INTRODUCTION
Natural Food Manufacturing (NFM) Sdn Bhd is the manufacturing company that produces a wide range of vitamins and food supplements including Tongkat Ali, the famous herbal drink in Malaysia. The company is not only producing but also selling the products through its own most experienced and competent sales representatives. The production process of the company requires its employees to perform only one or two specific tasks. Currently, the top management of NFM is adopting a functional structure in its production process. This functional production has caused several setbacks to the company.
The productivity of the company is stagnant for the past few years. Albeit good performance in its sales, the manufacturing and marketing department employees are not able to keep up with high demand in the market. NFM tried to overcome this critical problem by introducing new range of products. The company hopes that the wide range of the new products can be able to cope with the high demand from consumers.
English: Sales representatives in front of V. Ivor...
English: Logo for the Holt Manufacturing Company o...
OSX apps I currently use (January 2010)Yet, even the most experienced and competent sales representatives find difficulties to keep up with the technical details of the products. The sales representatives of the company are required to handle all the products. Therefore, the inability of the sales representatives to persuade customers to buy the product would affect sales performance of the company.
Changes have to be made after realizing the setbacks of functional structure in the production and marketing department. Somehow, converting the current practiced or organization structure is very much important. Therefore, the company has established a task force to overcome and improve the current situation. The assigned task force is responsible to convert the functional structure of production and the marketing department into team-based structure.
LEARNING ISSUES
In extracting the learning issues to the case study, there are...