Strategies For Waste Reduction In Organizations: An Essay.

Operations Improvement is generally concerned with the elimination of waste in all activities, in all areas of an organisation. 

Discuss the different approaches that may be adopted when attempting to identify and eradicate waste.

Departmental Responsibilities in Waste Reduction

In a general organization, sales, purchase, production, marketing, finance, HR, administration are types of departments exists. Combination of efforts to complete their assigned duties leads to the accomplishment of the targets. Management and assignment of duties to each department is performed by the directors and CEO of the organization. Different departments combine their efforts to build a successful organization. But the waste activities performed and the waste eradicated from their efforts are the reasons for the failure of the organization too. Such as using inadequate machinery for production irrelevant to the quality of the raw materials used and due to wrong machinery used, wastage of raw material also justified. Approaches like Porter’s forces, project manager’s report and the other attest techniques available in the market for promotion and advertisement of the products are very necessary for making an organization free from waste (Conger, 2015).

Production team is responsible for making the finished goods though using raw materials provided by the production team and through using other effective and adequate techniques which are provided by the management of the organization. This department also requires the creativity and the talent in the production managers who can guide their rest team members to perform in the adequate manner to obtain the effective results. Production of goods makes the organization unique from its competitors because the formulas, methods used for the production of the goods are not available with their competitors. Mainly waste generates from this department only through using extra raw materials for the producing finished goods or non-adequate mixture developed for manufacturing the expected goods. Other big factors available in this department are wastage of raw materials; wastage of human efforts which are involved with the machinery, over running of machine will lead over cost of machines, etc. Production tea has the overall responsibility of the organization because till the time production team would not completed their task, rest departments of the organization could not be able to generate positive outcomes for the organization (Spillecke & Brettel, 2013). 

A term overproduction is also injurious for the health of the organization because it creates over utilization of the resources of the organization. Apart from the resources of the organization, oversupply of the products could result in the decrease in the prices of the products hence, profitability will get affected (Healy & Palepu, 2012).

Lean strategy is applied and used in the business environment to remove the wastes from the various activities performed within the organization and this is the best and suitable way to implement in the organization for the removal of wastages. Agile Approach increases the productivity of the organization through adaptation of various methodologies. For attaining adequate results, organization could also implement these strategies’ combined form i.e. leagile approach. With the application of leagile in the organization, efficiency and the responsiveness of the organization increases (Staats, et. al., 2011). 

Application of Lean and Agile Approaches

Lean and agile approaches are very effective for the purpose of identification and eradication of waste in the various departments of the organization whereas combination of both approaches increases more efficiency for the organization in terms of the increasing responsiveness from the supply chain. When these two strategies are combined, a term decoupling point forms, under which all the work needs to be performed as per the increasing responsiveness from the supply chain management and increasing efficiency in terms of production activities of the organization.   

As soon as possible these strategies will perform within the organizational premises, adequate resources and other waste materials within the organization would be eradicated. Important feature of application of this kind of approach is that lean approach will increase the efficiency of the production capacities of the organization whereas the approaches whereas the agile approach will increase the responsiveness of the organizational members towards the issues of the organization so that appropriate outcomes could be generated (Cozzolino, et. al., 2012). 

Team work is the process of performing the particular task by a number of individuals. It could be performed in various sectors of the organization. Team activities also results in the extraction of unique ideas and advanced methodology advantages to perform the task for achievement of organizational goals. Generally team work does not leads to wastages of efforts or any other kind of waste. A team leader should be a person who could mold his/her leadership qualities in such a way so that team could perform in the same direction with the minimal of wastages of organization’s resources along with the adequate and effective outcomes  (West, 2012).

Following roles are involved in a team which is also known as Belbin’s team role:

Organization Worker: These are the people involved in the working procedure of the organization. They perform the activities as per the rules and regulations set by the managers and they generate productivity for the organization. Adequate training and better supervision techniques for this group is crucial to remove the chances of waste.

