Exam 7: Manufacturing and Service Technologies

Contrast the axes on Perrow's framework for department technologies.

Service technologies are considered to be labor and knowledge intensive, while manufacturing technologies tend to be capital asset intensive.

Failing to adopt appropriate technologies to support strategy, or adopting a new technology and failing to realign strategy to match it, can lead to poor performance.

The general pattern in technology research is that when technologies are routine, analyzable, independent, and well defined, then:

Boundary roles are used extensively in manufacturing firms, but rarely used in service organizations.

The Verification Department of the Internal Revenue Service checks the mathematics on returns and notes any discrepancies; this department would fit into which of Perrow's quadrants?

Assume you are the supervisor of workers who have very limited education and experience, and that their work is routine. Generally you would:

Extend the framework of Woodward's research findings to today, adding in whatever important technology did not exist at the time she did her research.

The manufacturing industry has increased three times as fast as the service sector in the North American economy.

A baseball team is an example of pooled interdependence.

The goal of the sociotechnical systems approach is to design the organization for:

Case 7.0 Toyz, a 7 year-old manufacturing company in a small valley town, produces about three plastic toy lines that they judge will be "hot" items for children. In their first two years, even though start-up costs were high, the company did well because they judged the unpredictable market well, and even set the pace within their region for popularity of a new bubble-maker. By their third year, however, similar cheaper bubble-makers were commonly imported from Taiwan, and the owner's judgments on other "hot" items were not on target; consequently Toyz operated at a loss for two years. Three years ago Toyz added a small new product line that they think might bring some stability to the company. In addition to the "hot" items, Toyz added a small "cash cow" line of plastic furniture for children. Last year the furniture line constituted 25% of total revenue, and they would like to keep the line at about 25% of total revenues. The design department consists of five employees who are highly educated and are held responsible for safe engineering of a product that can realistically be manufactured. Toyz designers gear up annually in January for that year's Christmas season. As professionals, they make it a point to keep informed on government standards that are occasionally issued. Some organization leaders feel that marketing is missing the boat by catering more to Toyz' end users rather than to the company's wholesale buyers. Toyz deals with only two major distributors to handle all warehousing and distribution. Frequently their orders are not filled correctly because sufficient quantity cannot always be produced on time. Although top management is giving some consideration to outsourcing part of its manufacturing operations overseas (where labor is less costly), at the present time 4/5 of their employees are in manufacturing. The manufacturing area is kept very clean, but the odor on the premises is so bad that many people in town will not accept jobs there even though entry-level pay is somewhat above minimum wage. -Reference Case 7.0. Place Toyz' manufacturing, marketing, and design departments in Perrow's framework for departmental technology. Then, based on your analysis, make recommendations to management on any differences in how each of those departments should be managed.

Direct interaction between customer and employee is generally very high with services, while there is little direct interaction between customers and employees in the technical core of a manufacturing firm.

The goal of mass customization is to provide customers with exactly what they want when they want it.

An organization's ____ is the work process that is directly related to the organization's mission.

Interdependence means the extent to which departments depend on each other for information, resources, or materials to accomplish their tasks.

Using Woodward's findings, compare the structures that are appropriate for each of the technologies she identified. Use at least the following elements of structure: supervisor span of control, worker skill level, centralization, and number of management levels.

_____ technologies have high task variety, and the conversion process is not analyzable or well understood.

Which of the following is not true regarding mass production and the digital factory?

Teaching in a high school and medical services in a health clinic are referred to as an organization's _____ technology.