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Paper Instructions;

Session eight (Power and Change) and session 10 (Cross-Cultural Influences on
Change) of this course discusses the topic which can derail most change programs if
incorrectly used - power.

Your task is to compare Singapore and Australia in terms of Hofstede’s cultural
dimensions, and then discuss how national culture influences French & Raven’s
‘Five Bases of Power’.
From there, argue a case that the use of power in change programs may more
efficient, or less efficient, if the organisational change is happening in Singapore or
Australia.

Notes:
For a 2000 word essay such as this, we expect at least 10 peer-reviewed academic
journal article references.

Questions and Topics We Can Help to Answer
Paper Instructions;

take on the role of a Vice President of a major organization. The CEO has assigned you the responsibility of educating the leaders within the organization of the importance of maintaining an ethical culture. 

The tone of the presentation should be of a persuasive nature as you will also be asking these leaders to take this initiative to each of their areas. As you compile this presentation, include the following:

1. Explain exactly what it means to maintain an ethical culture within the organization.
2. Analyze the role that culture plays in global business ethics.
3. Describe and persuade on the importance and rationale for maintaining an ethical culture within the entire
organization. Think about methods that could be used to motivate towards ethical business practices.
4. Recommend tactical methods that might be used within each of their areas.
Your PowerPoint presentation should be 12-14 slides, not including the title slide and reference slide. All sources used must
be referenced and paraphrased. The directly quoted material must have accompanying citations and be cited per APA guidelines.

Use of speaker notes is required as well. In the speaker notes, you will provide what you would say if you were actually giving the presentation to an audience. Please write your notes in complete sentences and adhere to typical grammar and/or punctuation rules.

Questions and Topics We Can Help to Answer
Paper Instructions;

What are the key similarities and differences between consumer buying behavior and B2B buying behavior?

Questions and Topics We Can Help to Answer
Paper Instructions;

Why might a closely held corporation choose to remain private? Why might it choose to be publicly traded?

Questions and Topics We Can Help to Answer
Paper Instructions;

Why is a company’s informal organization important? What are some of the drawbacks and benefits of the informal organization?

Questions and Topics We Can Help to Answer
Paper Instructions;

Explain the roles of commercial banks, savings and loan associations, credit unions and non-deposit institutions in the U.S. financial system.

Questions and Topics We Can Help to Answer
Paper Instructions;

Specific Assignment Requirements

Read the following attached documents:

•    A guide to the project management body of knowledge, 5th ed (2013). Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute.(PMI)  (eReserves)  - the "Bible" if one subscribes to the PMI approach to PM

•    Martin, P. K., & Tate, K. (2001, May).  Not everything is a project. PM Network, 15(5). (eReserves) - helps us to understand the difference between a (repeating) process and a (unique, one-time) project

•    Schwalbe, K. (2015). An introduction to project management (5th ed.). Boston: Course Technology. Chapter 1 (eReserves) - Kathy Schwalbe, who answers emails from students, overviews PM

•    Singer, C. A. (2001, April).  Leveraging a worldwide project team. PM Network, 15(4). (eReserves) - includes dealing with cultural and time zone differences

•    The Orion Shield Project document

Use this table of contents:

Executive Summary    
Introduction    
    Ethical Issues    
    Legal and Contractual Issues
    Technical Issues    
    Project Management Issues    
    Recommendations    
Conclusion    

Please have a minimum of 10 references.

After studying reading The Orion Shield Project document address the following questions in a succinct and thoughtful report on 'Project Management Principles in the Orion Shield Case."


1.    Applying the required readings, what Project Management principles, if any, were violated in this case:

•    By Project Manager Gary Allison,
•    By Henry Larsen, Director of Engineering
•    By Elliott Grey, Director of Program Management 
•    By Paula Arnold, Project Engineer

2.    What structural and cultural characteristics of SEC allowed each of these individuals to behave as they did? Be specific in defining the behavior you feel was a violation or failure, and the organizational characteristic(s ) that supported that behavior.

