PRODUCTION AND OPERATIONS Using Teams in Production and Operations

Using teams in Production and Operations

Introduction of the Major Global Corporation: Coca Cola Company

Coca cola is undoubtedly considered as a global, and one of the leading manufacturers and distributors of non alcoholic soft drinks and beverages. The company's market is expanded in around 200 countries and in addition to coke, it owns over 5oo different brands. For example, Sprite, Diet coke, and Fanta. In every brand, company is most widely recognized in the world. It has the headquarters located in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. This company has almost 43% of the world's market share, with majority portion of its share in North America.

The company only manufactures the concentrates, bases of beverages and syrups. After manufacturing, these products are sold to the bottling companies. After being returned in a bottled and packaged form, the company distributes the brands all over the world. In addition to that, company itself is responsible for handling all marketing processes and strategic decision making. It utilizes all available means of marketing including print media, television, online marketing and other promotional campaigns.

To deal with the production of one billion servings a day, the company has a well developed infra structure of operations and productions management processes. In this paper, we will discuss the operations and production systems of the company, and evaluate the role of teams for these systems.

Team concepts and effective communication in the workplace

Development of teams among the employees makes everyone to be involved in the system. The employee' satisfaction level and productivity increases when he feels completely involved and empowered in the system. Working in a team has many advantages over working individually.

Regardless of having many benefits, working in teams may cause tension and anxiety in few employees if they remain reserved in the teams and hesitate to discuss the issues with the team members. Effective communication among employees has become a key requirement for success of the team work, as well as successful operations for any company. For effective communication, employees must be open minded, active listeners. They must not stick to their points but must be capable of work on the other's advice for over all progress of the company, since they all are working for the same goal, mutual cooperation and collaboration is mandatory.

In many organizations, the teams are only meant to communicate and collaborate with their own team members. For example, marketing team will function only for managing its process, in isolation with all the other teams of the company. This strategy is not preferred, as it creates virtual barriers and lack of communication between the teams.

According to Dr. W. Edwards Deming's rules of Total Quality Management, the teams must not work in isolation with each other. They must remain in contact with each other. When they are working on the same goals and following the objectives of the same company, there must be no virtual barriers among them. Team leaders must arrange some weekly or monthly meetings to overview the performance ...