THE NATURE OF PLANNING

- There are many instances when managers are overwhelmed by various activities which at times be-cloud his
judgment.
- A plan which is the output of planning provides a methodical way of achieving desired results.
- The purpose of planning is to intensify the effectiveness and efficiency of the service enterprise by providing
focus and direction.
- Planning is necessary due to rapid changes in technology.

NEW BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY TRENDS

Effective planning anticipates and takes into account new trends in business technology. Several emerging trends
are transforming countless markets and businesses. These trends focus on relationships, resources and information.

 Relationships – Companies pursue open innovation by involving customers, suppliers, small specialty
businesses, and independent contractors in the creation of new services.
 Extracting more value from interactions – Companies gain value from the active interactions between
employees.
 More science into management – Companies engages such technologies as date mining and modeling
to exploit a large amount of data in order to make smarter decisions and cultivate deeper insights into
their customer’s needs and behaviors.
 Identifying new opportunities – Planners should reflect and identify patterns that may next shape their
markets and industries and consider whether there are opportunities to catalyze these changes and
control their outcomes instead of reacting to changing business patterns.

TYPES OF PLANNING

 Strategic Planning – sets the goals, purposes, and direction of a company.

 Operational Planning – managers at both middle levels (managers and directors) and lower levels
(supervisors and group leaders) perform operational planning in order to define the specific tactics and
action steps needed to set accomplish the goals specified by top management.
 Intermediate Planning – refers to “the process of determining the contributions that subunits can make
with allocated resources.”

(STRATEGIC PLANNING, PARTICIPANTS IN THE PLANNING PROCESS)

PLANNING ROLES OF ENGINEERING MANAGERS

1. Confer with management, production and marketing staffs to discuss project specifications and procedures.
2. Coordinate and direct projects, making detailed plans to accomplish goals.
3. Review and approve product design and changes.
4. Recruit employees; assign, direct and evaluate their work and oversee the development and maintenance of
staff competence.
5. Prepare budgets, bids, and contracts, and direct the Negotiation of research contracts.
6. Perform administrative functions.
7. Review and recommend or approve contracts and cost estimates.
8. Present and explain proposals, reports and findings to clients.
9. Negotiate with clients to prepare project specifications.
10. Plan, direct and coordinate survey work with other staff activities.
11. Report to officials and the public to provide information and solicit support for projects.

TOOLS FOR PLANNING

 Affinity Diagram

- Tool for organizing a large amount of disorganize information into groups based on their natural relationships
and affinity.
- A type of brainstorming technique that allows you to generate, organize and consolidate information.
  Tree Diagram

- A systematic method to outline all the details needed to complete a given objective or process.
- An orderly structure similar to an organization chart or family tree diagram.
 Interrelationship Diagram

- It identifies and displays all the interrelated cause-and-effect relationships among different concepts and ideas.
 Matrix Diagram

- A tool that shows the connection between ideas in a table format.

 Process Decision Program Chart

- A tool for identifying and documenting the steps required to complete a process.
 Activity Network Diagram

- A tool used to map activities and tasks for a project in sequential order.

PLANNING ACTIVITIES
The activities of planning involve forecasting, action planning, issuing policies, and establishing procedures.
 FORECASTING

The objective of forecasting is to estimate and predict future conditions and events. Forecasting activities center
on assessing future conditions in technology, products, marketplace, and other factors affecting the business success
of the company.
Forecasting may be implemented by using the following steps:
1. Identify — critical factors that have the most profound effects on the company’s profitability.
2. Determine — the forecasting horizon as short term (one year), intermediate term (two to five years) or long
term (five to ten years).
3. Select — forecasting methods such as:

• Mechanical projection. The future is projected assuming essentially the same characteristics as in the past.
• Analytical projection. The future is estimated based on an extrapolation of the past (trend analysis). Statistical
tools such as linear or nonlinear regression, moving averages, exponential smoothing, time series, and others may
be applied.
4. Forecast —future eventualities and their likelihood of occurrence.
5. Prepare—the forecast, as well as the pertinent database.
6. Adjust —forecasts regularly to incorporate pertinent changes related to assumptions and desirable results.
7. Assure—understanding and acceptance by all parties affected by the forecast.

