Organizational Design
The supply manager, Jack Toole, must determine whether to give Nuclear Vessels or Atomic Products the Oceanics, Inc. contract.
Oceanics, Inc. needs to purchase one pressure vessel that meets their specifications. The two top companies were carefully screened and visits to both plants were made to determine which one was better qualified.
What specific areas and activities should the Oceanics group have investigated on its two visits? While a number of issues were investigated, the team should have investigated at least two additional areas: supply chain management and inventory/logistics. Both of these issues are germane in terms of being able to deliver appropriate levels and specifications as needed. The issue with supply chain management is quite important since it relates to the actual manufacturing of the product in a timely fashion, and whether or not the companies involved had the infrastructure appropriate for the process. Indeed, this also bleeds over into the area of engineering expertise, since it is not only about the inventory being put into the supply chain, but also the quality and specifications of that inventory necessary for the important work.
Thus, both the quality of the laboratory and research design areas is important, as well as ensuring that the Supply Chain is correct, vital and robust...
Even small delays could bring disaster to the overall project. For example, it is possible for a supply chain to be either too robust or too lean, depending on the actual situation between organizations. For instance, management of an organization is able to control the supply chain and place orders but still does not have full control over the products that may be purchased or surges or spikes in demand that may affect the manufacturing process. A supply chain that is too lean may then have two actual effects on the organization: 1) with retail or other consumer-based operations there may be stock outages, causing customers to become jaded and dissatisfied and perhaps change their buying behavior to another store; 2) for manufacturers the process may come to a halt, causing time, money and most particularly human resources to be wasted. In both cases there is a loss of profit, reputation, and customer (whether that customer be retail or business-to-business) (Watson, 2007).
2. Evaluate each supplier on each of the above items using information obtained on the field visits.
Atomic Products Company - Clean, modern, well lit and ventilated; organized arrangement. Roughly 2,000 employees, 470,000 square feet of floor area. The laboratories are…
