Analysis of issue - Employees efficiency vs. quality
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23 Oct 2009, 11:25
“In general, a company’s most valuable employees are those who are concerned more with efficiency than with quality.”
Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the opinion stated above. Support your views with reasons and/or examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.
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Most corporations are profit-driven, and operate in a competitive environment. In this environment, organizations compete do deliver products to consumers quickly, and at the lowest cost possible. Therefore, once the minimum standard of quality for its product or service is met, the corporation’s profit goals are more easily met with the contribution of employees who are efficient, rather than those who focus their efforts on quality.
The McDonald’s Corporation is considered the most successful restaurant in the world. Does it make the best quality burgers in the world? Most of its customers who have eaten burgers at high-end steakhouses would vehemently disagree. The success of McDonald’s is in the fact that it delivers “fast” food; as its slogan says, “Billions and billions served.” The employees of its franchises have minimal training in the culinary arts, but are very efficient in their duties of flipping hundreds or thousands of burgers a day to provide happy meals to customers who are unwilling to pay for better quality.
Financial analysts pay close attention to a figure called the “turnover ratio”, which measures the average time it takes for a company to sell its products. The higher the ratio, the more profitable the company is perceived by investors. One of the leaders in this category is Dell Computers, a company that uses a method called “Just in Time Inventory” in which products are shipped to consumers on the same day the parts of that product were delivered to Dell’s warehouse. With this method of quick assembly and delivery it is impossible for Dell’s employees to sufficiently analyze the configuration of each product in order to ensure it functions properly. Last year, my sister ordered a Dell computer which she was forced to send back because the configuration of the computer was poor. Had Dell’s assembly workers tested the operating system before shipping it out, they would have warned their supervisors that shipping this computer will turn off another customer who will take their business to Apple, which is what my sister had done.
Nevertheless, Dell remains one of the top two suppliers of computers worldwide, because of the contribution of its employees who are efficient, and are able to ship millions of computers despite that fact that a large portion of those computers are of poor quality.
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Please critique. Thanks!