 ACTION PLANNING

Another important activity related to planning is action planning, the process of establishing specific objectives,
action steps, and a schedule and budget related to a predetermined program, activity, or project (Kerzner 2009).

Action planning mandates engineering managers to take the following specific steps:
1. Analyze critical needs. Critical needs are those associated with staff development, staff maintenance, and staff
deficiency, as well as those related to special assignments.
2. Define specific objectives. Specific objectives need to be defined to satisfy the critical needs. The results
statement (who will attain what desirable results by when) must be specific.
3. Define standards. Standards measure the attainment of the objectives. The standards should preferably be
quantitative in terms of performance ratios, percentages, cost figures, resource parameters, and other factors
in order to be measurable (Kaplan and Norton 2007).
4. Define key action steps. The definition of key action steps establishes the sequence and priority of steps
required to attain objectives.
5. Devise a schedule. Scheduling establishes both a time sequence for action steps and the interrelationship
among the steps, as some might be prerequisites for others. It is advisable to estimate the optimistic (earliest),
the pessimistic (latest), and the most likely (most probable) dates of possible completion of each step.
6. Develop a budget. Budgeting allocates resources necessary to accomplish objectives. The planner determines
the basic units (man-hours, man-weeks) to accomplish each task, estimates the total resources needed for the
project, and adds a contingency to the total amount for potential deviation to arrive at a total budget.
  ISSUING POLICIES

For companies to operate smoothly and consistently, corporate rules and regulations are used to prescribe
acceptable practices. Company policies address important issues such as employee hiring and termination, annual
performance appraisals, savings plans, benefits, medical insurance, pension plans, sick leave, safety, and other issues.
In general, policies are continuing directives promulgated to address repetitive issues, assignments, and problems in
an organization.
 Establishing Procedures

Developing procedures is of critical importance to a company, not only because doing so will preserve the best way to
perform repetitive work but also because doing so will accomplish the following:
1. Provide the basis for method modernization.
2. Ensure standardized action (such as quality control, resource saving, and work reproducibility).
3. Simplify training.
4. Retain corporate memory, such as know-how, knowledge, heuristics, proven safety practices, and problem-
solving techniques.

SOME SPECIFIC ADVICE ON PLANNING

 Assumptions - Plans are typically built on both hard data and assumptions. Assumptions are usually based
on extrapolations of past experience and intuitive projections into the future. It is important for managers to
constantly seek and interpret additional resources and insights to verify their assumptions.
 People - Any plan is worthless unless its objectives are achieved through a successful implementation.
Implementation requires dedicated people who are supportive of and ardent about the subject matter involved.
Managers need to take into account the suitability of people, including their background, personality, training,
mental flexibility, interpersonal skills, collaborative attitudes, adaptability, and emotional attachments to
specific ways things are done.
 Benefit versus Cost - When planning, managers need to be guided by the expected value that a given project
or program may bring about. Low-value projects justify the commitment of low-level efforts, whereas high-
value projects justify the allocation of high-level efforts. Efforts applied should be commensurate with the value
added by the expected results. Otherwise, corporate resources may be wasted. The saying, “Things worth
doing are worth doing well,” is valid only to the extent justifiable by the expected value.
 Small but Sure Steps - To be effective in planning, managers should
1. identify clearly the desired end results and the series of small steps required to reach them
2. allow a timely control and midcourse correction, if needed, and
3. aim at attaining a series of small progressions (or continuous improvements) that are more
acceptable in numerous old-style companies than one large achievement (or a step change) after a
long period of time
 Contingency Planning - Some of the changes in future conditions are unpredictable. Yet strategic planning for
the future must be done today. Besides striving for acquiring hard data and soft information to continuously
validate the assumptions introduced in the planning, managers should take an additional uncertainty-
modulating step: Study exhaustively the sensitivity of various assumptions to the company business and
incorporate contingency steps, including fallback positions, in order to minimize the adverse impact of
questionable assumptions (Childs 2008).
 Commitment - Managers need to secure company commitment before any plan can be implemented
successfully. Company management must declare their intentions and their readiness to allocate resources
needed to achieve the planned objectives. Without a firm company commitment, nothing of value will emerge
from the planning efforts.

