MGT274 - Week Eight

1. MGT274 Basic Supervision
Week Eight

2. Group 1:
Justin Akridge, Whitney Gaither, Antonio Jackson &
Alia Russell
Group 2:
Charlie Baker, Brenda Gargano & Ray Mansfield
Group 3:
Franca Elabor, Koron Harrison & Clayton Perry
Due Monday of Week 11 (June 3rd)
Supervisor Interview Project &
Group Presentation

3. INDIVIDUAL COMPONENT: SUPERVISOR INTERVIEW (100 POINTS)
Interview someone in a supervisory position; your selection cannot be yourself or someone in
class. Identify someone you think is an effective supervisor. It can be someone from where you
currently employed or someone from another organization. Gather responses to the questions
listed below and document your supervisor’s answers to the questions listed below.
Briefly introduce your supervisor (i.e., supervisor’s name, title, employer, and years of experience
a supervisor; also explain why you choose this particular supervisor).
1. How did the supervisor acquire his/her position? What background/preparation did the
have; e.g., formal education, company-specific training, etc.?
2. What traits, characteristics, and/or skills does the supervisor think are most important to
an effective supervisor? (Consider the supervisor’s responses in terms of what’s been covered
this class in formulating your response to this question).
3. When this person first became a supervisor, what was the most surprising discovery about
assignment to the supervisory position; provide examples with explanations?
4. Ask the supervisor to describe a typical day. Find out what percentage of time each day is
on the five functions of a supervisor (e.g., think of a pie chart where you explain the
percentages the supervisor spends on each managerial function).
5. What are the most rewarding aspects of being a supervisor, why?
6. What are the biggest challenges of being an effective supervisor, why?

4. 7. Ask the interviewee to describe a situation that he/she did not handle well and how it
contributed to their being a better supervisor today; what the consequences and what
did they learn from the experience. (This experience could relate to either the
supervisor’s current employment or with a previous employer).
8. Ask the supervisor to share a situation that he/she handled very effectively and how it
contributed to their being a better supervisor today; what were the benefits associated
with the experience. (This experience could relate to either the supervisor’s current
employment or with a previous employer).
9. What advice would the supervisor give to a newly appointed, first-time supervisor?
(Identify and explain at least five different advice suggestions, including an explanation
of each and why the advice is important to a new supervisor).
10. Reflect on the information you gathered in the interview and the material covered in
this course, specify a criteria that you plan to use to specify supervisor performance.
Summarize your thoughts in light of the interview specifically pertaining to what you
learned from the interview. Formulate your response around the following two (2)
questions:
1. What makes a supervisor effective in their job?
2. What differentiates an average supervisor from an exceptional supervisor?
Note: Responses to introduction must be a minimum of 25-words, questions one through
seven must be a minimum of 50-words in length, responses for questions eight through
nine must be a minimum 100-words in length, and response for question ten be a
minimum of 350-words in length.

5. GROUP COMPONENT: GROUP PRESENTATION (100 POINTS)
Each group is to prepare a 15-20 minute presentation summarizing what they learned from
their individual and collective efforts related to the group assignment. Specifically, In
essence, each team will provide a presentation addressing the question: What it requires to
be a great supervisor? Each team will make their presentation during week ten of the
course. The specific and measurable aspects of the presentation include the following:
Group Presentation Rubric:
Content: The presentation must address and present all ten (10) of the supervisor interview
questions noted above. The overall presentation clearly presents a response to the
question: “What makes a great supervisor?”
Participation: Each member of the group equally contributed to the presentation; i.e., each
team member must present a portion of the presentation.
Key Terms/Concepts: The presentation must integrate and accentuate as part of the
presentation twenty (20) key terms and concepts from the course. This requirement may be
satisfied by underlining each key words in your presentation (e.g., PowerPoint), crossword
or seek-and-find puzzle, presenters’ specifically discusses each key word, etc.
Debrief Questions: Following your team’s actual presentation, each team member should
be prepared to answer the following question:
What did you learn from your experience in interviewing your supervisor? What are you walking
away with from the experience?

6. Quality Assurance/Logistics and
Distribution
Monitor and improve the quality of the work being performed. A
 Advantages of using 6 Sigma as means of improving quality by reducing the
opportunities for defects.
 Developed in 1986 by Motorola as a means of reducing defects in their phones. Since
then countless companies have used 6 sigma to improve operations and profitability.
Most notably is General Electric under the direction of Jack Welch.
 Logistics and distribution.
 How next day air shipments from UPS and FedEx have grown to having Amazon
wanting to use drones to deliver the same day.
 Competition in the world of retail is centered on how fast the customer can get the
product.
 Challenges supervisors have in this new field of logistics and distribution.