Chairman: He is the person seated on the highest position amongst the organization and he is responsible for developing strategies and adaptation of advanced techniques for increasing efficiency of the organization (DeChurch & Mesmer-Magnus, 2010).

Shaper: Shaper is the person who directs the team in such a way so that all the efforts could be putted in the right direction. Team leaders and managers acts as the shaper in the organization.

Belbin's Team Roles and Their Significance

Apart from these roles there are certain other i.e. plant, resource investigator, monitor-evaluator, team worker and finisher (van Dierendonck & Groen, 2011).

This approach identifies various methods to improve the efficiency of the organization. The main focus is implied on providing adequate training measures to the new employees as well as to the existing employees for their better understanding the regarding the rules and regulations of the organization. While giving the required information to the employees of the organization, they should also be guided for the activities which should not be performed at any cost. Another important aspect of the operation management is determination of the work from the top level to the bottom level, this is done to analyses thee error in the performance procedure (Etro, 2010). Analyzing the work after its completion helps to estimate the errors and gaps present in that and within the appropriate time available that error should be removed so that outcomes could not be affected. Market needs should also be analyzed and it is part of removal of waste because without knowing market requirement, production of goods would be wasted. Following are the main components of this strategy:

• Quality: Under this aspect of the operation management, quality measure of the product should be at its peak. Maintaining quality and rapid improvement helps the organization to gain some new customer as well as it also helps to keep the existing customers satisfied too. Customers have a mentality of getting as much as possible in their spending and the most important factor they expect from the producers is the quality of the products.
• Delivery:under this aspect, sales team needs to consider the delivery of the products should be completed within adequate time frame. Delivery of the goods and services is the crucial factor in terms of the performance of the organization. This is the important aspect of the organization’s success delivery of the products on time helps the organization to satisfy the customer’s needs.
• Accountability: Organization is accountable to its audience because they are procuring goods and services for the selling in the market with a motive or earning a certain rate of profit. So as per the demand of the consumers, products should be delivered so that promise made to the customers could be fulfilled.
• Flexible: All the techniques and strategies adopted by the operations management should be adequate enough to be converted as per the marketing requirements and conditions of the market (Chude & Chude, 2013).
• Cost:The product’s price should be set on the basis of adequate margin of profit. All the advanced techniques and measures adopted for the production should be kept in the way to improve the product’s features and for reducing the cost of the production.

The product’s quality defines the character of the product as well as its features are also included under this term. Quality of the product will be maintained to attract the number of consumers and for improving its image in the dynamic environment of the world (Hill, et. al., 2014). This is a feature adopted by the production team and a lot of theories and principles needs to be followed while determining and maintaining quality of the particular product. Following are the characteristics of quality:

• Quality of the products should be as per the manufacturing based approach and under this approach, main motive is to produce error free and well qualitative products.
• Quality of the product should be developed as per the descriptions set by the management as well as the consumer’s requirements should also be analyzed.
• All the policies, benchmarks and the standards should be followed while developing the quality of the products because these are important characteristics as per the long run survival perspective of the organization (Pedersen, 2010).
• Value-based approach is also a part of the maintaining quality of the products because the quality defines and develops the unique value of the product.
• Maintaining and continuously increasing quality of the product develops the high qualitative product as well as it also forms a goodwill for the organization in terms of producing qualitative products and it directly helps the company to increase its profitability.
• There is a small gap between the customer’s expectations towards the quality of the product from the manufacturers and the quality served by the manufacturers to the public. This thin line of gap could reduce the demand of the product if customer’s expectations and product served by them did not get matched (Basu & Basu, 2010).
• While conducting the various methods in the competitive market to make own product look unique, companies put type of measures and with those methods, many manufactures tries to make some amendments in the quality of the product which could be dangerous for the business’ health because it could also leads to the closer of the organization.
• Till the time, quality measure does not changed or amended by the top level management, it should be remain the same and for reviewing the work performed by the organization’s people, monitoring and controlling activities should be conducted regularly (Demil & Lecocq, 2010).

