Sparkling Glass Limited

Background

Sparkling Glass Limited (SGL) is a medium scale glass container manufacturing unit. For the last two years SGL has made losses because of increasing cost of production. But this year it is expected to make profits. The reasons for high cost of production have been government policies, wage agreements and sales cartels which control the inputs.

This report serves as the decision support document for the selection committee appointed to find the replacement of Mr. Ashok, the General-shift-in-charge who is slated to retire in few months.

Purpose

Mr. Prasad, the Plant Superintendent wants to find the replacement for Mr. Ashok. Four shift-in-charges, viz. Mr. Khanna, Mr. Punjabi, Mr. Gupta and Mr. Gulati are in contention for the job. The other options available are recruitment of a new person and extension of Mr. Ashok's tenure. The decision tree for the given case is as follows:

Options Available

Among the possible options, the recruitment of a new person from another company might infuse new unbiased ideas. However, the following risks outweigh the benefit of recruiting a new person:

* Possibility of friction with the existing shift-in-charges: The incumbent shift-in-charges may take some time to accept the newcomer to the company and vice versa and the difference in opinions of both the parties may create some conflict.

* High cost implication: SGL has suffered losses for the last two years and wants to earn profits this year. In such a situation, hiring someone new from another company may add to the financial woes of the company. Also the time taken by the new person to learn the nitty-gritty of SGL's business will be more which can eventually be a costly affair.

* Demotivating influence on the existing staff: Some of the shift-in-charges have years of experience and might be looking forward to be promoted as the General-shift-in-charge. Recruiting a new person may demotivate these employees.

The other option of extending the tenure of Mr. Ashok also doesn't seem feasible as the company needs fresh perspective and some restructuring at the ground level if it wishes to recuperate the losses of the previous two years.

Thus the only alternative that remains is to find the suitable in-house candidate from among the four shift-in-charges who are reasonably familiar with the plant process

Rationale used in decision making

The job description of a General-Shift-in-Charge includes production planning, scheduling and costing, which means the candidate has to have good quantitative aptitude.

Secondly, the person needs to have excellent communication skills and interpersonal skills as he is required to interact with laborers as well as union leaders and acts as the interface between the plant superintendent and the workers.

Thirdly, candidate who shows more commitment towards his job will be preferred over another who barely fulfils his responsibilities.

Likewise, more amount of relevant work experience will be an added bonus.

Lastly, educational qualification will be factored in. However, as per the relevant job description, knowledge of glass technology doesn't give much leverage. The following table shows the different priorities assigned to different skills.

Skill Set Priority

HR Skills 1

Production Planning =2

Scheduling =2

Costing =2

Commitment =2

Relevant Experience 6

Educational Qualification 7

Based on the above arguments, different weights (on a scale of 0.0 to 1.0) have been assigned to the different skills required, taking into consideration the existing business scenario and the current needs of the company. The following pie-chart shows the different weights assigned to the different skills.

After assigning different weights to different skills, relative rating on a scale of 1 to 4 has been assigned to each of the four potential candidates. For a given skill set, the candidate having the best expertise among the four has been given a relative rating of 4 while the one having the least expertise of the lot has been given a relative rating of 1. The weighted score of a candidate for a particular