Scientific Management :

1)Outline what is Scientific Management

2)Explain Eli Whitney's contribution to Operations Management?

3)Use examples to discuss 3 weaknesses of Scientific Management. 

Productivity :

1.     Argue using examples why it is critical for operations managers to calculate productivity in their organizations. 

2.     Use an example to explain the difference between production and productivity.

Answer:

Scientific Management

1. Founded by Frederick Winslow Taylor, scientific management, also known as Taylorism  is a management theory that analyzes and synthesizes workflows. Its main objective is improving economic efficiency, especially labor productivity. It was one of the earliest attempts to apply science to the engineering of processes to management. In simple words, scientific management implies the art of knowing exactly what is to be done and how it is to be done. Under this approach, scientific techniques are applied in the recruitment, selection and training of workers and are also used in tackling various industrial problems.

2. Eli Whitney's contribution to operations management was the concept of interchangeable parts. He is credited with the invention of the first cotton gin during the time of industrial revolution in America when labor was a scarce resource. He also used this concept in manufacturing ten thousand muskets for the United States army at a very low price.

Interchangeability of parts concept means the creation of identical parts that can be mass produced and replaced. The parts can then be fitted together to create the final object like firearms. The goal of this concept is to eliminate the need for the large and skilled workforce which can be expensive to any organization.  The idea allowed Eli Whitney to reduce cost in mass manufacturing significantly. Machine specialization solves the problem of labor constraint and also eliminates duplication of work. The concept allowed more work to be done in a short duration of time, therefore, increasing efficiency.

3. Weaknesses of Scientific Management

1. Loss of Individual's Initiative - Under Scientific Management, methods of work are all standardized and instructions are given to the workers by the foreman. Like for example, the workers are supposed to perform the work in the same style and carry out the instructions given by the foreman. This tends to destroy the individual worker's initiative, renders their skill useless, makes their work monotonous and converts them into automatic machines.
2. Speeding up of Workers - One example scenario is that Scientific Management aims to speed up the workers, not consideration of their health and well being. Mere speeding up of the workers without corresponding structural changes in the organization and working conditions shall not lead to higher output but create only harmful mental conditions in the workers.
3. Monotony - The good example of it is the separation of planning function from that of doing, and excessive specialization, reduces the work to a mere routine. It would create monotony. Monotony refers to a mental state of slackness, inefficiency and a loss of interest in the job.

Productivity

1. Being the indicator of business performance, operations manager uses productivity metrics to measure their own performance standards and to assess their own progress too. By accurately measuring individual productivity, a business can significantly increase its revenue and take a winning position in the industry. For example, if a certain operations manager of a company is just performing the daily work operations without understanding and analyzing the productivity, the manager did not foresee or consider the future growth and didn't even know the status of every workers if they are really doing their job all the time or not. The importance of computing productivity is that it is aiming to represent the growth  because providing more goods and services to consumers translates to higher profits. As productivity increases, an organization can turn resources into revenues, paying stakeholders and retaining cash flows for future growth and expansion.

2. Production is the process of creating, growing, manufacturing, or improving goods and services. It also refers to the quantity produced.

On the other hand, productivity is used to measure the efficiency or rate of production. It is the amount of output (e.g. number of goods produced) per unit of input (e.g. labor, equipment, and capital). To be specific, we take an assembly of pizza as example, production refers to the process on how  the raw materials of dough and other ingredients will be transformed into pizza starting from the preparation of its materials up to the finished product. Productivity however, is the measure on how it takes a process of pizza assembly in accordance with the number of orders  from time to time or by daily basis.