This is a department of the organization which is developed for conducting number of research programs for the improvement of the organization in various aspects. Required changes and application of unique methods are done by this department under the operations department (Freeman, 2010). While developing the methods and techniques for the different levels of the organization, number of challenges needs to be faced by the operations managers which are as follows:

• Selecting appropriate strategy: Under this term, strategy should be analyzed for the production of goods and services to develop an adequate image of the organization in the competitive world. This selection should be done through consent of almost all the directors, CEO and with the operation manager of the organization. Advice from the production team and the ideas from the lower level managers should also be considered because they know better than the upper level managers regarding the actual position of the market (Huang, 2011).
• Amendment or Upgrading: These are done as per the requirements of the public and as per the changing conditions of the business environment. Necessary changes should be adopted as soon as possible because late adaptation of changes in the procedures of the organization could obtain negative results or it could also decrease the importance amongst its competitors.
• Regulation:every organization should follow this step after making amendments or after adaptation of every new policy or method for the betterment of the organization. This step helps the organization to obtain the symptoms of success or failure with the new policies through studying the environment of the organization. Main concentration of this team is to analyze the appropriate results as per the targets set up by the management and mainly the results obtained are as per the methods provided by the heads or not (Khan, et. al., 2013).
• Strategy: After the planning and implementation of the methods developed for performing the activities of the organization. An appropriate technique with a set of methods evaluated will be included for getting error free methods and waste could also be eliminated from the operations departments.

This is a strategy adopted for the betterment of the organization and for removing the threats for various kinds of issues available in the business environment. With the application of this approach in the business organization, a lot of errors are removed automatically and the advantages are also increased with the application of these forces. Mr. Porter has invented these forces to reduce the chances of errors and generation of waste in the business organization because performing adequately in the competitive environment of the business includes various techniques adaptability (McWilliams & Siegel, 2011). Following are the methods involved in the Porter’s theory of removing waste:

Quality Improvement for Better Consumer Response

New Entries: This strategy of the Porter’s five forces consist the top most as per the priority basis in the process of removal of waste from the general performance to improve the performance of the organization. This is also useful as per the marketing environment of the business as well as it forms the strategies to beat their primary competitors in the market. For instance, Coca-Cola Company is multination brand which is situated in almost all big parts of the world. They have the big threat with the entry of the new organizations of the same industry because their entry could harm the Coca-Cola’s profit margin as well as it could also decrease the demand of the Coca-Cola’s products. Wastage of production, adaptation of new and advanced techniques for setting up goodwill in the market could increase the cost of the production and rapid decrease in the demand of the products would leads to wastages of production. Due to perishable in nature of Coca-Cola’s products, after a certain period of time they are not useful (Parnell, 2011).

Production of Substitutes: The products manufactured by one company in the competitive business environment could also be manufactured by the other company. For instance, Coca-Cola Company is involved in the manufacturing the cold drinks and other fast food products whereas its primary competitor is PepsiCo which is also involved in the same business and they both are a big and primary competitor for each other. Under this strategy, both companies perform their best by adopting adequate and advanced promotional campaigns, various advertisement methods. These all procedures and techniques involves a huge amount and it leads to the wastage of funds of the organization and apart from this while competing with each other, aggressive competition also becomes a procedure to generate waste in every activity of the organization.

Consumers: Consumers are the people who are the reason for the success or the failure for any organization. All the necessary activities performed by the organization are to impress the consumers so that they could buy and consume the products manufactured by the various organizations with a motive of fulfillment of the consumer’s needs and for earning a reasonable rate of profit. Extra ordinary activities performed on promotion and advertisement campaigns could also increase the cost of the production which creates a burden over the consumers’ pocket (Teece, 2010).

Providers: These are the person who provides or distributes raw materials or any kind of substitute products required for the manufacturing of finished goods. For instance, a biscuit manufacturing company purchases flour and sugar from other companies, this is also known as a business to business marketing. Under this the distributor of flour could be minimum in that particular market and with a decision taken in the union they could increase the cost of the flour at any time, it beings a monopoly market. So increase in the prices of the raw materials would leads to the increase in the cost of the finished goods hence, consumer’s needs to face this too. To ignore kind of scenarios, maintaining adequate relations with the suppliers and the distributors helps the organization to purchase the raw materials at the same price for a long run (Werther & Chandler, 2010).

