Ch8Mindmap

Contingency Plan: A back-up plan put in place for an unexpected emergency or unforeseen event to avoid disruptions to the business.
e.g. Ryanair should have had a contingency plan for pilot shortages — e.g. emergency rosters or agreements with contract pilots — to avoid the cancellation of thousands of flights.

Strategic Planning: Made by senior management; sets long-term goals (5–10 years) from the Mission Statement. e.g. Ryanair's strategic plan to become Europe's largest airline and expand transatlantic routes. Airline link: Ryanair's long-term goal of dominating low-cost European aviation.

Tactical Planning: Made by middle management; short-term goals (1–2 years) from the Strategic Plan. e.g. Ryanair's annual fleet decisions, route additions and pricing strategies for the coming season. Airline link: planning new routes or seasonal pricing to achieve the strategic goal.

Manpower Planning: Matching human resources with the needs of the business — ensuring sufficient trained staff are available. e.g. The flight cancellation crisis showed Ryanair failed to plan pilot holiday rosters correctly — a functioning manpower plan would have prevented this. Airline link: "messed up the planning of pilots' holidays" — directly illustrates a manpower planning failure.

Enterprise: Any innovative attempt to start something new while taking on the personal and financial risk of failure in order to make a profit.

Management: A goal-orientated process involving coordinating the resources of the organisation to achieve its goals — through the activities of Planning, Organising and Controlling and the skills of Leading, Motivating and Communicating.

Reduces uncertainty: Planning gives all staff clear objectives to follow. This reduces confusion and helps management and staff make effective decisions when faced with challenges — they have a reference point to guide them.

Assess performance: By comparing the stated objectives against actual results, a business can identify where it is underperforming and take corrective action. e.g. If a sales target is missed, management can investigate the cause and adjust.

Stock Control: Concerned with keeping optimum stock levels — the right stock, in the right place, at the right time to meet production requirements and satisfy consumer demand.
Overstocking leads to: capital tied up in stock, obsolescence, higher storage and insurance costs. Understocking leads to: lost sales, damaged consumer loyalty, production stoppages. Using JIT (Just-in-Time) management — raw materials arrive just in time for production — eliminates excess stockholding costs and improves cash flow efficiency.

Quality Control: Concerned with inspecting work done to ensure it meets required standards. Methods include: physical sampling inspections, Quality Circles (staff teams who meet to discuss and resolve quality issues) and achieving quality marks such as ISO 9001 or Q Mark.
Effective quality control leads to efficiencies by minimising the costs of faulty goods — reducing returns, complaints and lost reputation — and by producing consistently high quality products that generate repeat purchasing and consumer loyalty.

Span of Control: The number of subordinates that report directly to one manager. A wide span means many subordinates report to one manager; a narrow span means fewer. The appropriate width depends on the skill level of staff, the nature of the work and the commitment of workers.

Chain of Command: The hierarchy in a business from top management down to employees. It sets out the formal lines of communication and authority from the top to the bottom of the organisation — between each layer of the structure.

Better coordination across departments: By bringing together staff from different departments into project teams, a matrix structure ensures that different areas of expertise contribute to the same goal — improving the quality of decisions and outcomes.

Improved decisions: Teams draw on a wider range of skills and perspectives than any single department could provide. Decisions reflect input from Marketing, Finance, Production and other areas simultaneously.

Satisfies social needs (Maslow Level 3): Working in cross-departmental teams gives employees a sense of belonging and teamwork, improving motivation and morale — reducing staff turnover.

Quality Control: Concerned with inspecting work to ensure it meets required standards . Methods include sampling, Quality Circles and quality marks.
Direct Quote: "The variation in the consistency of the product caused Inis Bia to miss out on a major contract with a UK multiple."
Evaluation: The quality control was ineffective — inferior product reached customers, damaging the brand and causing a loss of a major contract. This shows quality standards were not consistently maintained.

Stock Control: Ensuring optimum stock levels — right stock, right place, right time — to meet demand without overstocking or understocking.
Direct Quote: "The business was also trying to ensure production kept up with large orders from a large Irish supermarket."
Evaluation: Stock control was under pressure — the inability to meet supermarket demand suggests understocking issues, leading to potential loss of consumer loyalty and a major retail partnership.

Quality Control improvement: Inis Bia should introduce Quality Circles — regular meetings of production staff to identify and resolve consistency issues — and consider applying for a quality mark such as ISO 9001 to ensure standards are independently verified.