Assignment: Efficiency and Effectiveness

This assignment will allow you to evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of an organization. It will also assist you in using software for a professional presentation.

To complete this assignment, view the Module Six Assignment Guidelines and Rubric document

Module Overview

In this module, you will explore efficiency and effectiveness as they relate to labor. Workforce personnel have a significant impact on product quality and services rendered. This quality can be heavily impacted by effectiveness and efficiency. A company's reputation and customer satisfaction ratings are often defined by the workforce. However, the workforce can only be as good as resources allow. Leaders in management often talk about improvements in employee effectiveness and efficiency as a means to improve business. However, it must be understood that effectiveness is very different from efficiency (Chaffey, 2014).

Efficient employees produce rapidly and smartly. Employees who consistently produce at a high level are effective. Judiciously applying effectiveness and efficiency can help produce superior products more rapidly and with potentially fewer resources. However, efficiency and effectiveness are not interchangeable terms: Efficiency is not always effective, and effectiveness is not always efficient.

Effectiveness can be considered the outcome of the actions of employees and managers. This means that, together, personnel who demonstrate workplace effectiveness also help produce superior results. Effectiveness is often measured through performance reviews. If performance evaluations are the measure of effectiveness, then care must be taken in the preparation of those evaluations to ensure that they truly measure the appropriate characteristics. Employees must be rewarded for their strengths, and employees' skills must be enhanced via training to support required improvements in effectiveness. All personnel must recognize their impact on effectiveness and understand how their performance affects the company overall.

This module will focus on the many factors in the workplace that have an impact on effectiveness, including the workplace's environment, safety, layout, and available equipment, and how those factors must be addressed by management.

Reference

Chaffey, D. (2014). What is the difference between efficiency and effectiveness marketing measures? Smart Insights. Retrieved from http://www.smartinsights.com/goal-setting-evaluation/goals-kpis/definition-efficiency-and-effectiveness/

Learning Objectives

By the end of this module, you will meet these learning objectives:

o Assess strategies to increase productivity with respect to manufacturing, process, cycle, and takt time limits
o Evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of an organization
o Analyze the impact of an organization's layout on customer satisfaction

Plan at a Glance

This is the recommended plan for completing the reading assignments and activities within the module. Additional information can be found in the module Reading and Resources section and in the task list.

1. Read the assigned chapter in the textbook prior to completing the presentation on efficiency and effectiveness.

Reading and Resources
Required Resources

Textbook: Operations and Supply Chain Management, Chapter 15

o What are efficiency and effectiveness?
o What is the difference between efficiency and effectiveness?
o Do effectiveness and efficiency yield value?
o What is the difference between MRPII and ERP?
o What resources need to be managed and what benefits are derived from doing so?
o What types of businesses are best served by MRP and SAP?

Additional Support (Optional)

PDF: Layout Design for a Low Capacity Manufacturing Line: A Case Study- http://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs-wm/45563.pdf

This article relates to fashion production.

Video: Effectiveness, Efficiency and Productivity (3:30)- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayiMmD3bCio

This video explains the difference between efficiency, effectiveness, and productivity. For a transcript of the video, click here.

Video: Manufacturing, Building Efficiency, Growing Economies (2:30)- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_p1qHmP5zz0

This video is about manufacturers and how they must "constantly perform better just to keep up with the super-fast growth of the industry. Manufacturing plants must stay on the cutting edge of technology to minimize downtime and maximize productivity." For a transcript of the video, click here.

Video: Material Requirements Placement (MRP) and ERP (2:59)- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3r-DPaEWpf0

This video highlights some of the important factors that differentiate MRP and ERP.