Challenges Faced by Operations Managers

There are a number of stages involved in a project’s life and along with the stages involved in the project, number of factors are also present which are risk factors, waste involved in the performance and project lifecycle. Following are the stages of a project:

Initiation: Under this stage, a project starts and along with the initiation of the project, numerous factors come along with the initiation. It is a blueprint of the project (Burke, 2013).

Planning: The most important stage of project is planning because as per the plans developed to perform the certain activities, the outcomes will also generates the same. This stage could leads to the generation of the waste amongst the project. For instance, an organization is planning to set up an oil and gas refinery and for the same huge investment is required. In the planning stage of the this project, organizational members draws only one project which was the best and after that most probably there will be no such options will be left. But amendments made by the government’s policies leads to the failure of that planning hence, planning was the reason for wastages of organizational resources.

Implementation: This should be done with the consent of team leaders, workers and all the directors of the organization. Implementation program of the methods developed should be done in a proper care and a management team should be appointed who could monitor the performance of the employees. This will help the organization to identify any error present in the methods so that it could be removed and organization’s performance does not get affected. This will directly saves the wastes generation in the organization.

Monitoring: Every organization should focus on controlling the activities of the organization because if they would not be controlled, workers and other staff members of the organization could utilize the organizational resources for their own use which would result in the waste generation for the organization. In every field of the organization monitoring process is necessary, for instance, an organization is involved in the manufacturing of biscuits and for its manufacturing they purchase sugar and flour from various suppliers. And organization was lacking with the adequate monitoring processes, hence purchase manager uses this for making his own benefits, as he chose the inferior quality goods for the manufacturing of the biscuits and rest money he kept in his pocket. Organization’s products’ demand decreases hence, it leads to the waste of production activities, funds wastages as well as waste of profits (Eadie, et. al., 2013).

Porter's Five Forces for Waste Reduction

There are a number of approached available in the market which are experiences and developed by some of the business experts to determine the types of wastes from different departments of the organization. Along with the identification of the wastes, they have also examined a number of unique approaches through the impact of waste could be eradicated and to bring the organization’s performance on track (Trkman, 2010).

Wastes are the reasons for declining the organization’s performance and it also impacts the overall position in the competitive market. Waste could be identified through approaches like Belbin’s Team roles, Applying Porter’s forces, and through appointing a professional team of some expert members. The people appointed for identifying the waste generated at the each level of operations. As per these approaches, the greatest possibility of finding risk of having waste is in the operations department i.e. Production Department. Production team produces certain amount of products as per the assumptions made by the marketing team and while producing, affordable rate of waste could be accepted.

Non-adequate usage of resources, raw material and human efforts could lead to the situation of waste generation. Waste is the resource through which organization’s performance declines rapidly as well as their survival in the long run also becomes a difficult situation.  To avoid these scenarios, these approaches are applied to obtain adequate and effective outcomes. Removal of wastages is done to improve the strategies applied in the working procedures of the organization. Waste cannot be removed from the roots because while producing goods, a minimum percentage of waste is affordable but after that percentage, waste could impact the profitability of the organization. Hence to improve the strategies adopted for the removal of the waste should be so effective and adequate so that all the activities could be controlled in an efficient manner (Vernon, 2014).

Various approaches could be used to eradicate waste from the different levels of the organization so that organization could achieve its objectives and goals within a selected time frame. The first and foremost technique that could be used for the eradication of the waste is adaptation of the operations management’s techniques which is also known as the 4 M i.e. to maximize the efficiency of the organization through adopting advanced methods of production, effective utilization of money, using adequate materials for greater outcomes and to minimize the cost of the production through applying adequate and effective techniques of production and identification of waste. Following are some of the approaches which could bring down the responsiveness rate of the generation of wastes:

This 7S framework defines the requirement and fulfillment procedure of the organization to apply the appropriate strategies developed as per the management’s policies and rules.

