Madam Sally Lai, 52, the Head of Production Control from Armor Asia Imaging Supplier, was my interviewee for this assignment.Armor Asia, a company that slits jumbo ribbons into smaller ones for barcodes printing found on all your daily products.
Her responsibility is to plan the orders received from customers. Upon receiving orders, she has to ensure that the production department is able to meet the required dateline set by the customer. Before being able to hand the order out to her workers to start on the production, she has to ensure that there are enough materials on hand and manpower to run the whole production. Aside from that, she also has to make sure the machine capacity meets its daily quota.
I would say Madam Lai’s style of management is a mixture of Classical School of Management and Human Relations School of Management.
She strongly believes that work should be divided according to specialization, as mentioned on Henri Fayol’s principle number 1, under the administrative management. Order in her department is the utmost important factor. With order, it will be easy for Mdm Lai to locate the different kind of jumbos, labels and boxes. There is also the need to promote unity and harmony among workers.
She also mentioned that she sent two of her china workers for English lessons, where they will be able to read simple English instructions. This approach lies under the Scientific Management, where development and training of workers is carried out. Lastly, there is no definite separation between management and employees. She wants to understand her workers well and be a friend to them too.
There will always be some difficulties faced by any company. Unable to meet customer’s deadline due to shortage of material or unforeseen circumstances that causes delay, together with conflicts among employees were Mdm Lai’s difficulties faced during her work.
A good manager will have to look into these problems and solve them effectively. Some of the ways would be building good relationship with suppliers to avoid miscommunication of delivery date, understanding your workers better, not only through employee and employer relationship, but getting to know their personal life outside of work. Be their friend.
In addition, one has to be able to understand each of his or her workers thoroughly, be it in the working environment or their personal life. Besides that, producing the highest quality product to meet customer’s satisfaction is secondary.