•    How does the Project Management Body Knowledge address the effects of organizational structure and culture on successful project management?
•    What principles of project and general management can a project manager rely upon to positively influence these organizational characteristics?

3.    What guidance do project management principles give for creating effective communication, and what do you think Gary would have done differently if he had been well versed in those principles?

4.    Henry Larsen gave Gary three requirements for good project management. How do those compare with the project management body of knowledge? Should Gary have been given different advice?

•    If so, what would have been better advice?
•    If this was good advice, how did Gary fall short on those three criteria?

5.    How many departments were involved in this project, and what guidance do project management principles give for coordinating functional departments?

•    Citing relevant principles, explain what Gary could have done differently to avoid Larsen’s perception that Gary had failed as a project manager.

•    Finally, did Gary fail? If SEC was awarded a sole source contract for production of the new material, why was his project perceived as a failure?

•    Do you agree or disagree? Explain your rationale, citing relevant project management literature for how success is defined for a project. 

Remember to include a meaningful, results-filled executive summary at the beginning of your report.

Questions and Topics We Can Help to Answer
Paper Instructions;

Assignment

Required reading – read the documents attached to the order:

Reading (Required):
Jacobs, F.R & Chase, R.B. (2013). Operations and supply management: the core, 3e. New York: McGraw Hill/Irwin.  Chapter 1
Multimedia: 
D’Mello, J.G. (2015). Introduction to operations management.  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WERYyASsKzQ

•    Each student first succinctly defines in his or her own words the phrases “operational efficiency”, “operational effectiveness”, "operations strategy" and "operational sustainability."

•    In addition, each student defines the concept of “quality” as used in his or her work organization or family and presents examples.

•    Further, each student defines Six Sigma, and comments on its applicability and advises its value, if any, in his or her or another organization.

Be prepared to do online research to learn more about Six Sigma as an important OM technique in the reduction of production errors albeit at a high price to the enterprise using it.

Clarification: 

You may or may not be able to agree with the following distinction between "operational efficiency" and "operational effectiveness":

In terms of executing the day-to-day processes of an organization - ie, its operations, 

•    Efficiency refers to resource conservation, while 
•    Effectiveness has to do with mission or task accomplishment 

There are numerous important external factors that affect the operational effectiveness and operational efficiency of an organization.  Two of the most significant external factors, typically, are resource constraints imposed from above and laws and regulations with which compliance is required.

Quality is rather hard to define.  You may or may not be able to agree that in essence, quality means either the "best" or the "best for the price".
According to the full version of Jacobs & Chase (2009) (ISBN 978-0073403304), 

Six Sigma is a philosophy and set of methods companies use to eliminate defects in their products and processes 

However, whether or not you agree with the above views, 

•    You are to succinctly define in your own words the phrases (1) "operational efficiency", (2) "operational effectiveness", (3) operations strategy, and (4) operational sustainability 

•    Then, you will define the concept of (5) "quality" as used in your organization

•    Finally, you are to define (6) "Six Sigma," and comment on its applicability and value, if any, in your organization. 

Questions and Topics We Can Help to Answer
Paper Instructions;

Purpose of Assignment
The purpose of this assignment is to provide a chance for the student to examine an existing organization and apply research to identify opportunities for strategic change. 
Assignment Steps
Develop a 1,050-word essay to identify one global creative organization, as defined in Ch. 10 and 11 of Mastering Leadership. 
Analyze the opportunities for strategic change that are evident, citing evidence. 
Include considerations of culture and structure in addressing those opportunities. 
Include the following: 
Identify one organization that could be considered creative, based on definitions in Mastering Leadership.
Determine whether or not you believe the organization meets those criteria. Explain why.
Discuss the impact of organizational culture and structure on that opportunity for strategic change.
Formulate conclusions including personal learning on your analysis. 
Format your assignment consistent with APA guidelines.

