Bright Arinaitwe_BIA 4.2 Project (Forecast & Prediction)
1. Forecast Analysis
In 2001, Uganda’s leading newspaper, New Vision was
selling 34,000 copies daily while their competitor, Monitor was selling 21,000.
Many reasons were invented to explain Monitor’s poor performance – notably
among them was accusing New Vision’s CEO, William Pike, of playing dirty
tricks. New Vision was denigrated as a ‘government run newspaper’, just
spreading government propaganda yet it’s sales kept growing while Monitor’s
sales kept shrinking. By end of 2003, Monitor was technically bankrupt.
Monitor’s passionate readers could not save them from collapse. Monitor
management asked themselves why Ugandan readers were pushing them into
bankruptcy while buying a government owned newspaper (New Vision) that did not
advance the values of the common Ugandan.
New Vision’s CEO Pike, possibly understood that New
Vision as a state-owned newspaper – could never beat Monitor on independence and boldness. He also figured
that not all readers are as passionate about such emotive issues of liberty,
freedom, accountability and human rights. He also possibly did what in modern
business strategy is called `the strategic canvas’. He strengthened New
Vision’s coverage of functional things like sports news, exchange rates,
community news, jobs, gossip and features on health and environment.
In search for excellence and beyond content, Pike improved
the copy’s layout and design to grow customer loyalty. New vision hired a
newspaper from London, UK to execute this strategy. He also ensured that by 6:00
am, the New Vision was in every major town of Uganda from the remotest town in
Uganda’s North to South and East to West.
In
2004, Monitor hired a new CEO with vast experience in marketing and sales. When
the new CEO - Conrad came to Monitor, he upheld the newspaper’s
independence and boldness. But he also fixed many of the issues in the other
issues Monitor was struggling with. By July 2006, Monitor had overtaken New
Vision as Uganda’s leading daily with over 32,000 daily sales compared to
New Vision’s 25,000 daily sales.
2. Risk Avoidance
Monitor was weak in all
these areas and had to address all these issues or fail and drop out of market altogether.
For example, they would deliver their newspaper in nearby towns at 3:00 pm when
readers already made newspaper purchases and gone home. The Monitor’s design
and layout was poor and printing quality horrible. Monitor’s sense of
self-righteousness could not compensate for these weaknesses. It is not
that Monitor was wrong to stand for
democracy, accountability and liberty. They did not realize that passion was
necessary but not sufficient to achieve market leadership. Monitor’s missionary
attitude created a problem in how they approached the market. It led them to
misunderstand the diverse interests of readers. They held onto their most
committed readers who passionately cared for the values Monitor stood but lost
those readers who were less passionate.
3.
Total Quality Control (TQC)
Deming’s 14 Points are as follows:
1. Create
constancy of purpose for improving products and services.
Simply put, companies should
think long-term. Today’s business course should be determined with tomorrow in
mind.
2. Adopt
the new philosophy.
Contingent
plan to adopt to rapidly changing technology should be put in place. Companies that fail to improve constantly and
innovate will eventually find themselves out of business. Adopting means
predicting customers' needs.
3. Cease
dependence on inspection to achieve quality.
This
eliminates the need for inspection on a mass basis by building quality into the
product in the first place. Relevant content that appeals to customers is
critical for survival. Thinking
long-term is important. Setting up the course today to be in business tomorrow
should be paramount. Knowing what to do and doing best leads to constant
improvement of quality.
4. End
the practice of awarding business on price alone; instead, minimize total cost
by working with a single supplier.
Ending the practice of awarding
business based on price tag is important. Instead, minimizing total cost and
moving toward a single supplier for any one item on a long-term relationship of
loyalty and trust should be considered. Price
tag doesn't always tell the whole story.
5. Improve
constantly and forever every process for planning, production and service.
Improving company systems constantly leads to higher production
and service output. Deming
says, "Don't blame the individual, fix the system for them."
Improving quality and productivity only comes by improving the system.
6. Institute
training on the job.
Management
should not be busy for the employees. They should not view training as an
expense or view employees as commodities but rather as assets. One person
should be responsible for teaching everyone the same skill. If this is not
done, mistakes are passed down the line because each time one employee teaches
the next more is lost through communication breakdown.
7. Adopt
and institute leadership.
According
to Deming, a leader should have a theory and vision of how to transform his
company. He is practical and understands
why the transformation would bring gains to his organization and to all the
people that his organization deals with.
8. Drive
out fear.
To
paraphrase President Franklin D Roosevelt’s words, the first thing to fear is
fear itself. When employees are threatened with being fired if they do not
produce a certain number of units, their goal will be to produce the numbers
but not quality. This only leads to losses are more defects will be the
company’s loss. Management must create a work
environment where workers can take pride and joy in their work. Blaming
individuals only works to demotivate them - fixing the system for them would
help them become more productive.
9. Break
down barriers between staff areas.
Departments
should work together at all production stages. Everyone must share knowledge in
a cooperative and not competitive effort. For example, people in research, design, sales, and
production must work as a team to achieve a coherent process in a print house. Teamwork
helps employees to work for a common goal. It also helps achieve a smooth
integration of all production stages to achieve a final quality product.
10. Eliminate
slogans, exhortations and targets for the workforce.
Slogans, unrealistic targets
and asking for an achievable goal like zero defects only work to derail
workers. When these unrealistic goals are demanded from workers, it works as a
motivation to produce low quality work. Expectations should be outlined and people
should be praised face-to-face. Once workers are looked at valuable part of the
company and their contribution appreciated, they offer the best they can thus,
high productivity.
11. Eliminate
numerical quotas for the workforce and numerical goals for management.
Deming
argues that production target encourages high output and low quality. Support
and resources should be provided so
that production levels and quality are high and achievable.
12. Remove
barriers that rob people of pride of workmanship, and eliminate the annual
rating or merit system.
When
everyone’s contribution to the company appreciated without comparing them to
their colleagues, their pride goes up over
time, the quality system will naturally raise the level of everyone's work to
an equally high level.
13. Institute
a vigorous program of education and self-improvement for everyone.
People’s
current skills should be improved through retraining to meet future changes and
challenges. This will make
your workforce more adaptable to change, and better able to find and achieve
improvements.
14. Put
everybody in the company to work accomplishing the transformation.
Everyone
in the company should work toward its transformation. Transformation must start with top management,
for they have the most leverage and influence. Once the decision has been made,
middle management, supervisors and workers must come on board.
4. Six Sigma is a method that provides organizations
tools to improve the capability of their
business
processes. This increase in performance and decrease in process variation lead
to defect reduction and improvement in profits, employee morale, and quality of
products or services.
5. Process
Analysis
This is
step-by-step breakdown of the phases of a process, used to convey the inputs,
outputs, and operations that take place during each phase.
The benefits of
Business Process Analysis in a business include identifying process flaws in
existing workflows and analyzing them for improvement; Suggesting ideas on
reducing or eliminating the redundancies found in the processes and documenting
process data and using it as reference for future decisions. This eventually,
helps organizations make the most of their limited resources, cut costs, and
offer better values to their products and customers.
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