KO=The Coca-Cola Company
Nicollemarie Pérez Zapata
E00031849
Assignment_u03
What role can top management play in helping a company achieve superior efficiency, quality, innovation, and responsiveness to customers?
A company can increase efficiency through a number of steps:
• Exploiting economies of scale and learning effects,
• Adopting flexible manufacturing technologies,
• Reducing customer defection rates,
• Implementing just-in-time systems,
• Getting the R&D function to design products that are easy to manufacture,
• Upgrading the skills of employees through training,
• Introducing self-managing teams
• Linking pay to performance,
• Building a companywide commitment to efficiency through strong leadership,
• And designing structures that facilitate cooperation among different functions in pursuit of efficiency goals.
The role of top management is absolutely critical in achieving each of these goals. It is top management’s task to set challenging efficiency, quality, innovation, and responsiveness goals and to communicate the importance of these goals to others in the organization. Top management must also demonstrate commitment to the attainment of these goals by modeling the desired behavior and by using the internal incentive systems of the organization to reinforce behavior that is consistent with each of the goals. Furthermore, top management has to allocate resources within the organization so that others can attain these goals; it needs to facilitate cooperation between different functions within the organization in pursuit of superior efficiency, quality, innovation, and customer responsiveness.
Achieving superior quality demands an organization wide commitment to quality and a clear focus on the customer. It also requires metrics to measure quality goals and incentives that emphasize quality, input from employees regarding ways in which quality can be improved, a methodology for tracing defects to their source and correcting the problems that produce
E00031849
Assignment_u03
What role can top management play in helping a company achieve superior efficiency, quality, innovation, and responsiveness to customers?
A company can increase efficiency through a number of steps:
• Exploiting economies of scale and learning effects,
• Adopting flexible manufacturing technologies,
• Reducing customer defection rates,
• Implementing just-in-time systems,
• Getting the R&D function to design products that are easy to manufacture,
• Upgrading the skills of employees through training,
• Introducing self-managing teams
• Linking pay to performance,
• Building a companywide commitment to efficiency through strong leadership,
• And designing structures that facilitate cooperation among different functions in pursuit of efficiency goals.
The role of top management is absolutely critical in achieving each of these goals. It is top management’s task to set challenging efficiency, quality, innovation, and responsiveness goals and to communicate the importance of these goals to others in the organization. Top management must also demonstrate commitment to the attainment of these goals by modeling the desired behavior and by using the internal incentive systems of the organization to reinforce behavior that is consistent with each of the goals. Furthermore, top management has to allocate resources within the organization so that others can attain these goals; it needs to facilitate cooperation between different functions within the organization in pursuit of superior efficiency, quality, innovation, and customer responsiveness.
Achieving superior quality demands an organization wide commitment to quality and a clear focus on the customer. It also requires metrics to measure quality goals and incentives that emphasize quality, input from employees regarding ways in which quality can be improved, a methodology for tracing defects to their source and correcting the problems that produce