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The Group Is one of the leading companies in the food industry in the Nordic Countries. In addition to its Finnish reduction plant, Rover also processes food In Sweden, Norway and Denmark. The Group altogether employs over 7,000 people In four countries. Rover Finland Is Rover Group’s subsidiary company, which attends to domestic markets. Rover Finland has only one production plant in Southern Finland where it has approximately 500 employees. This case concentrates on the operation of Rover Finland. Rovers core activity Is food processing.
Subcontractors supply the raw materials which are then processed in Rover’s production plants. Food products are first sold to big wholesalers, who deliver products to the grocery stores, where consumers buy them. The goal of the company is to respond to customer demand without having a large amount of products In stock. Managing different kinds of Information and knowledge is important for succeeding in reaching this goal. It is important to manage information flows both internally (within the company) and externally (to the interest groups).
Picture 1 – Information flows in Rover Finland Picture 1 represents the information flows inside the company. It describes the communication between the parties that are Important for this assignment (Picture 1 is an example, not a complete description of the situation). There are three operation levels in the company: top management, middle management and employees. The top management consists of six highly educated managers, who are responsible for strategic management and the management In the Group level.
The middle management consists of a purchasing manager, a sales manager and a production manager, who are responsible for managing the daily operations. They order the raw materials according to the demand. They also sell the company’s products to the wholesalers and arrange for their delivery. Finally, they report about the dally activities to the top management. There are two big wholesalers that are Rover’s main customers. These customers production manager. There is a close relationship between Rover’s middle management and the purchasing manager of one of the customers.
The other customer has a big purchasing team, whose members are changing fast. Although the middle management contacts the customers daily, also the top management communicates with the customers, as it handles the long term contracts with them. The main task of the Purchasing Manager is to order the necessary raw materials from Rover’s subcontractors. The subcontractors are mostly farmers, who have arioso practices of doing business. The Purchasing Manager is doing business separately with each individual subcontractor and has therefore formed good relations with most of them.
The Purchasing Manager also acts as the contact person between the middle managers and the employee supervisors. Employees in the production lines are responsible for processing the raw materials into food products. The production work is arranged in three shifts. Employees work in the production plant that is separated from the management building. Supervisors are the link between these factory workers and the middle management. Their Job is to execute the production plan and to report the production related issues to the middle management.
Answer the following question: Discuss, using examples, * Why and what kind of information does the production manager need from the customers and from within the company? In addition to the information flow between the Production Manager and Customers, choose one information flow within the company (Production Manager – Top Management OR Production Manager – Sales Manager OR Production Manager – Purchasing Manager). * What types and levels of information do these information flows represent? Write your answer as an essay. Use concrete examples to illustrate your answer.