Questions and Topics We Can Help to Answer
Paper Instructions;

Order Instructions

Readings (Required):

•    Johnson, W.H.A. (n.d.). Toyota Motor Manufacturing Company Canada (TMMC): The Lexus RX 330 Line. Waltham, MA: Department of Management, Bentley College.  http://polaris.umuc.edu/~jstewart/Amba620/TMMCCase_Final.pdf
•    TPS Terms
•    TPS Goals, Origins, Principles, Sharing, Workplace Management, Commonly Used Terminology
•    TPS Vision, Philosophy, Concepts of Jidoka and Just-in-Time
•    Toyota Unveils Revamped Manufacturing Process
•    Toyota New Global Architecture to Debut This Year, Likely on the Prius
•    Toyota Invests in Competitive Plants - Sustainable Growth Strategy, New Plant in Mexico, Expansion in China (15 April 2015)

Multimedia (Required)

•    Knode, C.S. (2011) Decision tree video (setting up the problem): http://vimeo.com/duffer44/decision-trees-part-1.  Download Transcript
•    Knode, C.S. (2011) Decision tree video 2 (determining the value of perfect information valuation):  http://vimeo.com/duffer44/decision-trees-part-2 .  Download Transcript
•    Knode, C.S. (2011) Decision tree video 3 (determining the value of imperfect information valuation): http://vimeo.com/duffer44/decision-trees-part-3  Download Transcript

This week there is a group assignment that applies several operations decision-making techniques in an international context, focusing on the Toyota Motor Company's North American Lexus production decision made a few years ago. 

Toyota operations in Mexico are involved in this team assignment.  Mexico is a very important trading partner of the US and a member nation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which provides for duty (tariff)-free commerce among Canada, Mexico, and the USA.

Each group completes the tasks to be found in the Week 10 Assignment, deciding where and how Toyota should produce a particular Lexus model in North America, by the end of this week, in a succinct report that includes an executive summary. 

Assignment Clarification:

To properly complete this assignment, it will be important for each team to consider the following points:
•    Assignment Proper. Key to solving the assignment proper,  possibly with supporting files, is to tackle its various parts one by one, fully answering each requirement.  In this regard, don't get hung up on one exercise; move on to the next one.  Do refer back to prior seminars or other courses (properly cited of course) if they included any of the quantitative techniques required here
•    To remain motivated, remember that the overall learning goal here is to familiarize each team member with the OM techniques and concepts involved, not to make you a Toyota production planner
•    Thus remember to explain the team's answers in succinct but good English, particularly if the team wishes to obtain an above-task grade
•    Be sure to study all the  assignment help materials that are  posted here.
•    Please mark your answers clearly in your assignment submission, so they can be easily found and identified.

Assignment Help Files:

Exercise 1

Toyota Motor Corporation (1998 ff). The Toyota production system. http://www.toyotageorgetown.com/tps1.asp

Exercise 2 
Mind Tools. (n.d.).  Grid analysis. http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTED_03.htm 

Exercise 3
Mind Tools. (n.d.).  Decision tree analysis. http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTED_04.htm

Knode, C.S. (2011) Decision tree video (setting up the problem). http://vimeo.com/duffer44/decision-trees-part-1 
Download Transcript

Knode, C.S. (2011) Decision tree video 2 (determining the value of perfect information valuation).http://vimeo.com/duffer44/decision-trees-part-2  
Download Transcript

Knode, C.S. (2011) Decision tree video 3 (determining the value of imperfect information valuation).http://vimeo.com/duffer44/decision-trees-part-3  
Download Transcript

Exercise 4
Do online research on "Toyota production North America" and similar topics.
Consider contacting the Toyota Motor Company USA on these topics.

Assignment:

Team Assignment  (10%): Planning Production for Toyota North America

Lexus RX 350, Successor in 2007 to the RX 330

Photo courtesy of Toyota Motor Company




Assignment Tasks

Address the following four exercises:

Exercise 1: Making a Critical Assessment of the Toyota Production System (TPS) Today
a. Demonstrate your team's basic understanding of the TPS by 1) defining in your team's own words any eight of the terms found athttp://www.toyotageorgetown.com/terms.asp, and 2) applying them to one or more of your team's own companies or other organizations.

