A theoretical investigation of management disciplines and philosophies applied to yacht manufacturing companies.

Wiley, James Michael. (2004). A theoretical investigation of management disciplines and philosophies applied to yacht manufacturing companies. [Final Year Project]

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Abstract

This project deals with the issues of a management team in a yacht manufacturing company. The yachting industry in itself is a cottage industry, for some people it builds what is essential but for most is a luxury item. In recent decades, big companies and small companies alike have gone bankrupt, some with lack of work planned and some with full order books in hand. This can be a disaster for the communities that are affected by the job losses and loss of income to the community. This could have been caused by ineffective management practices, lack of morale, product life cycle, and most probably a mix of all of these. I’m going to investigate management practices and theories, and see whether they would have an impact on the companies to make them more efficient, friendly, and successful and ensure their long term life. Two theoretical model companies were constructed, based on stereotypical yacht manufacturing companies and they are used to base the findings on. I picked ten areas of research to look into that are related to management, engineering principles, philosophies and team ethos. I have them applied these on to the model companies and thought about how they would work retrospectively on them. Some of them are very applicable to standard engineering management teams and some to smaller management systems. The two companies both benefited from the thought and change made from the philosophies proposed, my first smaller model company theoretically could make huge changes to the way it works, a lot of it background work of the management side that would make it work more efficient, improving communication, more job planning, and a better work environment for the managers and staff. The second company I found is more executively based management already and benefits from some review and thought, and can also improve through quality accreditations and improved communication. It does however have to extremely aware of the product life cycles of the products it is building, and be flexible to meet their demands. The customer or client has to be considered and thought what he wants, but not at the expense of the downfall of the business. This project theoretically designs the two model companies as they could improve as best it can in theoretical terms. In real life there would be other problems, and other issues may come along, what I have inbuilt into both designs is input to management levels from staff and improved communication, which is the only way these problems come into the open instead of coming out at the end of a project when it is too late. The manager of any company shouldn’t be someone who is unapproachable by his staff, and his floor managers should know what is going on and any problems, potential or current, with the staff in the company.

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