Operations strategy - how a supply chain works, its elements

Supply Chain Management

We’ve spent several weeks looking at Operations strategy – how a supply chain works, its elements, etc.  Unfortunately, our book fails to address the biggest area that keeps managers across the planet awake at night – staffing.  It’s critical to a business’ success to have a well-defined strategy and plans/processes to implement that strategy.  Nevertheless, a business will fail if it lacks personnel to execute its strategy.

Pre-pandemic, the US labor market is statistically in a state of “full employment.”  There simply are not enough people unemployed and capable of filling job vacancies.  In the United States’ growing economy, the labor supply is insufficient for the demand for staff.

This situation is aggravated in the manufacturing sector because of its demographics.  A large percentage of manufacturing workers are greater than 60 years old.  It’s anticipated that they will all retire in the next 5 – 10 years.  Who will replace them?

This assignment is a 3-4 page paper(double spaced) proposing a strategy for identifying, recruiting and training manufacturing personnel based on the following assumptions:

1)    You are a plant manager in a mid-sized manufacturing facility.  You have 600 people working for you.  You’re plant is so busy, you’re running 3 shifts a day.

2)    One third of your employees – 200 people – are 60 years old or older.   You anticipate that they’ll retire within the next 5 – 10 years.

3)    You have two departments where the entire team is older than 60 years old.  It would be catastrophic for your business if they all retire at once.

4)    The labor market in the LA metropolitan area is “tight.”  Finding good talent has been a challenge for several years.

5)    The good news is that you recognize the issue and are developing a strategy to address it.  As this is California, there are some state resources available to cover training, etc.