• Strategy: Under this term, all the requirements of the organization should be considered while developing strategies to achieve those targets and goals. In effective and efficient manner.
• Structure:the activities which needs to be involved in the accomplishing the particular project should be structured properly to avoid any kind of misunderstanding amongst the employees of the organization (Vogel, 2010).
• Systems:For performing each activity, a certain set of methods and procedures are determined. For instance, for advertisement of the product, particular method needs to be examined amongst various methods like digital platforms, print platforms, etc.
• Staff:Under this term, appropriate and adequate team members and employees should be hired for the completion of the product. Talented and experienced employees should be appointed to obtain better outcomes (Bryman & Bell, 2015).
• Skills:Through this term, management needs to adopt adequate techniques for training and counseling sessions for providing appropriate training to the new hired employees.
• Style:Maintaining adequate environment in the organization is very necessary to bring the skills and talent of the employees as well as it will also help the team mates to interact with each other to achieve combined goals (Fleisher & Bensoussan, 2015). 
• Stakeholders:These are the people who take interest in the organization as they all have some expectations in terms of profitability, growth of the organization. Organization has the responsibility towards them hence; they should work adequately to conquer the expectations of the stakeholders.

Opting 7S framework will helps the organization to set up the approaches in such a way so that all the activities of the organization could be error free.

Apart from these stages and techniques adopted for the removal and identification of wastes from the various departments of the organization, all the superior officers of the organization should take the responsibility so that if anything happen other than the expected, adequate officer could be held responsible for the same. For instance, fire occurred in the organization’s premises and the reason of fire was lack of attention of production manager. This leads to the wastage of huge quantity of finished goods as well as many funds got wasted. The reason for this severe incident happen with the organization is production manager hence; he should be penalized as well as he could also be terminated for the same. This outcome will bring change in the organizations’ working procedures and with this; all the superiors and other employees will perform their tasks in well mannered.

Conclusion

This report concluded the different aspects of identification of the wastes in the various department of the organization in the business environment. Business environment has various kinds of factors such as waste in the production department, waste in the sales team, wastages in the finance department, in HR team and in the other department of the organization. These wastes affect the organization’s overall performance including the growth and the profitability. Eradication of waste is most necessary method for achieving the adequate ad expected goals for the organization. There are various approaches like Porter’s 5 forces of identification and eradication of waste under which competitor’s strategies are also analyzed. Along with this McKinsey’s 7S framework helps the organization to apply and select the appropriate strategies for betterment of the organization. Operations management techniques are also one of the strategies which determine the waste from departments of the organization. The most important factor of analyzing the waste from the organization’s environment is for generating the recommendations for removing the wastes from each department of the organization to accomplish the set goals (Ho, 2014).

References

Basu, D. & Basu, G., 2010, “Corporate Social Responsibility Program of PepsiCo India: a Unique Agro-Based CSR Model”, III International Symposium on Improving the Performance of Supply Chains in the Transitional Economies, vol. 895, pp. 45-49.

Bryman, A. & Bell, E., 2015, “Oxford University Press, USA”, Business research methods.

Burke, R., 2013, “Project management: planning and control techniques”, New Jersey, USA.

Chude, N.P. & Chude, D.I., 2013, “Impact of government expenditure on economic growth in Nigeria”, International journal of business and management review, vol. 1 (4), pp.64-710.

Conger, S., 2015, “Six sigma and business process management”,Handbook on Business Process Management, vol. 1, pp. 127-146.

Cozzolino, A., Rossi, S. & Conforti, A., 2012, “Agile and lean principles in the humanitarian supply chain: the case of the United Nations World Food Programme”, Journal of Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management, vol. 2 (1), pp.16-33.

DeChurch, L.A. & Mesmer-Magnus, J.R., 2010, “The cognitive underpinnings of effective teamwork: a meta-analysis”.

Demil, B. & Lecocq, X., 2010, “Business model evolution: in search of dynamic consistency”, Long range planning, vol. 43 (2), pp.227-246.