Introduction Organizing

Organization is another important function of service system management and engineering. Organizing Means

arranging and relating work so that it can be done efficiently by the appropriate people.

Managers are empowered to design the organization structure and has 4 main functions.

Planning: setting performance objectives and deciding how to achieve them.

Controlling: measuring performance and taking action to achieve desired results.

 Leading: inspiring people to work hard and to achieve high performance

Organizing: arranging tasks, people, and other resources to accomplish the work

Steps in organizing:

I. identification of activities

II. classifying the authority

III. departmentally organizing the activities

IV. coordinating between authority and responsibility

The concept of structure following strategy

Services consist of high-contact and low contact activities corresponding to the front-and back-office work.

There are 4 services strategies to create and maintain competitiveness in the marketplace.

Cost Leadership

Establishing a competitive advantage by having the lowest cost operation in the industry. Examples of such

services companies include McDonalds, Dunkin’ Donuts, and taco bell.

Cheap Convenience

This service strategy is to offer convenience at a reasonable low cost. Convenience is accomplished by

deploying a lot of service units.

Dedicated Service

This strategy by emphasizing increased flexibility and varieties in the service they offer, while making cost a

secondary consideration,

Premium Service

This strategy maximizes service customization and responsiveness to customers, they manage their

organizations with relationship orientation, rather than a transactional orientation.

ACTIVITIES OF ORGANIZING
As a function of engineering management, organizing consists of several specific activities described here:
• Organizing one’s own workplace for productivity. This includes the organization of one’s own office, file systems, and
daily routine so that work can be done efficiently (Fabrizio and Tapping 2006).
• Developing organizational structure. Identify and sort the work so that it can be done efficiently by qualified people in
teams, taskforces, committees, departments, and other suitable arrangements (Dickinson and Jelphs 2008, Cox 2001).
• Delegating. Entrust responsibility and authority to others and the creation of accountability for results. Managers must
learn to delegate effectively in order to achieve results by working through people. They distribute the workload while
maintaining control to make the best use of available talent in the organization (Burns 2002).
• Establishing working relationships. Create conditions necessary for the mutually cooperative efforts of people.
Managers must make commitments, set priorities, and provide needed resources (money, physical facilities, skills, and
know-how) to foster teamwork and collaboration among people (Straus and Layton 2002).
All of these organizing activities exist for the purpose of achieving improved efficiency in performing work.

ORGANIZING ONE’S OWN WORKPLACE FOR PRODUCTIVITY

How well is the office of a typical engineering manager organized?

Surveys point out that an average executive spends about five weeks per year looking for lost items (Von Hoffman
1998).

Engineering managers need to be organized with respect to time, paper, and space.
Here are a few rules of thumb that are recommended for the engineering manager to become more efficient:
• Use an online calendar that indicates time slots blocked out for important activities. Such a calendar allows others—
one’s own secretary and peer managers—to schedule meetings conveniently. One should also prepare agendas before
holding or attending meetings.
• Maintain a to-do list. Set priority to activities and separate urgent tasks from others by assigning most urgent tasks to
list A, moderately urgent tasks to list B, and least urgent tasks to list C. Consult the lists regularly. If one is computer
literate, then use electronic systems to generate and maintain such a list.
• File papers based on access, or use a logical keyword system under which to find the document later. The file system
may be based on categories such as projects, persons, or deadlines. Keep a master copy of the file index nearby and
update it often. This master index helps locate a file and safeguards against creating duplicate files.

