Marketing Plan Chevrolet Essay

A performance appraisal is a review and discussion of an employee’s performance of assigned duties and responsibilities. The appraisal is based on results obtained by the employee in his/her job, not on the employee’s personality characteristics. The appraisal measures skills and accomplishments with reasonable accuracy and uniformity. It provides a way to help identify areas for performance enhancement and to help promote professional growth. It should not, however, be considered the supervisor’s only communication tool. Open lines of communication throughout the year help to make effective working relationships. In Chevrolet each employee is entitled to a thoughtful and careful appraisal. The success of the process depends on the supervisor’s willingness to complete a constructive and objective appraisal and on the employee’s willingness to respond to constructive suggestions and to work with the supervisor to reach future goals. In Chevrolet it i s important for them to give the satisfaction of their customers as part of their business. As the company needed employees who will help them in obtaining their goals, they make sure to have excellent agents or dealers to gain more customers in market. The services which they offer to their buyers are based to the performances of their car dealers and agents who sell their products. As having an integrated performance appraisal, the Chevrolet handle their employees with a synchronization on their management that will help them to comprise more strategies, goals of the company and the right plan for them to be marketable in their business. Chevrolet has their records of their sales on their cars and the level of performances of their dealers and agents. As managing a business that needed to sell in a high cost of prices but giving customers a satisfaction and good value of their products, the company needs to check and monitor the employee who sells and market the products. Periodic reviews help the supervisors of Chevrolet gain a better understanding of each employeeâ€⠄¢s abilities. The goal of the review process is to recognize achievement, to evaluate job progress, and then to design training for the further development of skills and strengths. A careful review will stimulate employee’s interest and improve job performance. The review provides the employee, the supervisor, the Vice President, and Human Resources a critical, formal feedback mechanism on an annual basis; however these discussions should not be restricted solely to a formal annual review. Annually, the appropriate supervisor evaluates each employee’s performance. In the case where an employee has changed jobs part-way through the appraisal period, both of the employee’s supervisors during the appraisal period should submit an appraisal of the employee’s performance. During the performance evaluation process, the most recent job description on file with Human Resources will be reviewed and updated if necessary, by both the employee and the supervisor. The Chevrolet employees are reviewed for a salary increase, annually. The amount of the salary increase pool of funds is recommended by the administration and approved by the Board of Trustees. The method for allocating funds is based on rewarding meritorious performance. Merit increases will be awarded on a pay-for-performance basis and are based on individual performance. When used as intended, a pay-for-performance structure achieves the goal of rewarding truly top performers with merit increases that match their achievements and contributions. These bases of performances of the employees are one way of recognizing the job that they worked hard for the company. The company wanted to increase the level of good quality services for their employees for them to have the loyalty of their customers. This reward to their dealers and agents are persuading them to enhance the ability and performances in marketing their products. The goal of Chevrolet is to give satisfaction and needs to their customers and to their future buyers. The company’s Performance Appraisal can help the company to obtain the following objectives: To maintain records in order to determine compensation packages, wage structure, salaries raises, etc and to identify the strengths and weaknesses of employees to place right men on right job, to maintain and assess the potential present in a person for further growth and development, to provide a feedback to employees regarding their performance and related status, to provide a feedback to employees regarding their performance and related status. It also serves as a basis for influencing working habits of the employees and to review and retain the promotional and other training programmes. It is said that performance appraisal is an investment for the company which can be justified by following advantages: Performance Appraisal helps the supervisors to chalk out the promotion programmes for efficient employees. In this regards, inefficient workers can be dismissed or demoted in case. It can help in chalking out compensation packages for employees. Merit rating is possible through performance appraisal. Performance Appraisal tries to give worth to a performance. Compensation packages which include bonus, high salary rates, extra benefits, allowances and pre-requisites are dependent on performance appraisal. The criteria should be merit rather than seniority. The systematic procedure of performance appraisal helps the supervisors to frame training policies and programmes. It helps to analyse strengths and weaknesses of employees so that new jobs can be designed for efficient employees. It also helps in framing future development programmes. Performance Appraisal helps the supervisors to understand the validity and importance of the selection procedure. The supervisors come to know the validity and thereby the strengths and weaknesses of selection procedure. Future changes in selection methods can be made in this regard. For an organization, effective communication between employees and employers is very important. Through performance appraisal, communication can be sought for in the following ways: the employers can understand and accept skills of subordinates; the subordinates can also understand and create a trust and confidence in superiors. It also helps in maintaining cordial and congenial labor management relationship. It develops the spirit of work and boosts the morale of employees. All the above factors ensure effective communication. The Performance appraisal of the company serves as a motivation tool. Through evaluating performance of employees, a person’s efficiency can be determined if the targets are achieved. This very well motivates a person for better job and helps him to improve his performance in the future. Life Cycle Costing The Life cycle costing is a method of calculating the total cost of a physical asset throughout its life. Life-cycle costing is concerned with all costs of ownership and takes account of the costs incurred by an asset from its acquisition to its disposal, including design, installation, operating, and maintenance costs. There are four major benefits of Life Cycle Cost analysis and it is evaluation of competing options in purchasing, improved awareness of total costs, more accurate forecasting of cost profiles and performance trade-off against cost. When the Chevrolet is planning the acquisition of a major asset, organizations spend considerable time and effort in making an economic evaluation of the initial (capital) cost. This evaluation typically considers the required size or capacity of the item, operating performance