Riordan Manufacturing Benchmarking

Running Head: GENERIC BENCHMARKING RIORDAN MANUFACTURING

Generic Benchmarking Riordan Manufacturing

University of Phoenix

Human Capitol Development MBA530

Facilitator: James Pepitone

January 10, 2006

Benchmarking Paper

Gone are the days when manufacturers could count on price increases to help boost profit margins. Today, manufacturers are faced with pressures to decrease prices for their goods -- which mean profits must be achieved through improvement in the development, production, and delivery of manufactured products. It is not a matter of luck -- today's top companies must out manage and out manufacture their competition. Employees who are satisfied with their jobs are more likely to stay in them, thus increasing productivity and retention.

Riordan Manufacturing (RM) is a global plastics production company headquartered in San Jose, California with an annual income of $46 million. The plastic production is divided among 3 plants: plastic and beverage containers in Albany, Georgia; custom plastic parts in Pontiac, Michigan; and plastic fan parts in Hangzhou, China. The production plants service many vendors from diverse market areas. The company recently conducted an annual employee survey, which showed a decrease in overall job satisfaction, particularly in the areas of compensation and benefits. The senior leadership of RM has been faced with a difficult task of examining the declining moral and work ethic throughout the company.

In today's competitive marketplace, companies are seeking ways to improve their overall performance. One such method of improvement, recently adopted by many companies, is benchmarking. Benchmarking is a technique used to evaluate internal business processes. In this analysis, managers determine the firm's critical processes and outputs, baseline those processes, then compare the performance of each process against a standard outside the industry.

Approach

A team was formed comprised of 4 individuals. The team brainstormed ideas using emails. Each member emailed his or her problem statement and end-state goals to Sandy McCarrie for the purpose of eliminating the less desired to get the 3 best for the project. The team members then assigned numerical value to the problem statement and end-state goals. Sandy then emailed the results to Amos Farr and he emailed the final end-state goals to the members. The benchmarking is done by evaluating the practices that other industries have taken part in against the end-state goals.

Work Delegation

The team members researched how a particular company approached a similar problem and found the best practices for the situation. The project was completed by a group effort. Each member requested a company to benchmark and the final results were emailed to Amos. Amos then compiled the information and set it into paper format. The paper was then sent through the Writepoint and Plagiarism Checker and revised by each member.

Research Topics and Key Words

Researching companies and completing the benchmarking was prepared by using the resources available to the students of the University of Phoenix. The University Library currently offers access to numerous subscription databases containing over 24,666 periodicals, as well as dissertations, conference proceedings, financial reports, and key reference books. These databases provide a great deal of information, including many subscription resources not normally found through popular Web search engines. The key words used to in researching were: Eastern Financial Florida Credit Union, Industry, and pay for Performance, Incentives, Restaurants, employee satisfaction, reward systems, performance criteria, succession planning in restaurants, the City of Dallas, position identification, employee growth research topics These topics were decided upon based on the end-state goals chosen by the team, with the basis to analyze what other good companies have adopted to overcome similar situations.

Database

The team members supplied the information to the research databases used to complete the project. These databases were then added to the end of the references on the reference list. The University Library gives student access to many web search engines that empower the student to gain information on a scholarly level. The most popular databases are EBSOChost, Infotrac, and Business Source Premier. The information from the databases reinforced the reading for the course.

The problem statements below were developed individually from the prior assignment for the Riordan Manufacturing scenario. The four problem statements identified were: 1. Riordan Manufacturing will find a method to make changes in the way the employees feel about the company to regain leadership in the plastics manufacturing industry. 2. Riordan Manufacturing can implement changes in the area of human resources to become the employer of choice in the global plastic manufacturing arena. 3. As a global producer, Riordan Manufacturing offers a full-range of tailored plastics products through motivated sales teams using a customer-relationship management system. 4. Riordan will continue being an employee friendly company, putting the development and care of it's employees first, while intensifying its focus of being the leader in the production of high quality plastics products for the world market.

Generic Benchmarking Companies

The team reviewed different companies that have faced similar problems that Riordan Manufacturing is facing and addressed how each company handled the situation in a positive manner. The end-state goals can be reviewed below.

1. Improve employee satisfaction by 15 percent over next 2 years.

Eastern Financial Florida Credit Union

Riordan Manufacturing can increase employee satisfaction over the new two years by looking at the employee benefit structure it currently has in place, reviewing the incentive programs the company offers, acting on the employee survey results, and using the employees to establish incentive plans. "...people support what they help create" (Grensing-Pophal, 2005). Riordan can establish an employee/management board to look at the compensation it currently offers the employees and to help decide who received recognition.