A document should be kept if:

1. The information it contains cannot be easily found elsewhere.
2. The information it contains helps the engineering manager to reach a goal.
3. It has been consolidated as much as possible.
4. It is up to date.
5. It is really necessary to keep this document.
Most professional workers are said to use only about 20 percent of the paperwork they keep. The challenge is, of
course, to decide which 80 percent can be thrown away. Question every piece of paper that crosses the desk. Use the
wastebaskets frequently.
With practice, every engineering manager can get his or her workspace and daily routine organized for productivity
(Hemphill 1999).

FUNCTIONS, ROLES, AND SKILLS OF MANAGERS

Why Study Management?
• The better you can work with people, the more successful you will be in both your personal and your professional lives.

– Employers want to hire employees who can participate in managing the firm.

– Even nonmanagers are being trained to perform management functions.

What is a Manager?
A manager achieves objectives through efficient and effective use of resources.
• Efficient-doing things right

• Effective-doing the right thing

FUNCTIONS, ROLES, AND SKILLS

FUNCTIONS
 Planning
- Setting objectives
- Determining how they’ll be met
 Organizing
- Delegating and coordinating tasks
- Allocating resources
 Leading
- Influencing employees to achieve objectives
 Controlling
- Establishing mechanisms to make sure objectives are met
- Implementing mechanisms to make sure objectives are met
SKILLS
 Technical Skills
- “Business skills”
- Using methods and techniques to perform a task
- Keeping up with the latest technology in your job
 Interpersonal Skills
- “People skills”
- Your relationships with all individuals and groups
- Understanding
- Communicating
- Motivating
- Resolving conflict
- Working as a team member
- “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”
- Ethics
 Decision-making Skills
- Select alternatives to solve problems
- Take advantage of opportunities
- Be able to conceptualize, diagnose and analyze
- Use math skills
- Manage time

What Resources does a Manager use?

• Human Resources - the people. Your most valuable resource!

• Financial Resources - the money, the budget

• Physical Resources - the buildings, the equipment, supplies

• Information - computers, reports

DIFFERENCES AMONG MANAGERS

The Three Levels of Management
 Top managers
- CEO, president, or vice president
 Middle managers
- Sales manager, branch manager, or department head
 First-line managers
- Crew leader, supervisor, head nurse, or office manager
 Nonmanagement operative employees
 - Workers in the organization who are supervised by first-line managers

Being a Manager
- Most managers begin as employees
- Promoted after they have gained experience and have shown certain leadership qualities
- Focus is on goals
- Position of authority

Top-level managers - are responsible for setting goals and planning for the future.
Middle managers - carry out the decisions of top management.
Operational managers - are responsible for the daily operations of the business.
Management plan - divides a company into different departments run by different managers.
Line authority - Managers at the top of the organization are in charge of those beneath them.
Centralized organization - puts authority in one place, with top management.
Decentralized organization - gives authority to a number of different managers to run their own departments.
Departmentalization - divides responsibility among specific units, or departments.

CROSS FUNCTIONAL-TEAMS:

In general, teams are mostly set up to give or generate recommendations, such as a strategy to solve a
problem for instance, on entering specific regional market, or solve a specific customer – related problem. Another is
to make or do things for example, to design products, advance new processes, or install new assembly lines. The last
is to run things successfully, while operating organized plans.

Altogether. It is the work product delivered by the members together (the team synergism) that is responsible for the
superiority of the overall team performance over the sum of the performances of the individuals. When we say “team
synergism” it is an increase of success in terms of working in teams.

In a typical functional organization, the development of new products follows a sequential process enumerated as
follows:

1. Marketing - conducts research to identify the customers’ needs and defines product features, such as functionality,
reliability, ease of repair, resale value, warranty, and so on.
2. Design engineering - releases specifications, performs functional design, selects material, obtains vendor and
supplier inputs, and conducts engineering analyses to incorporate these features into a product.
3. Manufacturing - engineering reviews and simplifies the product design for manufacturability and reliability
considerations.
4. Service- organization further changes the design to facilitate serviceability.
5. Production - is finally set up to define manufacturing techniques and to mass produce the product.

