- 2. How should an organization balance the different design characteristics in a new product? Elaborate.
- Characteristics of a Good Product Design Company
There are several methods of plastic production that are employed extensively by a product design company in creating A-grade plastic product design options. Some of these methods include rapid injection moulding, conventional injection moulding, rapid prototyping, and rapid tooling. Due to their extreme technical nature, these methods call for a lot of attention, safe practices and quality check to be employed by a product design company. Typically, a product design company that specialises in plastic product design develops a tool kit for the purpose and uses a technology that best suits the requirements of a plastic product design project.
Let us now discuss the characteristics of a good product design company, some of which are elucidated below:
- Quality
- Appearance
- Performance
- Service life
- Price
- 3. Define Job Design. Explain the important factors to be considered for Job designing.
Job design essentially involves integrating job responsibilities or content and certain qualifications that are required to perform the same. It outlines the job responsibilities very clearly and also helps in attracting the right candidates to the right job. Further it also makes the job look interesting and specialised.
Factors to be considered for
Job designing:
A well defined job will make the
job interesting and satisfying for the employee. The result is
increased performance and productivity. If a job fails to appear
compelling or interesting and leads to employee dissatisfaction,
it means the job has to be redesigned based upon the feedback from
the employees.
Broadly speaking the various
factors that affect a job design can classified under three heads.
They are:
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- Work Nature: There are various elements of a job and job design is required to classify various tasks into a job or a coherent set of jobs. The various tasks may be planning, executing, monitoring, controlling etc and all these are to be taken into consideration while designing a job.
- Ergonomics: Ergonomics aims at designing jobs in such a way that the physical abilities and individual traits of employees are taken into consideration so as to ensure efficiency and productivity.
- Workflow: Product and service type often determines the sequence of work flow. A balance is required between various product or service processes and a job design ensures this.
- Culture: Organizational culture determines the way tasks are carried out at the work places. Practices are methods or standards laid out for carrying out a certain task. These practices often affect the job design especially when the practices are not aligned to the interests of the unions.
Environmental Factors
Environmental factors affect the job
design to a considerable extent. These factors include both the
internal as well as external factors. They include factors like
employee skills and abilities, their availability, and their socio
economic and cultural prospects.
- Employee availability and abilities: Employee skills, abilities and time of availability play a crucial role while designing of the jobs. The above mentioned factors of employees who will actually perform the job are taken into consideration. Designing a job that is more demanding and above their skill set will lead to decreased productivity and employee satisfaction.
- Socio economic and cultural expectations: Jobs are nowadays becoming more employee centered rather than process centered. They are therefore designed keeping the employees into consideration. In addition the literacy level among the employees is also on the rise. They now demand jobs that are to their liking and competency and which they can perform the best.
Behavioural Factors
Behavioural factors or human factors
are those that pertain to the human need and that need to be
satisfied for ensuring productivity at workplace. They include the
elements like autonomy, diversity, feedback etc. A brief explanation
of some is given below:
- Autonomy: Employees should work in an open environment rather than one that contains fear. It promotes creativity, independence and leads to increased efficiency.
- Feedback: Feedback should be an integral part of work. Each employee should receive proper feedback about his work performance.
- Diversity: Repetitive jobs often make work monotonous which leads to boredom. A job should carry sufficient diversity and variety so that it remains as interesting with every passing day. Job variety / diversity should be given due importance while designing a job.
- Use of Skills and abilities: Jobs should be employee
rather than process centered. Though due emphasis needs to be given
to the latter but jobs should be designed in a manner such that an
employee is able to make full use of his abilities and perform the
job effectively.