Name
Professor
Course
Date
Australian Hardware: Continuous Improvement Strategy
Company Overview
The Australian Hardware was established in the year 1921 while using the name Percy’s Home Goods. The name was changed in 1952 and in 1982 the firm became a public company when it was floated in the Stock Exchange of Australia. Percy Greenwright’s family is the major shareholder of the company with Holden Greenwright as the CEO and chairperson of the board of directors. It operates about 138 stores across the country with more than 1000 employees. The main products of the company include timber, hardware, outdoor, hardware, tools, paint, and garden. Australian hardware remains a competitively priced firm and offers high-quality and innovative products.
Continuous Improvement Methodologies
Total Quality Management
The best continuous improvement methodology for Australian Hardware is the Total Management Quality because it focuses on different areas of the company to boost efficiency and effectiveness. The main principles that will help enhance efficiency include customer focus, leadership, and process approach, the involvement of people, continual improvement, systems approach to management, supplier focus, and process approach. Customer focus entails the need for an Australian Hardware to be aware of customer requirements and often satisfy them. Leadership is about creating effective leadership of the company to ensure that it creates unity of purpose among all stakeholders. Such leadership also promotes the involvement of people to ensure that there is an appropriate interaction between people and systems in the company. The organization should be treated as a system that has an interrelated set of activities that link the internal and external environment of the organization.
Decision-Making Tools: Root Cause Analysis
A root cause analysis is the most appropriate approach to the identification of problems and making key decisions at the company. It is a collective term that illustrates a wide range of tools, techniques, and approaches utilized to uncover different issues. There are different techniques and approaches to root cause analysis. However, the best for the Australian hardware is the Kepner-Tregoe Problem Solving and Decision Making model which involves situation, problem, solution, and potential problem analysis. These phases help identify a visible problem and analyze it to determine the root cause of a given problem.
Encouraging Participation
During implementation, there is a need for enhanced participation among all stakeholders to ensure success in the process. In this view, the change leader will be expected to communicate and negotiate with all stakeholders to encourage their participation. The negotiations shall entail listening and solving the fears and questions of the stakeholders to avoid any resistance. For one to successfully conduct this process the change leaders must have interpersonal, team decision-making, and negotiation skills. The change leader ought to communicate the need for change, the approaches required, the benefits of the changes not only to the company but also all stakeholders, and negotiate with them to find a compromise in some areas.
Building Ownership and Work Culture
To ensure that there is the sustainability of the changes, there is a need to ensure that all stakeholders in the company own the change and accept it. They must be encouraged to ensure that their participation is valued. There is also a need to communicate that participation in the improvement process is necessary. The participation shall also be measured among other performance management indexes, acknowledged and rewarded. The continuous improvements shall be incorporated in the organizational culture to ensure that it becomes part of the organizational structure and behaviors. These organizational cultures shall be continuously communicated to all stakeholders.
Impact of Continuous Improvement Measures
Communications to Stakeholders
Implementation of the continuous improvement methodologies at Australian hardware will have significant impacts on communication among stakeholders. The improvement methodologies will streamline communication between the company and the customers since it emphasizes customer focus. Besides, continuous improvement encourages the involvement of all stakeholders through effective communication. To ensure that all stakeholders including the shareholders, the management, and employees focus on the objectives of the company there is a need for effective communication strategies that encourage feedback and giving personal views and opinions. Moreover, continuous improvement shall improve communication between the company and the suppliers since there shall be a constant engagement between the two parties at all times.
Knowledge Management and Information Flow
The continuous improvement shall ensure that there is effective management of knowledge and information flow. The system ensures that the company can identify the existing source of knowledge and improve on them. It creates a system where the firm can map, index, categorize and evaluate its knowledge assets. This will make sure that the information gathered and shared is adequate and accurate. Besides, continuous improvement will promote prompt and specific knowledge sharing system. That is, the information shall be delivered to the right people at the right time. It offers a platform to continuously asses the existing communication structures to identify challenges and help promote the swift flow of information.
Sustainability and Sustainability Objectives
Sustainable continuous improvement necessitates the engagement of all stakeholders at all levels as well as a robust management system that enhances long-term and incremental culture-based changes. The process of continuous improvement boosts engagement of employees, development of their competencies and skills to effect improvement of processes. It creates an integrative improvement approach that is designed around the products, customers, and processes. This translates to functional improvements, for instance, maintenance, quality, and demand and supply planning. Continuous improvements necessitate complete integrative improvement which includes systems, tools, and principles that are always ready. The process promotes systemic, multidimensional methods to make sure structural, behavioral, and process alignment which promotes sustainability.
Performance Management
Continuous improvements enhance the engagement of all employees and facilitate the effective flow of information. These ensure that all employees understand their performance metrics and the rewards that accompany them. As a result, the employees will understand what is expected of them and can commit to achieving it. Besides, the engagement process created by the continuous improvement will ensure that employees can communicate their challenges and the management responds promptly to ensure that they maintain high productivity. The system ensures that the challenges and issues affecting employees can be reviewed and analyzed through root cause analysis to find an immediate solution that promotes employee welfare.
Legislative Compliance
Legislative compliance is a crucial component in the company. It is essential that Australian hardware conform and comply with all regulations to avoid issues that can destroy its brand image. Therefore, continuous improvement creates a means through which the company can continuously review its legal compliance status and rectify areas with issues. Besides, it encourages continuous engagement with external stakeholders which include the government and other agencies to ensure compliance. It also ensures that employees are educated on different policies and regulations to ensure there are legal compliance at all levels of the company. Through root cause analysis the company can also identify issues that can result in potential violations and ensure that procedures are put in place to address the challenges.
Part C: Portfolio of Work Communication Strategy
Communication Objectives
Communicate the need for the continuous improvement initiatives
Illustrate the value of the continuous improvement across the company
Communicate the parameters of continuous improvement to be adopted at the company.
Target Audience
Individual employees
Work Teams
Communication Medium
Emails: It shall be used to communicate to the individual employees
Team Meetings: It shall be used to communicate to work teams
Procedures for Communicating Continuous Improvement Activities Outcomes
Monitoring and Evaluation: All initiatives shall be reviewed and monitored to facilitate identification of challenges and successes.
There shall be short-term and ling-term outcomes at each step
The short-term outcomes shall be communicated when each step of every activity is completed
The long-term outcomes shall be based on the implementation matrix.
Personal outcomes shall be reviewed and communicated through performance appraisals.
The main communication channels for outcomes shall be the emails and team meetings.
Monitoring Strategy
Targets
Attain customer-focused operations and services
Reduce operational costs
Increase revenue per customer interaction
Standards
Customer-centered services
Compliances with legislations
Compliance with company policies and procedures
KPIs
The Key KPIs include
Operational cost reduction
Sales
Revenue generated
Customer satisfaction
Responsibilities for recording and reporting
Each team should generate review reports on monthly, quarterly, and annual basis
Management should generate review report for shareholders
Timelines
The continuous improvements to be carried out on a monthly, quarterly, and annual basis
Technologies and Systems for reporting
Customer relationship management
Performance Management systems
Project Management software such as Microsoft Share point
Procedures for Special Meeting and managers CI Teams
Day to day processes and activities, and outputs shall be reviews
The performance of partners and staff shall be reviewed constantly
Regular meetings and interviews shall be the main channel of review and communication
The evaluation shall be done in daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly basis
Regular reports must be generated and distributed to partners and stakeholders.