There are three keys to the success of concurrent engineering teams:

1. Management commitment – Management commitment with co-teams are important. For example, when two
or more teams signed a contract for a project, everyone must remain committed to that contract for a
successful, organized work.
2. Ongoing communications that use advanced communication tools such as the intranet, e-mails, and electronic
data interchange (EDI). – Nowadays, we have internet that can really make most of the things easier in a short
period of time. Communication is one example of the biggest aspect in connection with internet. Proper
communication with co-teams are important for any updates, good, or bad. By communicating effectively,
teams can lessen the problems in a workplace.

3. Teamwork training for all members - Indeed teamwork is a very powerful aspect in doing a team-based project.
Organizing properly by assigning each member of the team the work applied will really help the project
successful. It is not the leader only that works, it is with the whole team.
For teams to add value, team leaders must pay attention to team discipline, team learning, and factors affecting team
effectiveness.

1. Team Discipline - For “blow-the-roof-off” performance, a team is often the vehicle of choice. But to excel, the
team needs the right training and preparation, to make sure that all members listen well, respond
constructively, support one another, share team values, and have a discipline.
 2. Team Learning - How fast a team can learn will affect its overall performance. A learning team is one that is
skilled at creating, acquiring, and transferring knowledge and at modifying its own behavior to reflect new
knowledge and insights. Teams need to learn new technologies.

A learning team must have systems and procedures to do the following:

• Solve problems systematically.
• Experiment with new approaches.
• Learn from own experience and past history.
• Learn from other’s experience and best practices.
• Disseminate knowledge effectively throughout the team and organization.

The organizational skills of the team leader affect the team learning. Factors affecting team learning include the
following:

Team composition: When selecting team members, team leaders should give preference to members’ technical
competence—retention of a mix of skills and expertise, ability to work with others, willingness to deal with
ambiguous situations(risk takers), and self-confidence in making suggestions and proposing ideas while not
inhibited by other members’ ranking and corporate status.

Team cultures. Team leaders should build a team culture in which some experimentation is encouraged and failure
is acceptable.

Leader’s style. Teams will learn better and faster if, as motivation, the team leaders frame the learning as a
challenge for all team members.

Factors that do not affect team learning are said to include;

• Educational background
• Prior experience in practicing old technologies
• Top-management commitment
• Status of the team leader
• Reporting and auditing processes.

DELEGATING:

The next step is for the engineering manager to delegate the proper responsibility and authority to the selected leaders
and workers, and establish the upward-directed accountability needed to achieve the defined organizational objectives
by assigning responsibility and authority and by creating accountability.

To engineering managers, as superiors, there are eight (8) statements why delegating is beneficial because it upgrades
the quality and quantity of work performed, relieves the engineering manager for pursuing more important duties or
gaining more time for management work, makes the engineering manager knowledgeable of the employee’s
capabilities, prepares the employee to step in for the engineering manager when needed and hence enabling the
engineering manager to be absent from the job occasionally, distributes the workload properly, improves leadership
qualities, eases the engineering manager’s job pressure, and cuts costs through more efficient operating decisions.

Delegating is also beneficial to engineers as technical contributors because It makes the job more satisfying, provides
encouragement, incentives, and recognition, gains new skills and knowledge, promotes self-confidence, facilitates
teamwork, advocates growth and development, and fosters initiative and competence.

For delegating, there are four guidelines;

1. What the engineering manager cannot do and the employee can do, the employee does.
2. What both the engineering manager and employee cannot do, the engineering manager does.
3. What both the engineering manager and the employee can do, the employee does.
4. What the engineering manager can do and the employee cannot, the engineering manager does.

Delegating requires skill and practice. The following are guidelines for efficacious delegation:
• Explain the importance of the assignment.
• Check on understanding and confidence.
• Give the employee leeway in their choice of method, unless the procedure has been specified and standardized
before.
• Set a goal, timetable, or deadline. A short-term goal is better than a long-term goal.
• Be reasonable. Keep the goal within the employee’s capabilities.
• Assign responsibilities that go with the job. Allow commensurate authority of decision making, and let employees
accept responsibility for poor as well as good work. (The engineering managers remain accountable for the delegated
assignment with respect to their own superiors.)
• Trust the employee.
• Give recognition for good work.
• Share the engineering manager’s own worries. Let the employees know your concerns about the assignment; explain
them openly and fully. Recognize difficulties in the assignment and solicit suggestions on how best to handle the
assignment.
• Make it a project; let the assignment be a challenge.
• Do not rush in and take over. The employee could use more training if a lack of progress is apparent.
• Do not expect or want perfection.