Duarte, S. & Cruz-Machado, V., 2013, “Modelling lean and green: a review from business models”, International Journal of Lean Six Sigma, vol. 4 (3), pp.228-250.

Eadie, R., Browne, M., Odeyinka, H., McKeown, C. & McNiff, S., 2013, “BIM implementation throughout the UK construction project lifecycle: An analysis”, Automation in Construction, vol. 36, pp.145-151.

Etro, F., 2010, “Endogenous market structures and the optimal financial structure”, Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, vol. 43 (4), pp.1333-1352.

Fleisher, C.S. & Bensoussan, B.E., 2015, “FT Press”, Business and competitive analysis: effective application of new and classic methods.

Freeman, R.E., 2010, “Cambridge University Press”, Strategic management: A stakeholder approach

Healy, P.M. & Palepu, K.G., 2012, “Cengage Learning”, Business analysis valuation: Using financial statements.

Hill, C., Guarner, F., Reid, G., Gibson, G.R., Merenstein, D.J., Pot, B., Morelli, L., Canani, R.B., Flint, H.J., Salminen, S. & Calder, P.C., 2014, “Expert consensus document: The International Scientific Association for Probiotics and Prebiotics consensus statement on the scope and appropriate use of the term probiotic”, Nature reviews Gastroenterology & hepatology, vol. 11 (8), pp.506-514.

Ho, J.K.K., 2014, “Formulation of a systemic PEST analysis for strategic analysis”, European academic research, vol. 2 (5), pp.6478-6492.

Huang, K.F., 2011, “Technology competencies in competitive environment”, Journal of Business Research, vol. 64 (2), pp.172-179.

Khan, R.S., Grigor, J., Winger, R. & Win, A., 2013, “Functional food product development–Opportunities and challenges for food manufacturers”, Trends in food science & technology, vol. 30 (1), pp.27-37.

McWilliams, A. & Siegel, D.S., 2011, “Creating and capturing value: Strategic corporate social responsibility, resource-based theory, and sustainable competitive advantage”, Journal of Management, vol. 37 (5), pp.1480-1495.

Parnell, J.A., 2011, “Strategic capabilities, competitive strategy, and performance among retailers in Argentina, Peru and the United States”, Management Decision, vol. 49 (1), pp.139-155.

Pedersen, E.R., 2010, “Modelling CSR: How managers understand the responsibilities of business towards society”, Journal of Business Ethics, vol. 91 (2), pp.155-166.

Spillecke, S.B. & Brettel, M., 2013, “The impact of sales management controls on the entrepreneurial orientation of the sales department”, European Management Journal, vol. 31 (4), pp.410-422.

Staats, B.R., Brunner, D.J. & Upton, D.M., 2011, “Lean principles, learning, and knowledge work: Evidence from a software services provider”, Journal of operations management, vol. 29 (5), pp.376-390.

Teece, D.J., 2010, “Business models, business strategy and innovation”, Long range planning, vol. 43 (2), pp.172-194.

Trkman, P., 2010, “The critical success factors of business process management”, International journal of information management, vol. 30 (2), pp.125-134.

van Dierendonck, D. & Groen, R., 2011, “Belbin revisited: A multitrait–multimethod investigation of a team role instrument”, European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, vol. 20 (3), pp.345-366.

Vernon, P.E., 2014, “Routledge”, Intelligence and Cultural Environment (Psychology Revivals).

Vogel, D., 2010, “The private regulation of global corporate conduct: Achievements and limitations”, Business & Society, vol. 49 (1), pp.68-87.

Werther, W.B. & Chandler, D., 2010, “Sage publications”, Strategic corporate social responsibility: Stakeholders in a global environment.

West, M.A., 2012, “John Wiley & Sons”, Effective teamwork: Practical lessons from organizational research.

Yang, M.G.M., Hong, P. & Modi, S.B., 2011, “Impact of lean manufacturing and environmental management on business performance: An empirical study of manufacturing firms”, International Journal of Production Economics, vol. 129 (2), pp.251-261.