Chapter 3, Problem 31AP

a.

Summary Introduction

To determine:

Aggregate measure of production and difficulty for planning the size of faculty in a university.

Introduction:

Aggregate capacity planning is a process in which resources and inventory of future demand is determined. It helps in maintaining overall quality and features of product. It leads to effective management and cost efficiency of product.

Explanation of Solution

Planning for the size of the faculty in a university

To increase the size of the faculty, various constraints will be taken care. Constraints can be cost, salary, revenue, expenditure of recruitment, Human Resource Management etc. These constraints needs to be assessed before increasing the size of faculty.

A major problem in applying aggregate planning for expansion of faculty in a university is resource allocation. Every university has limited resources at their disposal. A university can gather its resources from tuition fee, gifts in form of cash or kind, research grants etc. Expenditure includes salaries of faculty, building maintenance, capital goods etc. In a university, there are various departments and sub-departments. These departments get their share of budget and resource are allocated accordingly.

For example, school would allocate funds to the individual departments and the department would allocate funds to the faculty and staff in the department.

b.

Summary Introduction

To determine:

Aggregate measure of production and difficulty in determining workforce requirements for a travel agency.

Introduction:

Aggregate capacity planning is a process in which resources and inventory of future demand is determined. It helps in maintaining overall quality and features of product. It leads to effective management and cost efficiency of product.

Explanation of Solution

Retaining workforce in a firm is a big challenge for companies and they are striving hard to discover new Human resource strategies and workforce requirements for a travel agency. Some of them are listed below:

Incentives: Travel agencies should consider revising monetary incentives for employees. The purpose is to encourage and retain employees for a longer period.

Improving communication between the lower and middle level managers: Employees should come forward and clarify their concern regarding their respective job responsibilities and maintain clear communication among them. It therefore eliminates any form of ambiguity between the employees.

Training: A travel agency must have trained people as drivers. So, in order to employ, training must be given and a driving test is a prerequisite. It helps the employees to be updated with industry specific knowledge.

These are some of the elements that the firm aggregates in total in determining the workforce requirements for a travel agency.

The difficulties in applying aggregate planning are explained below:

Companies often lag in identifying the needs of the employees and ends up observing a large employee turnover. Besides that, a travel agency often pays small remunerations and sets huge targets for their employees to achieve company goals. It harms the reputation of the firm adversely.

Also, there is a huge communication gap between the management and the staff that dissuades employees to clarify their concerns.

c.

Summary Introduction

To determine:

Aggregate measure of production and difficulty in planning workforce and production levels in a fish - processing plant.

Introduction:

Aggregate capacity planning is a process in which resources and inventory of future demand is determined. It helps in maintaining overall quality and features of product. It leads to effective management and cost efficiency of product.

Explanation of Solution

Aggregate measure of production and difficulty in planning workforce and production levels in a fish processing plant that produces canned sardines, kippers and smoked oysters.

Aggregate capacity planning is a process in which resources and inventory of future demand is determined. It helps in maintaining overall quality and features of product. It leads to effective management and cost efficiency of product.

The following is a list of aggregate measures that can be considered for planning workforce and production levels in a fish processing plant.

Number of fishes: The planning and production department needs to ensure that they have sufficient units of fish to be sold to large groups of customers. Besides that, the respective department needs to search for suitable vendors that would supply the fish to the manufacturers and the distributors.

Markets: Another major point is to search for relevant market such as suitable locations or regions. The firm needs to ensure where to sell products and from where they can earn maximum revenues or find suitable market segments.

Number of skilled workers: Skilled and trained workforce is a major challenge for firms to start up new projects or in this case, production levels in a fish processing plant.

The difficulties in applying aggregate planning are explained below:

Transportation issues: It is often seen that due to climatic conditions or vehicular accident, the units of fish are damaged in transit. It affects the company’s earning and business in a huge way.

Waste disposal centers: The production department often faces difficulties in locating waste disposal centers due to which it gives rise to health issues.

Improper production planning: At time, firms are unable to forecast production units and end up producing excessive units that leads to huge loss of money, time and resources.

Hence, if aggregate measures such as transportation, waste disposal centers, production planning, markets, target audience are not properly considered, it leads to disaggregation of planning.