembly only operation with components purchased from local vendors.

3.Outsource the entire manufacturing operation to an offshore company.

I would choose the Latter (#3). This is because: a. I have little financial skills, my net worth is not very high, my management skills are poor, and I know nothing about manufacturing. The first is clearly off-bounds to me due to the fact that it demands sufficient financial outlay as well as manufacturing and managerial skills

The second necessitates financial and organizational as well as managerial skills.

With the third, I am simply seeking a viable company that will produce the entire work for me in all its involved four categories: controlling, leading, organizing, and planning.

c.Explains the pros and cons of that decision and the logic you used in reaching that decision.

The advantages of an offshore company are that labor is cheaper; I will be saving money in other areas too (such as resources and taxes); production time will be speeded; another company is fulfilling all the duties that I find myself weak in; I will be less often away from home thus satisfying wife and family.

The disadvantages, here, are that I have to be careful to select a reputable, honest company and constantly monitor its progress so that it fulfills its task according to my objective. Here, I am not in charge -- someone else is and that may be disadvantageous in that I have specific ideas and direction that I can no longer fully control. This is particularly so since desirable results are often handicapped by outsourcing which results in a waste of time and material and can be costly for the company who outsourced the project. My solution, then, would involve carefully investigating possibility of a company that has an honest, efficacious reputation to do the job, starting slowly, and monitoring progress of project. I can always retract if necessary without undue financial loss to myself (since another company is controlling the scheme).