Administrative Section

In this section the organisational chart, human resources and equipment needed for the office section of the Company will be discussed. The importance of this section is to determine how many people are involved in the non-production section of the Company and what equipment is needed for them to do their jobs. To start the process, the organisational chart first has to be defined. In the next section, the organisational chart is defined and each position described briefly.

5.6.1 Organisational Chart

Since the Company is relatively small both from manufacturing and administrative sides, the management of its operation requires a minimum number of employees. Since some of the positions are not so demanding it is possible to assign a person to two positions in the administrative section. The organisational chart below shows different positions and how they are related to each other.

Figure 28: Organisational Chart

As has been said since the Company is in its initial stage the administrative tasks can be handled by sharing the tasks between employees. At the managerial level, the ‘managing director’ can also handle the ‘sale manager’ position. In the same way the ‘production manager’ can handle the ‘supply chain manager’ position. This applies to the first three years of the Company’s existence. For the other positions such as ‘sale specialist’, ‘production engineer’ and ‘supply chain specialist’ the employees’ allocation are as follows.

‘Sale specialist’ is in charge of handling customers’ contacts and orders throughout all the processes till the delivery point. In case he needs additional technical information the order might be referred to the ‘production engineer’, who controls the production process and the technical related inquiries both from the customers and production line. ‘Supply chain specialist’ monitors the inventory levels, both for raw material and final products and is also in charge of procurement of the direct and indirect materials that are being used in the production. In addition to monitoring the inventory level, this position has a close relationship with ‘sale specialist’ for handling the customers’ needs and also promoting the Company. As at the managerial level, the production and supply chain position are handled by one person. For this section is also possible to merge these two positions for at least the first three years of the Company’s existence.

For the ‘sale specialist’ position, the key factor for calculating the required number of employees is to consider the time duration for handling each order. Since the orders are different from each other and each takes time according to the size and specification requested from the client side, an average time

Managing Director

Sale Manager

Sale Specialist

Production Manager

Production Engineer

Supply Chain Manager

68 for each order is considered. It has to be noted that not all the RFQs1 lead to orders, therefore, it is assumed that at least one-third of all the potential customers in all the market segments will contact the Company for an RFQ. This number is always bigger than the orders the Company receives and since being responsive to the customers will boost the Company’s chance to get more orders, it has to be a priority in the Company policy. As a result, it is assumed that the Sale Specialist position must always have enough personnel to be responsive to clients’ demands. Another point that has to be considered is that the distribution of the clients’ contact is not clear. Therefore, a uniform distribution is considered for this section.

Using BPMN2, a business process is designed for the sales department and the process of selling the products, including quoting, delivery and returning if required. According to the business process the handling time for each contact with the Company from the point that the RFQ is sent to the point that it either becomes an order or is rejected, is considered to be 15 minutes on average. It also has to be noted that the 15 minutes happens in different sessions and not at once. For instance, a portion of that time might be the quoting and another portion might be the order processing related tasks. As was said in the above paragraph one-third of potential clients in all the market segments in the first year are considered as potential customers who could contact the Company for requesting a quotation. According to table 10 and table 11, the number of contacts with the Company is 15 950 clients. More information regarding the sales business process can be found in Appendix K.

Having established the total contacts, the total availability of the employees according to the labour laws and regulations of South Africa is eight hours per day making a total of 2 110 hours of employee availability annually. Based on these figures, the number of employees required for the mentioned positions can be calculated. By comparing these numbers, it is clear that at least two employees are required for this section to be able to handle the expected work load. Based on the market size the number of employees for this section makes sense, but it also has to be noted that for the first year that number of contacts, due to being young in the market, seems slightly optimistic. As a result for the first year one employee is considered sufficient in this position (Department Labour Republic of South Africa, 2012).

For the ‘production engineer’ and ‘supply chain specialist’ positions with regards to the Company size and the production load which is not very demanding, one person is assumed to be sufficient at least for the first three years.

In addition to the above-mentioned positions, a secretary is also needed to handle the normal office duties and expedite other jobs, such as communications inside and outside of the Company.

5.6.2 Equipment Needed for Administrative Section

In this section, the equipment needed by the administrative section of the Company is summarised as follows.

1

Request for Quotation

69

Table 24: Administrative Section’s Equipment and Human Resource

No. Positions Number of

Employees Equipment Needed per Employee 1 Managing Director

1

Office-related equipment including: office table, chair, telephone, computer and consumable material for office such as papers and pens.

2 Sale Manager 3 Production Manager

1

4 Supply Chain Manager

5 Sale Specialist 1

6 Production Engineer

1

7 Supply Chain Specialist

8 Secretary 1

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