For example, Pokayoke can be defined as an approach to create mistake proofing through use of devices that detect or prevent production errors. At a software development firm, pokayoke might be applied through use of a modular development process that includes extensive software module testing before proceeding to module integration and total system testing.

b. Describe the TPS as a total entity. What are its purposes? Its advantages? Its limitations? How is it now evolving? Is it getting better – or not? Has it been successfully copied by other motor vehicle manufacturers?  Why or why not?

Exercise 2: Use of a Grid Analysis (Weighted Scoring Model) to Help Make the North American Plant Location Decision for the RX 330
This exercise illustrates how when deciding among two or more competing plant location options, various decision factors (which can typically be characterized as exogenous - in a company’s external environment - or endogenous - internal to the company) can be qualitatively identified, and how these factors can then be weighted to obtain an overall score for each competing location option.
a. List the factors your team considers key to the Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada  (TMMC): The Lexus RX 330 Line North American plant location decision, identifying these factors as either exogenous  or endogenous, weighting them using your team's best judgment (stating any relevant assumptions or constraints), and assigning two scores to each factor: one for production of the Lexus RX 330 at TMMC, and one for production at a Toyota factory in the USA.

b. Using the scores from your team's weighted scoring model and working with regard to Ringo Sho and Nemawashi, make and support your recommendation for the RX 330 North American plant location - TMMC or a factory in the USA.

Exercise 3: Determining Production Capacity Needed at Toyota Motor Manufacturing of Canada (TMMC) 
Decision trees are another important if challenging world-class operations management method which operations managers should understand and with which other managers should be familiar.
This exercise illustrates how using a decision tree, determination of an "optimal" production capacity option can be made from among several possible capacity options based on the provided probable market demand and expected costs/payoffs of events that influence the options.
It is spring 2000, and TMMC has indeed just been chosen to produce the new Lexus RX 330 line, with the first units deliverable in 2003. Toyota must now determine the amount of annual production capacity it should build at TMMC.
Toyota's goal is to maximize the profit from the RX 330 line over the five years from 2003-2007. These vehicles will sell for an average of $37,000 and incur a mean unit production cost of $28,000 (here, $ = the Canadian dollar). 
10,000 units of annual production capacity can be built for $50M (M=million) with additional blocks of 5,000 units of annual capacity each costing $15M. Each block of 5,000 units of capacity will also cost $5M per year to maintain, even if the capacity is unused.
Assume that the number of units actually sold each year will be the lesser of the demand and the production capacity.

Marketing has provided three vehicle estimated demand scenarios with associated probabilities as follows:
Demand    2003    2004    2005    2006    2007    Probability
Low    10,000    10,500    11,000    11,500    12,000    0.25
Moderate    15,000    16,000    17,000    18,000    19,000    0.50
High    20,000    24,000    26,000    28,000    30,000    0.25

a. To maximize profit earned during this period, which production capacity should TMMC in 2000 decide to build - 10,000, 15,000, 20,000, 25,000, or 30,000 cars? Justify your choice. 
You may use the following decision tree developed by Toyota operations analysts in Toyota City, Japan - or your group may choose to vary it in some way based, perhaps, on its presumed better local market knowledge.



b. What are the weaknesses or limitations in this analysis? How might they be corrected or at least reduced?
c. It is now late 2016.  How well has the RX-330/350 actually done in the North American market?  Is its quality rated as high as if it were made in Japan?  

Do some online research; it's part of improving your attainment of Information Literacy, one of the UMUC MBA Competencies. Here see the Content/Week 10 references on Grid Analysis and Decision Trees

Exercise 4: Assessment of Toyota’s Current Regional Production Strategy 
North America


Source:www.worldatlas.com/<wbr><wbr>webimage/countrys/na.htm,

a. After doing necessary research online or otherwise, document and evaluate the current distribution of Toyota production in North America.  Here be sure to include Mexico.  
b. Why does the team believe Toyota has chosen to produce its cars in the current manner? Has Toyota been wise, or not?

