Industrial Management Assignment

Q1. Discuss briefly the similarity and difference between school of management thoughts that
we have discussed in the class, and identify which management thought do you think that it is
more important for today's management approach for both manufacturing and service sectors.
Write clear justification for your choice.

The schools of management thought are theoretical frameworks for the study of management.
Each of the schools of management thought are based on somewhat different assumptions about
human beings and the organizations for which they work.

1. The similarity between schools of management thoughts

 All are frameworks for the study of management.
2. Difference between school of management thoughts
A. The classical school of management thought
 The classical school is the oldest formal school of management thought.
 The classical school of thought generally concerns ways to manage work and
organizations more efficiently.
 Organizational focus on functions and economic demand of workers.
 Based on structure of organization classical school of management thought is
impersonal and mechanistic.
 Has automatic management and strict rule.
 Focused on finding the one best way.
 Has work goal of workers that maximum reward.
 Has a concept about workers that economic being.
 Relation in organization is formal.
 Workers did not share in the increased output.
 Workers ended up distrusting the Scientific Management method.
 Body of the classical school's management thought was based on the belief that
employees have only economical and physical needs, and that social needs and need for
job-satisfaction either don't exist or are unimportant.
 This school advocates high specialization of labor, centralized decision making, and
profit maximization.
B. Behavioral School of management thought
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 The behavioral school of management thought focused on trying to understand the

factors that affect human behavior at work.
 It is related to human behavior.
 The manager should possess skills for diagnosing the causes of human behavior at
work, interpersonal communication, and motivating and leading workers.
 The focus became satisfying worker needs.
 Focuses on issues of communication, leadership, motivation, and group behavior.
 Focuses much attention on human resource management, organizational behavior, and
applied psychology in the workplace.
 It gave emphasis on individual behavior & motivation.
 Difficult to forecast human behavior.
 Leads to in efficiency.
 Instigates avoiding work.
 Shapes behavior quickly.
C. Quantitative management approaches
 The quantitative school focuses on improving decision making via the application of
quantitative techniques.
 Uses mathematical and statistical approaches to solve management problems.
 This school focuses on the operation and control of the production process that
transforms resources into finished goods and services.
 It has its roots in scientific management.
 Operations management emphasizes productivity and quality of both manufacturing
and service organizations.
 Major areas of study within operations management include capacity planning,
facilities location, facilities layout, materials requirement planning, scheduling,
purchasing and inventory control, quality control, computer integrated manufacturing,
just-in-time inventory systems, and flexible manufacturing systems.
 Quantitative management approaches has contributed directly to management decision
making in the areas of planning and control.
 Focuses on improving managerial decision making by applying statics, optimization
models, information models and computer simulation.

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D. Modern approaches
 A modern approach to management respects the classical school, behavioral school
and quantitative management approaches.

Q2. In planning and decision making, forecasting technique is very important to accomplish a
firm’s primary objective. However, some companies are failed to select the best forecasting
techniques corresponding to their plans and product types. What is your point this problem
toward? And discuss the technological forecasting methods?

 Studies of past forecasts have shown that one of the most frequent reasons why a
forecast goes wrong is that the forecaster ignores related fields. A given technical
approach may fail to achieve the level of capability forecast for it, because it is
superseded by another technical approach which the forecaster ignored.
 Another problem is that of inconsistency between forecasts. The inconsistency
between forecasts reflects on the different locations and time used on controlled
experiment.
 It usually produces inaccurate and unreliable data which leads to incorrect insight and
faulty predictions. Because of these problems, it is often necessary to combine
forecasts of different technologies.
 In addition, the use of more than one forecasting method often gives the forecaster
more insight into the processes at work which are responsible for the growth of the
technology being forecast.
 Combining forecasts can reduce errors compare with a singular forecast.
 In the case when researches face troubles to pick a typical forecast method, combining
forecasts are always the best solution.

 The manager must fix the level of inaccuracy he or she can tolerate—in other words,
decide how his or her decision will vary, depending on the range of accuracy of the
forecast. This allows the forecaster to trade off cost against the value of accuracy in
choosing a technique.

 Use structured judgment: When a number of criteria are relevant and a number of
methods are possible, structured judgment can help the forecaster to select the best

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methods. In structured judgment, the forecaster first develops explicit criteria and then
rates various methods against them.
 List the important criteria before evaluating methods.
 Ask unbiased experts to rate potential methods: To find the most appropriate
methods, I must ask a number of experts to rate various forecasting methods. The
experts should have good knowledge of the forecasting methods and should have no
reason to be biased in favor of any method. The experts also should be familiar with
the specific forecasting situation.
 Use structured rather than unstructured forecasting methods.
 Use quantitative methods rather than judgmental methods, if enough data exist.
 Use causal rather than naive methods, especially if changes are expected to be large.
Naive methods often give adequate results, and they are typically inexpensive.
 The selection of a method depends on many factors the context of the forecast, the
relevance and availability of historical data, the degree of accuracy desirable, the time
period to be forecast, the cost/ benefit (or value) of the forecast to the company, and
the time available for making the analysis.
 Commonly adopted methods of technology forecasting include the Delphi
method, forecast by analogy, growth curves and extrapolation. Normative methods
of technology forecasting like the relevance trees, morphological models,
and mission flow diagrams are also commonly used. Delphi method is widely used
in technology forecasts because of its flexibility and convenience. However,
requirement on reaching consensus is a possible disadvantage of Delphi method.
Extrapolation can work well with enough effective historical data. By analyzing the
past data, forecaster extend the past development tendency in order to extrapolate
meaningful outcomes in the future
 The forecaster should choose a technique that makes the best use of available data.

Types of technological forecasting methods

Forecasting methods are classified into two groups:

i. Qualitative

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 Based on human judgment, opinions; subjective and nonmathematical.

 It has a strength can incorporate latest changes in environment and inside information.
 It has a weakness can bias the forecast and reduce forecast accuracy.
ii. Quantitative
 Based on mathematics quantitative in nature.
 It has strength consistent and objective; able to consider much information and data at
one time.
 It has a weakness often quantifiable data are not available. Only as good as the data on
which they are based.

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