Thursday, November 24, 2005

be the curtailment imitated


General Motors has desperately taken a bid to shed 30,000 jobs by 2008 in order to cut overheads by US17b annually and stave off bankruptcy. Reported The Australian. GM's huge wage, health care and pension costs have seen it struggle against mean and lean Asia competitors such as Toyota, and it's products have failed to keep capturing the imagination of consumers.

GM's Chairman Rick Wagoner said that the slashing billions of dollars in costs is necessary to save the company, and bring it back to profitability. But he admitted it will be difficult for suppliers, employees, and the towns where they work.

The quality and cost of a product are determined largely by the effectiveness and efficiency of the production system. When a business has become sour, most probably the cost of business operating is taken in blames. So a layman's tramp such as cost cutting will be the priority footstep to think about.

In the 1980s, cost-cutting efforts by US companies have typically relied on such approaches as plants closing, downsizing operation, laying off production workers, and selling off problem child units. Experts argue that American firm focus on capital investment as a mean of reducing labor costs rather than improving quality, reducing inventories, and tapping the potentials of good labor force.

As R.Wayne Mondy et al [isbn:0-205-12700-2] cited in the Management Concepts, Practices, And Skills p576, that Basically American managers have been underutilizing their human capital - pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into equipment and technological advancements rather than keeping and retraining valuable employees and gearing their efforts to improve the relationship between work and productivity.

What have made the tendency of layoff workers to become the primary implementation in US? Perhaps it lies on the culture and salutary of workers. Analysts say GM's highly paid workers are well-protected by ample and glamorous benefits, and this cost makes GM cars more expensive than those from foreign competitors.

This tendency becomes much more significant if you take a comparison between US and Japan of the behavior of work force. Japanese companies typically have a group-oriented culture in which workers are taking concern to help in finding and solving problems for company; they love their company with one accord with everybody agreeing. While American teamwork involves group members in one management activity rating other group's performance; they protect their own unit's standing rather than the company as a whole. In such a situation, the cost of human resources formed as the major portion of total costing.

Traditional Chinese-oriented and Japanese-oriented workers have their beautiful side, these workers are not only hardworking but patriotic to their own company. They tend to work as crews with boss on a same boat and treat company as a family. Perhaps the less cumbersome workmen regulations and welfares make them be rational. Naturally the quality and cost of product are determined by this scenario.

Let assume you've hired several workers who are skivvies and are just looking for paid-leave and bonus. They are cleverly doing a simple job by group with whistling. What would you do when your net profit is written in broad reded figures? Certainly you'll follow suit of what GM was doing. Is that Right?

What if the MAS's situation was just like the above phenomenon, could the curtailment performed by GM be imitated?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

hi KK!!

nice to meet another fellow kulim blogger. plus u, that makes us the 3 musketeers!! (me, kljs & you)

will see more of u n am gonna add u to my list. :)

ps. sorry as this is a TOTALLY unrelated comment. heh. =P

Picatho (百可度) said...

welcome yvy, i got the impression of warmth by knowing bloggers of neighborhood. doesn't feel like home alone again. nice to meet u too! i'll do nexus for all i've met :)

Anonymous said...

haha!! glad to note that. most bloggers i know are VERY friendly n u will find that u can fit in without much problems. welcome to the club again!

:)

Anonymous said...

ps. thank u for the present. now i can scare off potential robbers!! lol =P