THE APPLICATION OF PRODUCTION SKILLS IN THE MANAGEMENT OF BUSINESS ORGANIZATION TO GAIN COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
ABSTRACT
Production skills are a basic element in maintaining the production capacity of an organization is an important function in any production organization. The reprocessing of any organization is made up of both its human and material assets, which are the source of generating revenue and growth. A great deal of production skills is required to harness both the human, machine, materials, money, and assets of a production firm, and stay on top of the business, being a competitive market… (Scroll down for the link to get the Complete Chapter One to Five Project Material)
INTRODUCTION
BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
- Production skills
Industries and business organization be it private or public, have one thing in common, the human workforce, this could confidently be said, that organization, will not exist without its human resources, since a business organization cannot even start without a workforce, and effective and efficient skills, will gear the ability of the organization to stand out among its competitors.
Production control is defined by Burbidge (1992). In his book, the principles of production control, “Is the function of management which plans, directs and controls the material supply and processing activities of an enterprise, so that the specified products are produced. By specific methods to meet an approved sales program. These activities being carried out in such a manner that the labor, plant, and capital available are used to the best advantage.
Poter (2006). In his book, effective entrepreneurship, he is of the view that companies can choose between three general strategies to build competitive advantage a differentiation strategy, a low-cost strategy and third approach, the frequency used by entrepreneurs in focus, or niche strategy. A firm that uses a differentiation strategy competes on the basis of its ability to do things differently than its major competitors do.
Beal, Reginald (2000). In his journal competing for environmental scanning competitive strategy and organizational performance in small manufacturing firms is of the view that pursuit of an effective entrepreneurial strategy is mainly through advantages, has been mapped through the collection and analysis of information from existing and potential customers.
Boxalla (1996) Boxall 1996 defines strategy as a firm’s framework of critical ends and means. This definition helps to make the point clear, that means do not flow unproblematically from ends. Rather the historically developed means to shape what ends are conceivable and possible… (Scroll down for the link to get the Complete Chapter One to Five Project Material)
In the past years, various issues to the effective management of industries and business organizations to gain a competitive advantage over others have been noticed and highlighted as follows:
- Unskilled Labour:
Unskilled labor has been the major problem facing industries and business organization, this is as a result of personnel managers, not recruiting and selecting employees, base on merit, skill, and expertise, but rather on selection based on man know man, a connection of whom you know to get to where you want. Hence, the effect is having the wrong people at the right place and thereby affecting the quality of service or product to be delivered to the market.
In Nigeria today, you will be surprised, seeing somebody who read a different course entirely been employed in a different field. i.e. a mechanical engineer working in the banking sector, such the expected performance will be upturned and unsatisfactorily.
- Technology:
The inability of industries and business organizations to use modern ways to get things done effectively, and efficiently is another major problem. A supplier may be expected to produce technical, particularly during the early stages of design and manufacturing… (Scroll down for the link to get the Complete Chapter One to Five Project Material)
Research Objective
The objective of the study is to analyze the impact of production skills in the management of industries/business organizations to portray how far the application of production skills in the management has helped the discipline level.
In this case, therefore, it is important to note that management is a very complex situation because human beings as individuals interact with one another in groups and in a large organization. It is also very important to note that every human behavior has a cause, there is a reason for a person behaving as he does… (Scroll down for the link to get the Complete Chapter One to Five Project Material)
LITERATURE REVIEW
Zilbovicius (1999) indicates that the petroleum industry originated the main production system (Mass, Lean, semi-autonomous groups, enriched groups), and influenced most sectors. Currently, the Brazilian petroleum industry has noticed an evolution of physical production and a number of formal workers (IBGE, 2011), which indicates an opportunity for sharing employees’ knowledge.
‘Blue-collar’ is a profession category related to laborers (Harding and Percival, 2008). It is a workplace designation that defines an employee who performs manual or technical labor, such as in a factory, in contrast to a white-collar worker, who does non-manual work.
Symbolic workers have, in general, some autonomy over their work, making decisions on how to appropriately perform it. Blue collars, in turn, do not have this formal autonomy; their actions and resources are usually predefined. Under such restrictions, they perform activities, internalizing knowledge from procedures, and developing tacit knowledge. Operations performance, and, ultimately, the firm’s performance depends on that knowledge, but there is sparse literature on blue-collar workers, and how they develop and incorporate knowledge in their actions (Muniz Jr.; Nakano; Batista Jr., 2011)… (Scroll down for the link to get the Complete Chapter One to Five Project Material)
K-PMM – THE KNOWLEDGE-BASED INTEGRATED PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT MODEL
Muniz Jr., Batista Jr., and Loureiro (2010) indicate that traditional production management models have two dimensions, a human or social dimension represented by the work organization called the W-dimension and, a technical dimension represented by the production organization which is the P dimension.
The P and W-dimensions essentially capture the explicit structure and the behavior of the production management system. Such a system has also a tacit structure that is progressively converted into explicit, as it is better understood. Tacit knowledge exists, it is important, and it needs to be formally included in a model of the production management system, especially to model shop floor environment relationships… (Scroll down for the link to get the Complete Chapter One to Five Project Material)
Workers Knowledge And Knowledge Management
Muniz Jr., Nakano and Batista Jr. (2011) indicate that the KM literature can be roughly divided into two perspectives: (a) knowledge as amenable of being stored, combined, and disseminated, and (b) while the other stresses the role of social relations and individual and collective action. To the latter, knowledge is embedded in relationships and cannot be separated from action.
