Recommendations

Running head: PROGRESS REPORT 1

PROGRESS REPORT 7

GRADUATE CAPSTONE PROJECT PROGRESS REPORT

Student’s name

Institution affiliation

Name:

Report Date:

Project Title:

Faculty Advisor:

Activities performed and results produced

Literature reviewed listing key points found

Book 1

On the discussion, there are key insights that I have learned and gained and key lessons learnt from the course in the program. The first thing learnt is the importance of the production department in any activity being carried by any organization or company. The production department, plays a very significant role in the acceptance of the goods and services that are being produced by the organization. In trying to understand therefore the problems that the organization being looked at in this case is facing. The production sector or department helps in fully understanding the full concept and position that is needed to be taken to allow for one to understand any problems that are related to product acceptance in the market place. (Mayfield & Mayfield, 2019).

Book 2

Another key insight learnt in this cases is the impact that the organization management has in the process of trying to solve any issues seen in the organization. The willingness of the management in trying to solve the issues seen in the organization will determine the success of the whole process. If the management is reluctant, then in most cases the problem will persist and the same will still be a problem in the organization. The management therefore will help in determining the extent to which the problem will be solved or not solved. (Meyer & Goes, 2017).

Book 3

Another key insight and lesson learnt in this course is the fact that in the process of determining as to why the product is not being accepted in the market looking at the internal structure and departments of the organization, the human resource department will help in understanding this problem. The human resource department is the one that is obligated in vetting applicants that are to be absorbed by the organization, the human resource department therefore will help in this since they will provide the standards and the requirements needed for one to be absorbed by the organization. If the human resource department does not therefore look at these requirements to the fullest and ensure that every employee who is absorbed meets them then in most cases this will bring problems that are associated with product acceptance in the market. (Wieczerniak et al., 2018)

Experiments conducted list key insights

In the process of looking and trying to find the main cause of the problem that the organization being discussed have, there are surveys and interviews that were carried out in different departments and different stakeholders that helped in trying to explain and understand this problem.

Interview 1

The first interview that was done was on the production sector of the organization, the interview was aimed in understanding the process that are taken in producing the product that the organization is selling and in the process identifying the possible reasons and to why the product is not doing well in the market. In doing this, the head of the production department was the one who was interviewed and the interview was done in the production industry. This helped in demonstrations of how each production process was being carried and this helped in identifying any faults that might have been seen in the same. The key insights learned from this interview is that more than 50% of the production process and activities are done manually by the employees in the company and therefore this means that there are possible errors that can be made when one does activities manually rather than the activities that are done by machines or electronically.

Interview 2

The second interview was done on the suppliers as the key shareholders of the organization. An interview was choosen to be done on the suppliers due to the key role that they do on the supply chain and they are the ones who directly link with both the customers and the company and therefore they are the ones who would help in identifying the sources of problems that might be the ones that are causing the product not to be accepted in the market by the customers. This interview was had to do since identifying and finding the suppliers while you need them is a big task since they are always on the move and therefore getting them and isolating them to give you the information that is needed for the completion of the project is hard. However the interview was carried in the trucks that the suppliers do supply the organization products to the customers. The key points learned from this interview is that, the suppliers get a hard time in the process of getting and delivering the products to the customers, the process of acquiring the goods from the organization is considered to be long and therefore in some cases the products arrive late to the customers and this makes the customers to be disappointed and end up seeking alternative options of acquiring the same goods from other suppliers.

Survey 3

In order to understand the problem that the organization was facing with its products being not accepted by the customers, the project had to carry out a survey in trying to understand the different customers that the organization has. In looking at the customers, a survey was carried out in looking at the different demographics of the different customers of the organization. This included understanding the specific age group of the customers who buy the product that the organization is selling, the education level of the customers that would possibly buy the products. The survey carried also aimed at looking at the nationality or the race that do prefer the product that the company is selling and also the possible religion of the people who prefer the product. The key findings that the research came up with is that, the customers of the company who do buy the product are evenly distributed across the different age groups, the survey also found out the when it comes to the sex, women prefer the product more than men and this is the factor that the organization did not consider much. Also. In looking at race, ethnicity and religion the customers that the company was serving were equally distributed across all these demographics. The survey gave helpful insights

Data you want but don’t know how to get

Item 1

In order to understand the real problem when it comes to the issue that the organization is facing, it is always important to access and know the financial reports and revenue that the product is creating currently compared to the revenues that the same was generating initially. Financial statements are therefore very critical information that would help a lot in understanding the problem. However, getting this information is in most cases very hard and the organization chooses to keep its financial statements confidential and therefore this information would be hard if not impossible to accesses and thereby help in understanding and possibly knowing the root cause and the providing possible ways of preventing these issues from rising.

Item 2

In trying to understand the reason as to why the product is not being accepted by the customers, it is important also to look at the employees who are involved in production of the said product. In as much as the whole process of carried out explicitly and in a good way, in some cases the way the employees are motivated will determine how the product will be produced and whether the employees will be doing their best to produce the best product. To understand this therefore it is important to look at their salaries and their allowances and see if the source of the problem comes from them being poorly paid. However, to get this information is in most cases impossible to get since the organization prefers to keep the information between them with the employees confidential. In order to access this information, high level clearance is needed and getting this sometimes is impossible unless the leaders of the company through the Chief Finance Officer gives one the needed credentials to access this information. This is therefore one of the information that I need and which I don’t know how to access the same from the organization.

To do list

In order to fully understand the problems that the organization is facing in trying to understand the problems there are still things that are needed to be done for the proposal to be fully functional and to have had looked at all areas fully. Some of these to do list are experiments.

Item 1

One of the thing that is still needed to be done is to interview the individual employees in the company. Interviewing them will help in understanding the different faults that are probably seen by the employees but are not communicated. Interviewing the employees would help a lot in understanding the problem from their perspective and this will in the long run help in identifying the problem being faced by the employee that might lead to being the reason as to why the product is not being accepted by the customers.

Item 2

Also interviewing the individual customers in the supply chain would help understand the exact reason as to why they are preferring not to buy the products that the organization is producing. Combining these different viewpoints of the different players in the distribution and production of the product will help in understanding the main issue that the organization is facing as per the contextual analysis done in the proposal.

Item 3

Another item that should be looked at in this proposal and that is not yet tackled is the issue on the requirements that are needed by the company for an applicant to have before being absorbed to being a worker of the said organization. These requirements are needed to be looked at when and if they are provided by the Human Resource department. After accessing this document that has all the requirements of the different employees that the organization has, a survey will be done that will aim at cross checking the qualifications that the different employees who are already in the organization have compared to what that the company requires them to have.

References

Mayfield, J., & Mayfield, M. (2019). The diffusion process of strategic motivating language: An examination of the internal organizational environment and emergent properties. International Journal of Business Communication, 56(3), 368-392. Retrieved from: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/2329488416629093

Meyer, A. D., & Goes, J. B. (2017). Organizational assimilation of innovations: A multilevel contextual analysis. Academy of management journal, 31(4), 897-923. Retrieved from: https://journals.aom.org/doi/abs/10.5465/256344

Wieczerniak, S., Cyplik, P., & Milczarek, J. (2017). Root cause analysis methods as a tool of effective change. Business Logistics in Modern Management. Retrieved from: https://hrcak.srce.hr/ojs/index.php/plusm/article/view/5962