requirements, physical appearance or image projected, the capital cost, and alternative product options. The company future costs are less visible, as they are often â€Å"hidden† within general operating expenses, but they can have a significant impact on the future viability of the organization. The scale of these costs depends on the level and frequency of usage of the asset. There are also broader environmental implications that flow from the decision to acquire a major asset. Resources are used during the creation, operation and disposal phases, with the potential to affect environmental sustainability, and there may also be direct environmental impacts. The study of these broader issues is often termed life-cycle assessment. This guide does not specifically address these broader issues but they should be part of a complete assessment of the merit of a specific project. The determination of costs is an integral part of the asset management process and is a common element of many of the asset manager’s tools, particularly Economic Appraisal, Financial Appraisal, Value Management, Risk Management and Demand Management. Growing pressure to achieve better outcomes from assets means that ongoing operating and maintenance costs must be considered as they consume more resources over the asset’s service life. Both the capital and the ongoing operating and maintenance costs must be considered wherever asset management decisions involving costs are made. This is the Life Cycle Cost approach. Quality Costing Improving quality is considered by many to be the best way to enhance customer satisfaction, to reduce manufacturing costs and to increase productivity. Any serious attempt to improve quality must take into account the costs associated with achieving quality, since nowadays it does not suffice to meet customer requirements, it must be done at the lowest possible cost as well. This can only happen by reducing the costs needed to achieve quality, and the reduction of these costs is only possible if they are identified and measured. The identification itself is not straightforward because there is no general agreement on a single broad definition of quality costs. However, according to Dale and Plunkett (1995), it is now widely accepted that quality costs are the costs incurred in the design, implementation, operation and maintenance of a quality management system, the cost of resources committed to continuous improvement, the costs of system, product and service failures, and all other necessary costs and non-value added activities required to achieve a quality product or service. Measuring and reporting these costs should be considered a critical issue for any manager who aims to achieve competitiveness in today’s markets. These are costs that can be only estimated such as profits not earned because of lost customers and reduction in revenue owing to non-conformance. The importance of opportunity and intangible costs for quality costing has been recently emphasized in the literature. The practice of costing quality is the combination of two important elements: the first is to analyse the cost of each part of a process and identify areas where savings may be made; the second is the ‘right first time’ approach. Of course people don’t just need to do things right, they need to be sure they are doing the right things. The aim of a quality costing process is to maximize quality while minimizing cost. A sound quality costing programme will measure the cost of quality; aim to control and reduce it; and, continually monitor it as a measure of progress. The process of quality costing is, on the whole, one of negative analysis – instead of strengths, it looks for weaknesses. This may be a painful exercise, be prepared for that. But remember that by identifying costs you can take steps to reduce them. Ignoring ineffectiveness and poor quality is rather like the ostrich approach to management – if I don’t see it, it won’t hurt me. It is useful to bear in mind that the best business with which to compare quality costs is your own. If you introduce quality cost measurement activities twice a year you will soon have data to compare. The Chevrolet cost categories in the quality planning is one of the most important and had prioritized by the company for them to achieved customer satisfaction. The company offer products with good materials to maintain the quality but with affordable prices. The company’s prevention costs support activities whose purpose is to reduce the number of defects. Chevrolet employs many techniques to prevent defects, for example statistical process control, quality engineering, training, and a variety of tools from total quality management (TQM). Prevention costs include activities relating to quality circles and statistical process control. Quality circles consist of small groups of employees that meet on a regular basis to discuss ways to improve quality. Both management and workers are included in these circles. An out of control process results in defective units and may be caused by a miscalibrated machine or some other factor. In statistical process control, workers use charts to monitor the quality of units that pass through their workstations. With these charts, workers can quickly spot processes that are out of control and that are creating defects. Problems can be immediately corrected and further defects prevented rather than waiting for an inspector to catch the defect later. Any defective parts and products should be caught as early as possible in the production process in the company. Appraisal costs, which are sometimes called inspection costs, are incurred to identify defective products before the products are shipped to customers. Unfortunately performing appraisal activates doesn’t keep defects from happening again and most managers realize now that maintaining an army of inspectors is a costly and ineffective approach to quality control. Employees are increasingly being asked to be responsible for their own quality control. This approach along with designing products to be easy to manufacture properly, allows quality to be built into products rather than relying on inspections to get the defects out. Failure costs are incurred when a product fails to conform to its design specifications. Failure costs can be either internal or external. Internal failure costs result from identification of defects before they are shipped to customers. These costs include scrap, rejected products, reworking of defective units, and downtime caused by quality problem. This also experienced by the company and the more effective the company’s appraisal activities the greater the chance of catching defects internally and the greater the level of internal failure costs. This is the price that is paid to avoid incurring external failure costs, which can be devastating for the company. When a defective product is delivered to customer, external failure cost is the result. External failure costs include warranty, repairs and replacements, product recalls, liability arising from legal actions against a company, and lost sales arising from a reputation for poor quality. Such costs can decimate profits. External failure costs usually give rise to another intangible cost. These intangible costs are hidden costs that involve the company’s image. They can be three or four times greater than tangible costs. Missing a deadline or other quality problems can be intangible costs of quality. Internal failure costs, external failure costs and intangible costs that impair the goodwill of the company occur due to a poor quality so these costs are also known as costs of poor quality by some persons.