Certain barriers to delegation do exist. Engineering managers need to beware of two key barriers:
1. Psychological. Engineering managers have concerns. If engineering managers let the employee do the work, they
may fear their own technological obsolescence, while their employees shine. This fear may be particularly relevant to
engineering managers who themselves are technically very strong.
2. Organizational. Unclear responsibility and relationship and confused understanding of line versus staff positions may
hinder effectual delegation.

Everything has the assurance of being successful when everything is organized, having an organize plan ahead of
time, can also less the damage because anything might happen while doing the said activity or plan, so if all are
organized, we have the time to think of another way with our team.

Establishing Working Relationships

Why have a good relationship?

Human beings are naturally social creatures – we crave friendship and positive interactions, just as
we do food and water. So, it makes sense that the better our relationships are at work, the happier and more productive
we're going to be.
Good working relationships give us several other benefits: our work is more enjoyable when we have
good relationships with those around us. Also, people are more likely to go along with changes that we want to
implement, and we're more innovative and creative.

Defining a Good Relationship

(Several characteristics that make up a good, healthy working relationships.)

Trust
This is the foundation of every good relationship. When you trust your team and colleagues, you form a powerful bond
that helps you to work and communicate more effectively. If you trust the people you work with, you can be open and
honest in your thoughts and actions, and you don't have to waste time and energy "watching your back."

Mutual Respect
When you respect the people who you work with, you value their input and ideas, and they value yours. Working
together, you can develop solutions based on your collective insight, wisdom and creativity.

Mindfulness
This means taking responsibility for your words and actions. Those who are mindful are careful and attend to what they
say, and they don't let their own negative emotions impact the people around them.

Welcoming Diversity
People with good relationships not only accept diverse people and opinions, but they welcome them. For instance,
when your friends and colleagues offer different opinions from yours, you take the time to consider what they have to
say, and factor their insights into your decision-making.

Open Communication
We communicate all day, whether we're sending emails and IMs, or meeting face to face. The better and more
effectively you communicate with those around you, the richer your relationships will be. All good relationships depend
on open, honest communication.

Where to Build Good Relationships?

Although we should try to build and maintain good working relationships with everyone, there are certain relationships
that deserve extra attention.

For instance, you'll likely benefit from developing good relationships with key stakeholders in your organization. These
are the people who have a stake in your success or failure. Forming a bond with these people will help you to
ensure that your projects and career, stay on track.

Clients and customers are another group who deserve extra attention. Think of the last time you had to deal with an
unhappy customer; it was probably challenging and draining. Although you may not be able to keep everyone happy
100 percent of the time, maintaining honest, trusting relationships with your customers can help you to ensure that if
things do go wrong, damage is kept to a minimum.

Good relationships with clients and customers can also lead to extra sales, career advancement, and a more
rewarding life.

How to Build Good Work Relationships?

• Develop Your People Skills

• Identify Your Relationship Needs
• Schedule Time to Build Relationships
• Focus on Your EI (Emotional Intelligence)
• Appreciate Others
• Be Positive
• Manage Your Boundaries
• Avoid Gossiping
• Listen Actively

Definition of Terms

Working Relationship - a relationship with a colleague, boss or employee to have a good work connection.
Diverse - showing a great deal of variety; very different.
Stakeholder/s - a party that has an interest in a company and can either affect or be affected by the business.
Client - a person or organization using the services of a professional person or company.
Customer - a person or organization that buys goods or services from a store or business.
Extra Sales - an add on sale can simply be defined as a sale of additional goods or services to a buyer.
Career Advancement - refers to the upward progression of one's career.