Organisation and Management †Assignment One Essay

For the purpose of this assignment I have chosen transport and logistics company Mainfreight Limited. I will be focusing specifically on the outbound night crew. This team is responsible for loading freight from the Wellington region onto trucks to be sent to branches across New Zealand. Inside this team there is one supervisor who works with the loading team on the floor also loading and is responsible for smooth daily operations. The mid level manager is the Operations Manager who is responsible for the supervisor and implementing organisational plans such as reducing damages to freight. The top manager in this case is the Branch Manager who sets goals for the branch and oversees planning for the future. Q1) An economic reason for a truck loading crew operating at night is that it’s cheaper to travel at night due to faster travel times and less fuel consumption for the trucks on empty roads I think this reason applies most strongly to my organisation because it will increase the profit. A social reason for the organisation is that there is less risk of accidents late at night on empty roads. A personal reason to form this organisation could be a love for trucks. Q2) Figurehead: The most well known figurehead of Mainfreight Wellington is the branch manager, an activity could be a speech at the grand opening, skills he would need include public speaking competency and reliability. Entrepreneur: The entrepreneur of the branch initiates innovative solutions and change to the organisation such as the branch manager diversifying from road transport to including rail or sea transportation. Some skills needed for this role are creativity and brevity. Resource allocator: Within my organisation this role is filled by the operations manager, who distributes resources such as equipment like forklifts and workers if needed to fulfill the crews workload. Some skills needed for this role are time management and planning ability. Disseminator: An activity a manager in this role might perform is gathering information from customers and producing estimates of freight quantities for the truck loaders who could then plan how they layout their loads. Skills need ed are the ability to gather and analyze information. Q3) ‘Soldiering’ by Frederick Taylor is when workers purposely limit output by not working to full capacity in order to avoid causing redundancies and to avoid losing incentive pay by exceeding required performance levels. The impacts of workers ‘soldiering’ on my organisation could mean that if there is a large influx of freight and workers don’t load it all that night, the delay could anger the customer who will then take their business elsewhere. If workers are soldiering performance will not be maximized and low productivity could cause a fall in capital investment and the eventual decline of the business. Q4) ‘Time and motion studies’ streamline task processes by reducing inefficient motions and then once the task process has been adjusted through motion studies the time studies then seeks to reflect a standard length of time in which the refined task process should be completed. Time and Motion studies’ are a technique to increase task efficiency by workers to increase the output with no greater physical effort. An impact of T&M studies on my organisation is that incoming freight is placed in bays so loaders do not have to go back and forth to the unloading area.