Question

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CASE STUDY

Nissan Company

Nissan Motor Company, Ltd, shortened to Nissan, is a Japanese multinational automaker. Head quartered in Japan, founded 1932. It formerly marketed vehicles under the "Datsun" brand name and is one of the largest car manufacturers –revenue appx $90 billion USD (2007) and Employees 190,000 (2008). Nissan continues its quest to optimize product development and deliver highly innovative technology. Today, in various countries and regions around the world they enjoy a reputation for creating truly innovative vehicles and service programs. With facilities around the world, the Qashqai, Micra, Micra C+C and Note are produced by Nissan Motor Manufacturing (UK) Ltd in Sunderland, Tyne & Wear.

• Answer the following questions on the above case, you should review about this company through secondary available information :

1. Evaluate Nissan Motor Company in terms of its emphasis on the operations strategy objectives? What are the order winners and the order qualifiers?
2. What is the proper role of the operations function in product design?
3. How to manage production and operation issues in the context of demand uncertainty and fluctuation?
4. Suppose that Nissan Motor Company has considering moving from a batch process to an assembly-line process to better meet evolving market needs. What concerns might the following functions have about this proposed process change: marketing, finance, human resources, accounting, and information systems?

Answer 1

1. Operations startegy of Nissan motors is based on the fact that a leading automotive company must fullfill it's responsibility as a part of global community while maintaining highest level of business standards.Nissan's vision is to enrich people's lives through attractive, high value products and technology.Nissan's new technology is the result of strong collaboration of Internal departments like design, production, quality and others. Their goal of profitable growth is always achievable as they have strong ties with Renault , thus using each other's strengths and producing more effective products. Their digitalization inside the car , smoothing human interaction with technology has become a key feature in their cars.Nissan.along with advanced technology also satisfies customer with proficient services,innovation, environment friendly products and operations, safer product etc.Nissan is developing verly low emission vehicles with technologies like U-LEV (ultra low emission vehicles) and.also focussing on safer product by introducing.policies like "real world safety poloicy" this striving to become the no. One global brand.

Order winners - order winners are the characteristics of the product that wins the business over their competitors , in case of Nissan the order winners are High quality, low cost , lower product introduction time etc.

Order qualifiers - Order qualifiers are the characteristics of a product which are necesanec for a product to even considered by customer or to be able to get at least up to your competitors. In this case these are meeting diversified customer needs, product availability on time etc.

2. The primary role of operations in product design is to confirm designers that this product can be Manufactured and assemnled in shop or not.During product design process cross functional team including departments like design, testing, vendor development, materials, manufacturing and operations , quality come together and work on a product giving their specialized feedback and based on these feedback the product is iterated. For e.g. if there are any changes in the product which are needed to be done for the suitability of current assembly line , operations department will give feedback as done in DFMA ( design for manufacturing and assembly) , if it is found that product can not be altered then manufacturing/ assembly line will be altered during product development process. Prototyping of a product in the initial stages of design is done with operations team and tested further business testing departments.

3. In case of demand fluctuations and uncertainty the issues with the production and operations can be managed by varying working hours, halting production,manufacturing assembly line speed reduction, varying the size of work force,using part time staff, sub contracting works and some times sending employees for trainings etc.

4. Effect of shifting from batch processing to assembly line on different functions -

• Marketing - Going from a batch process to assembly line process will increase total.production quantity which a marketing team can manage to more customers and also add new customers. Assembly line process also reduces the overall cost of the product which can be a marketing point for the manufacturers to sell their product with low cost. Nissan can also look in to such strategies.
• Finance - Finance department will have to calculate the overall expenses to set up and run the new assembly line and will have to prepare a solid business case to make it viable. Finance departments will have to adjust accordingly to increase in production, they will have to adjust all the financial factors associated with no. of hours or machines working.
• Human resources - HR will have to adjust the work force as per the new assembly line process , new recruitments will have to be done based on their previous experiences of working on assembly lines.
• Accounting - New added work force, their salaries , benefits etc will have to be managed by accounting function, continuous assembly line does not give intervals to adjust work.New hired.managers , leaders willbtravel extensively for new system, their hotel expenses, travelling expenses management will be an extra work for accounting department.
• Information system - New adjustments in data base, ERP system will be done , new assembly line maintenance, production counting , assembly time all will be automatic through an advanced IT system.

Thanks