7. Getting the Most out of the Team
Teams working as hard as they can but what they are producing is of poor quality.
 Product that needs to be reworked
 Parts that don’t fit as intended or
 Providing poor service
Knowing when quality starts to get bad.
 Usually the change from good to poor quality is a gradual process.
 For example; A punch press makes holes in a piece of metal. Over time because of
friction the punch gets smaller and smaller. That means the hole being punched is
getting smaller. Eventually the part that is intended to go into that hole will not fit.
Poor quality negatively affects productivity. The
 Production schedule calls for making 100 items per shift.
 Productivity suffers when poor quality requires the company to produce 110 items
to get 100 perfect ones. The extra 10 are a waste of money and time.

8. Getting the Most out of the Team
Tools help the supervisor monitor the entire process. That process can be making
something, performing surgery, baking a cake, preparing a purchase order, etc.
 Flowchart: A flowchart is a diagram of the process. By putting the steps and the
sequence of the process the supervisor can identify possible points in the process
where problems can occur.

9. Getting the Most out of the Team
 Check Sheets: Knowing you have a problem is one thing but knowing exactly what
the problem is another. A check sheet is simply a list and a count of the defects
being found. Let’s say you own a hotel and you know things are not perfect but
you don’t know why. Making a check sheet of complaints you may find that
customer complain more about incorrect invoices that anything else.

10. Check Sheet: A luxury hotel has been receiving a lot of complaints from guests recently.
The manager worries that if these complaints continue, the hotel will start to lose clients. Therefore,
you have been hired as a consultant to correct the problem(s). A list and count of the major
complaints by week for the last month is as follows:
 Week 1
 Error on bill 10
 Room not ready at check-in 8
 Room service delivery late 3
 Long line at check-out 10
 Week 2
 Error on bill 12
 Noise in hallway 2
 Long line at check-out 5
 Room dirty 10
 Week 3
 Not enough towels in room 5
 Error on bill 7
 Room service delivery late 6
 Not enough close-up parking 2
 Week 4
 Room dirty 7
 Error on bill 9
 Room not ready at check-in 10
 Long line at check-in 9

11. Check Sheet:

12. Getting the Most out of the Team
Pareto Diagrams: A Pareto diagram is a visual representation of the 80/20 rule. By
taking the data collected in the check sheet and placing it in order from most to least
you will know where to focus for efforts.

13. Getting the Most out of the Team
Control Charts: Control charts let the supervisor see the process in real time. Here is a
good example. Ask yourself what the most important feature of a fresh bag of potato
chips is. One thing is salt content. Think how bade the chips would be if there were
either too much or too little salt. Therefore, salt content is measured continually during
the process of making potato chips. Salt content is calculated and graphed about
every fifteen minutes. If there is too little or too much the supervisor will know to find
and correct the problem. Chip thickness, oil temperature, and cooking time are also
measured on a continuing basis.

14. Getting the Most out of the Team
Cause and Effect Diagram: Another name for a cause and effect diagram is a fishbone
diagram or an Ishikawa diagram. Professor Kaoru Ishikawa developed the cause and
effect diagram in Japan. The cause and effect diagram is a tool used to find the source
of the problem by asking who, what where, why and how questions.

15. Six Sigma
For years the world of manufacturing and the service industry operated in a three sigma
world. For the most part three sigma worked just fine. A three sigma system will produce
2,700 defects per million opportunities.
 A three sigma system the percent of acceptable product will be 99.73%.
A six sigma operation will produce only 3.4 defective parts per million. That amounts to
99.99966% acceptable product. Six sigma is hard to reach but is gives you a methodology
to follow which will improve operations.
Companies operating under a six sigma follow a methodology called DMAIC.
 Define: Define the problem. For example, parts don’t fit, students are going to other
schools, paint is chipping off, etc.
 Measure: Measure or count the defect. For example, parts are 10 thousands of an inch
too thin, 100 students left school because of money issues, 50 left because school was
too hard, paint is chipping off of the hood of the car
 Analyze: Find the cause of the problem. The die that makes the parts is worn down, the
school doesn’t offer scholarships, and the school has no remedial courses, there is no
undercoating on that part of the hood.
 Improve: Fix the problem. Change dies more frequently, offer scholarships and
remedial courses, adjust nozzles to increase undercoat coverage.
 Control: Put controls in place to assure the problems never occur again.

