WESTWARD EXPORTS LTD

CASE STUDY

INTRODUCTION
Westward Exports Ltd was a large Pakistani company

exporting ladies fashion garments made of pure cotton. Their main overseas markets were the USA, Europe, and Japan, and production was Rs.100 million. They had about 2,000 workers engaged in production through 138 subcontractors. Mr. Abdul Ahmed was the production manager of the company.

PROBLEMS?
HIGH REJECTION RATE:

Around 20 percent of the companys garment exports were rejected. LOW PRODUCTIVITY: The company had a production of Rs. 100 million but it employed around 2000 workers. NO ASSEMBLY LINE PRODUCTION: The contractors didnt use assembly line production. Therefore the quality of each cloth depended on the skill of the particular worker and each garment varied qualitywise.

PROBLEMS?-CONT.,
OBSOLETE MACHINERIES:

The contractors used out-of-date machineries which was inferior to modern machineries in both quality and production rate. DISPARITY IN GENDER PRODUCTIVITY: Men accounted to 60 percent of the production while the women accounted to 40 percent. Men worked overtime but had high absent rate. Women worked regularly but they were not willing to work overtime.

PROBLEMS?-CONT.,
LACK OF UNIFORMITY: The company used different concerns to dye and stitch the garments. Dyeing by different concerns caused variation in the garments color. The company sub-contracted the stitching to local suppliers which were not up to the international standards

ROOT PROBLEMS?
The problems identified are not stand alone. One problem

lead to another and are inter-linked. The root causes which lead to these problem are
Lack of

internal auditing and testing

No

proper organization and control

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS
INTERNAL AUDITING AND TESTING: The company was facing high rejection rate because they had no internal auditing and testing. The production manager should create a testing department where all the garments produced by the contractors were submitted for quality check. ADVANTAGES: This would lead to uniformity in quality and could also be used for identifying inferior products.

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS-CONT.,
This process decreases the rejection rate drastically.

Also the cost of rejection is not borne by the company. It

is borne by the sub-contractors who are now forced to produce quality products or face rejection. Maintenance of annual and monthly audit reports can help in monitoring the performance of the company.

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS-CONT.,
PROPER ORGANISATION AND CONTROL: The company lacks a proper vision and a manager to implement the goals of the company. The company needs to structure the distribution of works. The dyeing and stitching works should be given to a single contractor if possible. Otherwise they need to have a standard for quality and should ask the contractors to meet it or face rejection.

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS-CONT.,
Implementation of assembly line production could lead to

uniformity in quality and a faster production rate as opposed to individual production. As for the disparity between male and female productivity, instead of day-based salary scheme, hour based salary scheme can be adopted. But the manager should be careful in fixing the minimum hour as it might lead to dissatisfaction among employees.

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS-CONT.,
This effectively addresses the high absent rate among

male employees as they can work overtime to compensate it. Implementation of these measures will effectively increase the productivity of the company and also will drastically minimize the rejection rate without using modern machineries.

MODERN MACHINARIES
If the company wants to increase the productivity even

higher, the obsolete machineries should be replaced with modern high tech machineries. This will lead to higher production rate by minimizing the number of workers and better quality.

CHALLENGES
Westward Exports Ltd is a traditionally managed

company. If the manager introduces the professional methods without consulting and explaining the stake holders, it will lead to problems. These changes completely overhaul the existing methods which the employees are used to. So the manager must implement the changes in a step by step manner so that the employees are eased into the new work environment .