MGMT250 Notes September 2, 2004
1. Initial Stuff
A. Case Due in 2 weeks, do you have groups formed?
B. Book is in, next time have HW1 and HW2 due.
C. Schedule.
1. We shall start Operations Strategy Today.
2. Finish Ops Strategy next time
3. Begin Decision Analysis and Decision Theory Next time, read over Chapter
5s.
4. Still looking for place to tour.
2. Case Report and Questions for ATT UCS Case:
The following are discussion questions for class discussion, the case write-up should try to
address these questions within a good format (as recommended by the Latona and Nathan
reading). They are only possible issues. Other points of evaluation should be taken into
consideration. How well your report is written (structure, grammar), its summary of the case
(give a critique of what they are doing, what do you like, what do you not like. e.g. what are
the major problem areas), the strength and insight of your recommendations and
weaknesses of your recommendations (how do you plan on addressing the problem areas),
and how well you relate it to the text readings, will all influence your grade. Just answering
the questions one by one for a detailed case evaluation is not appropriate. You need to write
this as a report for someone that wishes to analyze the company and its performance
measurement program.
1. How would you define quality in a service organization such as UCS?
2. What type of measures would you use in this environment?
3. How might you design a way for the processes to meet and deliver on these measures?
4. How would you assess the strengths and weakness of UCS’s quality system?
Measurement, Compensation and Quality Improvement systems.
5. How is each of these systems designed? What are the key elements?
6. Do you think working as an associate is a good thing?
7. What are some human resources issues that may arise in this system?
8. What do you think about the options and directions of the organization? What would your
recommend that they do to their system?
3. What are some factors that affect productivity? (Pg. 51 book).
A number of approaches are recommended for productivity improvement (by book p. 52):
a. productivity measures for all operations.
b. perform improvements on “bottleneck” areas. What is a bottleneck area? How do you know?
c. use various methods such as employee ideas, benchmarking
d. establish reasonable goals.
e. management support
f. measure and publish improvements
g. don’t confuse with “efficiency”, what is example difference?
4. Competitiveness and Performance Measures:
Book defines competitiveness on how effectively an organization meets the needs of
customers relative to others with similar goods and services.
Here are some barriers to this competitiveness (on an international scope)
1. Short Time Horizon of Business Plans
- Giving excessive weights to financial criteria rather then other criteria.
-Underinvestment in R&D