16. Logistics and Distribution
In the recent past, most warehouse operations were under the direction of the plant
manager. Warehousing and distribution were a part of normal operations.
Orders were shipped when they were ready and the customer was just happy to get
the items they ordered.
Flash forward to today and you have and entirely different view of logistics and
distribution.
Customers expect orders to be shipped within hours of receipt and the packaged
delivered the same day if possible.

17. Logistics and Distribution
The modern logistics and distribution manager is faced with a set of challenges that
have to be met in order to succeed. Let’s take a look at some of these:
 Technology: Modern distribution centers are a maze of high speed conveyors.
Packages enter one end of the building and within minutes are being loaded on a
plane or a truck at the other end of the building. The conveyor and sorting system
are very expensive and complex. Most distribution center operating with this type
of equipment have a staff of IT techs working around the clock. While the
distribution center manager doesn’t have to be an IT professional some basic
knowledge is required.
 Equipment: In the good old days, storage racks, a forklift and a few pallet jacks
were just about all that was needed. Modern warehouses now require an
assortment of very expensive equipment. Modern warehouse equipment includes a
variety of sorting racks, stock picking equipment, racking, conveyor systems etc.
Much of this equipment is custom made for the facility and can have price tags
well over $100,000.

18. Logistics and Distribution
 Competition: Just think of all of the ways you can get a Keurig Coffee maker. You
can order one from Amazon, a department store like Kohl’s, buy it online from
Walmart etc. Consumer Reports has just analyzed 52 online buying sites. In other
words the customer has many choices. So who gets the sale? It should be obvious,
the company that gets the product to the customer the fastest and at the lowest
cost is the winner. Therein lies a challenge for the distribution manager. How to get
the product shipped quickly and just as importantly at a low cost.
 Labor Cost: Labor costs in the warehouse can add up quickly. Product that has to
be handled multiple times will cost a lot more than product handled more
efficiently. Warehouse layout then becomes a critical factor. Also important is the
hourly labor rate and any benefits. Pay attention to adds around the holidays when
companies like Amazon, UPS, Ebay Enterprise and other large distribution centers
are looking for help. Hourly rates will be more than double minimum wage and
health benefits are offered from day one. In addition these companies usually hire
through temp agencies and fees must be paid. Another problem which can occur is
when there is a shortage of workers and overtime must be used to get the job
done.

19. Logistics and Distribution
 Other Costs: In addition to labor cost the cost of shipping is something the
supervisor has to monitor and keep under control. Fuel cost, truck maintenance,
packaging materials, shipping materials are just a few things the supervisor must
keep under control.
 Accuracy/Damage: It is very easy to see that if a customer receives an incorrect or
damaged order they most likely will never buy from that company again. Therefore,
assuring near perfect order picking and packaging. This means bar codes and bar
code readers as well as paperwork must be working perfectly.

20. Job Duties and Tasks for: "Logistics Manager"
1) Recommend optimal transportation
modes, routing, equipment, or frequency.
2) Establish or monitor specific supply
chain-based performance measurement
systems.
3) Create policies or procedures for
logistics activities.
4) Plan or implement material flow
management systems to meet production
requirements.
5) Train shipping department personnel in
roles or responsibilities regarding global
logistics strategies.
6) Maintain metrics, reports, process
documentation, customer service logs, or
training or safety records.
7) Implement specific customer
requirements, such as internal reporting or
customized transportation metrics.
8) Resolve problems concerning
transportation, logistics systems, imports
or exports, or customer issues.
9) Participate in carrier management
processes, such as selection, qualification,
or performance evaluation.
10) Monitor product import or export
processes to ensure compliance with
regulatory or legal requirements.
11) Ensure carrier compliance with
company policies or procedures for
product transit or delivery.
12) Direct distribution center operation to
ensure achievement of cost, productivity,
accuracy, or timeliness objectives.
13) Negotiate transportation rates or
services.
14) Design models for use in evaluating
logistics programs or services.