In effect, this exercise provides the team an opportunity to think ahead to the politico-socio-economic-technological considerations that will be quite important in DMBA 630.

Questions and Topics We Can Help to Answer
Paper Instructions;

Assignment: Discussion Activity 

Each student is to critically assess the 1) mission, 2) goals, and 3) importance of information systems and their management (ISM) in the firm, 4) using Oracle Corporation as an example.

Clarification:

The single most important point made in these materials is that information systems, and their supporting information technology plus included telecommunications technology, are not drivers in well-managed organizations; instead, they are when properly used, supporters of the business mission and strategy.

That is true of UMUC, where the mission is educate with the major marketing strategy to be online.  It is also true of Amazon.com, where the mission is to make a profit selling a wide number of products, and the major marketing strategy  is  again, online.

The second most important point, stressed by Professor McFarlan and epitomized by Amazon.com, Apple and Google, is that properly-designed and -implemented information systems can convey a strategic competitive advantage to their enterprises.

Example: Here is a start on contributing to this week's discussions, with an example using UMUC as the firm.  

The  mission of information systems management at University of Maryland University College is to support the teaching and administrative processes of the university in an efficient and effective (!, recall operations management) way
The goals of UMUC ISM include:

Being at the state of the art in course delivery at a distance. That's why we have used Webex, google- and pdf format and audio/video materials 
Providing 24x7 reliability in the Learning environment, in  PeopleSoft and other essential information systems.  360 Support is on call via message and telephone at all hours, for instance. 
Conserving State and student (ie, tuition) resources in accomplishing the foregoing, which Maryland taxpayers and the state legislature expect.
The importance  of ISM at UMUC is extremely high, given

First, that the University has strategically decided to be the open university of Maryland and the United States, providing learning services to a growing student body mostly* at a distance, thus using information systems heavily. 
Second, there are a plethora of state and federal regulations, plus community standards, that govern the management of information at UMUC and thus provide continuing, importance-raising challenges.**


*Currently, about 82% of UMUC Adelphi students study exclusively online, and another 10% learn through a "hybrid" online/F2F program.

**One example is the accommodation requirements of the federal ADA - Americans with Disabilities - Act. These require that information be delivered at UMUC in ways that accommodate, for instance, visually- and hearing-impaired students. This means, for one example, that we must prepare - and pay for - transcripts of audio materials for hearing-impaired students (and some professors too).

Questions and Topics We Can Help to Answer
Paper Instructions;

•    Identify an important managerial challenge facing Oracle Corporation. 
•    Develop a plan that integrates effective financial and operational decision making to successfully meet this challenge and improve organizational performance, in a succinct report that includes an executive summary.

More Information:

What is a succinct report?  Could it be 10 pages or less?    One reads that IBM decision papers are limited to that length, and we all recall the single-sheet Ringo Sho approach to important decisions at Toyota.

As to overall plan format, I-B-C (http://polaris.umuc.edu/~jstewart/StewartWebSite/writingt.htm) is, recommended for your consideration.

A results-filled executive summary (ES) should lead off the plan. This link is to "How to Write an Executive Summary" in Course Resources.  You may also benefit from a review of the files in Course Resources specific to Writing Guidelines and  the files showing proper APA citations.

This final seminar week you will prepare an End-of-Seminar Project.
The EOSP provides an opportunity for you to demonstrate integration of  your knowledge of financial and operational management.  

You will each develop a plan that integrates effective financial and operational decision making to successfully meet a managerial challenge and improve the performance of your enterprise.

Attached is an example of a superior - not a perfect - EOSP.
Attention is invited to its thoroughness, helpful formatting, and use of several tools/methods that we have studied.

The table of contents is an "extra" help to the busy enterprise reader.