White collars workers have, in general, some autonomy over their work, making decisions on how to perform it. Blue collars in turn do not have that formal autonomy; their activities and resources are usually predefined.
Under such restrictions, they perform activities, internalize knowledge from procedures, and develop tacit knowledge. A standard operation procedure contains information, but the enclosed knowledge in it has no value until it is actually put into practice, and it is enacted by workers. Operations performance and, ultimately, the firm’s performance depends on that knowledge, but the knowledge management basis to blue-collar workers is still a research issue, i.e. how they develop and incorporate knowledge in their actions.
While white collars may have some action over their work environment and thus act to foster knowledge creation and sharing, blue collars do have much less formal autonomy. Their work context is defined by human management practices and operation management techniques on the shop floor. Thus, they ultimately define knowledge creation and sharing.
Eastern operations management techniques were the first to allow some autonomy and discretion to blue collars, demanding them to participate, analyze, and contribute to problem-solving. For instance, housekeeping (5S) and participative problem solving (Kaizen) groups are based on workers’ initiative and participation, and even the use of standard operating procedures in such a context ends up facilitating internalization (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995)… (Scroll down for the link to get the Complete Chapter One to Five Project Material)
This chapter discussed the method the researcher followed in carrying out the study. It started by discussing the research design, then the population, sample size and sampling technique, sources and method of data collection, variable measurement, validity and reliability, data collection method, method of data analysis, and lastly, justification of the method used.
Research Design
The study adopts a survey research design which is cross-sectional in nature. Primary data were collected from the population of the study using a survey questionnaire. This type of research design is adopted because the information about the independent variables and dependent variable represents what is going on at only one point in time. Data were collected from the population of the study using a survey questionnaire and analyzed to report the finding at a point in time… (Scroll down for the link to get the Complete Chapter One to Five Project Material)
The population of the study consists of 201 PPMCs managers operating their businesses within Kaduna state as at 2015 and are registered with PPMC.
DATA PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS
This chapter analyses the data collected from managers of PPMCs in Kaduna state. In order to achieve the main objective of this research which is to investigate the effect of production skill on the performance of PPMCs, production skills, production model, and production orientation were used as independent variables against PPMCs performance. The hypotheses will be tested and the findings will be explained.
A total of 174 copies of questionnaires was distributed and 162 (93%) were retrieved. Data screening was carried out on 162 retrieved questionnaires, out of which 144 (83%) were found to be useful because they have been correctly filled. Thus, the analysis was based on 144 filled and returned questionnaires which represent 83% of the total questionnaires distributed, a response rate considered sufficient for statistical reliability and generalization (Tabachnick & Fidell, cited in Aminu, 2014).
Table 4.1: Summary of the Responses
| Item | No of Copies | Percentage |
| No of Questionnaire Distributed | 174 | 100 |
| No of Returned Questionnaires | 162 | 93 |
| No. of Correctly Filled Questionnaires | 144 | 83 |
This section presents the descriptive statistics of the demographic model, the dependent and independent variables of this study. The demographic model includes; gender, nature of the business, number of years in business, number of employees, and educational qualifications of the respondents. The variables are production skills, production model and production orientation, and PPMCs performance. The rule for this analysis is that any mean responses of 1-2.49, 2.50-3.49, and 3.50-5.00 are rated below average, average, and above-average respectively, while the analysis of the demographic model is based on percentage.
Table 4.2 Gender of the respondents
The table below represents the respondents’ gender;
| Frequency | Percent | Valid Percent | Cumulative Percent | |
| Male | 124 | 86.1 | 86.1 | 86.1 |
| Valid Female | 20 | 13.9 | 13.9 | 100.0 |
| Total | 144 | 100.0 | 100.0 |
Table 4.2 shows the gender of the respondents. The totals of 124 of the respondents representing 86.1% are male while only 20 representing 13.9% are female. This shows that the male gender is the dominant gender among entrepreneurs in Kaduna State. The low participation on the part of the women may be attributed to culture, values, and norms which may hinder women from fully participating in business activities… (Scroll down for the link to get the Complete Chapter One to Five Project Material)
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
The findings revealed that production skills have a significant positive effect on the performance of PPMCs. Therefore, this study concluded that in order to achieve business performance, entrepreneurs need to acquire the planning, organizing, leading, and controlling skills.
The production model also has a significant positive effect on the performance of PPMCs in Kaduna state. This implies that the more an entrepreneur possesses a production model in the areas of locus of control, self-efficacy and risk-taking; the higher the performance of PPMCs. Therefore, this study concluded that the production model generally lead to higher performance of PPMCs in Kaduna state… (Scroll down for the link to get the Complete Chapter One to Five Project Material)
In line with the findings and conclusion of the study, the following recommendations were made:
- Based on the finding which reported that production skills in areas of planning, organizing, leading and controlling have a significant positive effect on the performance of PPMCs, entrepreneurs should, therefore, be encouraged to acquire as well as engage in planning, organizing, leading and controlling activities so as to improve the performance of their businesses… (Scroll down for the link to get the Complete Chapter One to Five Project Material)
References
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Muniz Jr., J. (2007). Modelo conceitual de Gestão de Produção baseado na Gestão do Conhecimento: um estudo no ambiente operário da indústria automotiva. Tese (Doutorado em Engenharia Mecânica, linha de Gestão e Otimização) – Faculdade de Engenharia de Guaratinguetá, Universidade Estadual Paulista, 2007. Available at http://www.athena.biblioteca.unesp.br/exlibris/bd/beg/33004080027P6/2007/munizjuniorjdrguara.pdf. Accessed at 20/09/2011
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