LEAN MANAGEMENT

Lean Management

Lean Management

Introduction

Operations management relates to the design and management of services, supply chains and products, and their supply (Shim 1995, p. 289). The focus of operations management is to make efficient delivery of goods and services to clients possible through development, acquisition and utilizations of various resources. Operations management takes place at all levels in the organization. For instance, it can take place at the tactical, operations and even strategic level. Many companies around the globe are focusing on employing operations management as a tool to provide their valued customers with better products and services, so that they can get their customer lifetime value.

There are several issues related to the field of operations management. Operations management is an attempt to improve plant management and its layout, better control of production scheduling, rapid inventory management, expedition of production processes and better equipment maintenance (Carpinetti 2003, p. 542). On a broad scale, we can say that the goal of operations management is to achieve effectiveness and efficiency of different operations of the organization. The paper is based on the case study of J. J. Galt Lock Ltd manufactures door locksets and hard ware for the houses, busnisses and retail markets. The paper identifies some of the operational management problems and recommendations to avoid these issues.

Purpose of the Case Study

The case study for this assessment will provide a detailed account of Galt Lock's aims and objectives, theoretical concepts to be used to analyze the organization, evaluation of the organization using the concepts identified, lessons learnt and recommendations. The case study aims to identify the significant operation management issues. The new business model of Galt Lock is all about the global expansion and operations and for this purpose the company needs to overview the areas where it wants operational efficiency.

Company Background

J. Galt Lock Ltd manufactures door locksets and hard ware for the houses, businesses and retail markets. The company's single plant is more than 200,000 square feet that consists of the following operational areas such as, machining, repairs, presses, buffing, tools, door locksets, hard ware for the houses, subassembly, and final assembly. At present, around 375 employees are working, in which 290 are working on hourly basis. The largest group of workers is the assemblers however, two-thirds of the labor force. In addition, Galt Lock creates a planning and forecast system that can be used through spreadsheet analysis to verify the manufacture and purchasing supplies of the company. There are 1500 to 3000 unlocked work orders that can be given at any time on the floor of shop. The standard delivery size is 50,000 parts, but for few items the size is 250,000 parts.

The Problems

It is the fact that growth poses many challenges and Galt Lock is not an exception to this situation. The company has faced many challenges of growth several times in the past and most often they were related to marketing, business, structuring or globalization. Currently, the company needs to investigate considerable energy and resources on the new ...