21. Job Duties and Tasks for: "Logistics Manager"
15) Supervise the work of logistics specialists,
planners, or schedulers.
16) Prepare or file environmental certification
applications.
17) Negotiate with suppliers or customers to
improve supply chain efficiency or sustainability.
18) Recommend purchase of new or improved
technology, such as automated systems.
19) Develop risk management programs to
ensure continuity of supply in emergency
scenarios.
20) Plan or implement improvements to internal
or external logistics systems or processes.
21) Collaborate with other departments to
integrate logistics with business systems or
processes, such as customer sales, order
management, accounting, or shipping.
22) Analyze the financial impact of proposed
logistics changes, such as routing, shipping
modes, product volumes or mixes, or carriers.
23) Direct inbound or outbound logistics
operations, such as transportation or warehouse
activities, safety performance, or logistics quality
management.
24) Analyze all aspects of corporate logistics to
determine the most cost-effective or efficient
means of transporting products or supplies.
25) Direct or coordinate comprehensive
logistical or reverse logistical functions for
product life cycles, including acquisition,
distribution, internal allocation, delivery,
recycling, reuse, or final disposal of resources.
26) Communicate freight transportation
information to customers or suppliers, using
transportation management, electronic logistics
marketplace, or electronic freight information
systems, to improve efficiency, speed, or quality
of transportation services.
27) Review global, national, or regional
transportation or logistics reports for ways to
improve efficiency or minimize the
environmental impact of logistics activities.
28) Conduct or review environmental audits for
logistics activities, such as storage, distribution,
or transportation.
29) Implement or monitor carbon or
environmental management, accounting, or
audit systems.
30) Develop plans or set goals to reduce carbon
emissions associated with storage or transport
activities.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_JCdf_w1_E

22. Managing Change
Signs of Resistance to Change
Just when you think change has been accepted and all is good you notice certain behaviors in
your workers that indicate all is not well. Here are some things to look for in your employees and
in your behavior that may indicate resistance to change.
 Still working under the old rules: Let’s say the new way of doing something requires the use
of computers to input data. You find that some workers are still using paper documents.
 Not accepting new assignments: One sign of resistance to change is not accepting new
assignments. The new way of doing things like being crossed trained in other positions. The
person is content with the current assignment but resists leaning anything else.
 Working at a slower pace: A natural reaction to change is to slow down and analyze. The
more the old way has changed to slower the worker will be.
 Waiting for someone else to make thing better: Modern employees have more been
empowered than their predecessors. In the old days employees took their orders from a
distance. Corporate headquarters may be 500 miles away but the person in charge there set
the tone. Now employees have more freedoms and can make changes to their work without
approval. Those workers who still hope help will come from someone else are resisting
change.
 Can’t change: There are employees who just can’t change. Not only do they not want to do
things the new way the thought of change keeps them from doing their current job.

23. Leading Change
How can the supervisor avoid resistance to change? Answer: the supervisor has to be a
leader of change. How? The first thing the supervisor must do is to embrace the change. If
the supervisor shows any sign of not accepting the change the employees will pick upon it.
Being the biggest cheerleader for the change is also very important.
 Help those who resist change: Work with the employees who resist the change and show
them how the change will help them with their job performance
 Only do what you can: Help the employees with the change but keep in mind your limits
 Reward Acceptance to Change: Make a big deal when employees accept the change and
make it successful.

24. Helping Employees Cope with Change
In addition to recognizing the sign of resistance and helping employees overcome their fear of
change the supervisor also has to help the employees cope and live with change. Not all
employees will have a hard time with change but those who do will need the help of a good
supervisor. Here are a few tips that will help you employees cope with change:
 Be there when they need to talk: A supervisor’s day if full of duties and responsibilities that
consume virtually all of the available time. However, keep in mind that you can never be too
busy to talk to an employee. Let them know that you they can talk with you whenever they
need to.
 Let employees know that other changes may happen: When one change occurs in the
workplace employees tend to wait for the other shoe to drop. Let them know that yes,
additional changes may happen. Let them know that you will keep them advised as to any
changes as soon as you are aware of them.
 Ask Questions: The employees know how the change has affected them because they are the
closest to the job. Ask for feedback as to how the change has affected them or their job. This
is good way of heading off any problems that could arise.
 Don’t make promises that you can’t keep: Treat you employees like adults. Give them bad
news without sugarcoating it.
 Involve the team: When you know change is coming get the team together and ask for their
input. The more they are involved and the more input they give the easier it will be to accept
the change.

25. Change can lead to…
???

26. Managing change is difficult. The supervisor must do everything they can to eliminate the
fear caused by the change rally the employees around the new way of doing things.
http://www.strategy-
business.com/article/rr00006?gko=64
3d0
https://youtu.be/PQ0doKfhecQ

27. Group Time