Business

Owing to the fact that the company has been making losses and is therefore in a dire need for readjustment to remain competitive, the following recommendations re being made. They particularly involve how the company can go about an ambitious plan to close down at least 10 of its 27 plants in the country, with the possibility of off-shoring. Actually, among other issues, this team recommends off-shoring and outsourcing production as key measures to cut costs and improve revenue collection. The members of staff who have been very faithful to the company will be transferred elsewhere. The less technical manufacturing processes will be outsourced, while the other operations of certain plants will be moved into China. This will help realize profitability and develop a market share that can ensure this profitability is sustainable, for this is the bottom line of the entire plan.

Closing up a Plant
Introduction
The motive of every business organization is to achieve a high level of profitability as soon as it is practically possible. As result, the company or firm, regardless of the industry in which it operates, will develop strategies and adopt measures to ensure that it makes profits. If this business goal is not possible and instead the company keeps making losses, then, among other factors, closing down the entire company, some of its divisions or the sections that are particularly not viable become the only alternative (Becker, 2000). Closing down a firm is usually a very difficult operation to undertake and requires, among other considerations, a dedicated team to see it through successfully and deal with emerging issues due to the closure. When more than one firm are to be closed, then the more demanding the process will be.

The Working Team
The team that I, as the CEO of the company seeking to close down at least 10 of its 27 plants, will choose will comprise of about 45 personnel who are critical to the process. It will include, for each plant to be affected, the Plant Manager, the Public Relations Officer, the Human Resources Manager, and the Union representatives. The other people are the SalesMarketing Managers and the ProcessProgram Managers. These are essential and important to the closing process and will in one way or be required. While the SalesMarketing teams will help in informing the suppliers and customers of the intended move so arrangements can be made to either redirect their deliveries to the remaining plants or to stop them, and to inform customers of the move, the Human Resources manager and the Unions Representatives will help sort out the issues with employees. Program managers will come in handy with ideas about how best to implement such an ambitious plan. The Public Relations Officer will be responsible for the flow of information about the entire process.

Environmental Issues
Before closing, there has to be an ensuring that the vacated site does not pose any environmental or health risk. To ensure this is done, the relevant environmental impact assessment personnel will have to supervise the plants before and after close-down so that they issue a certificate of compliance as far as the required environmental standards are concerned.

The Sections to Consider for Closing
The main plants that are under considerations are those that can be outsourced or even off-shored. This is because although it is true that the company has not been making any profits but losses in the recent past, it has no plans of totally downsize its overall productions. In fact, it is planning to increase its production through outsourcing and off-shoring. Therefore, the company will only close those plants that deal with parts of the process that can be done elsewhere or by someone else more cheaply and perhaps even with more quality being added (Wall, 2004).

 These are the Wiring and Seating plants. This is because both wiring and seat fitting are not very capital-intensive abroad and do not require a lot of technical expertise. That aside, these parts of the manufacturing process will not harm the company so much when they are done elsewhere (Wall, 2004). The other plants that will be closed are those that engage in paneling because this too can be outsourced. I also believe that there ought to be a doing away of the sections that are engaged in Finishing. In essence, all the services which are able to be done at any other place cheaply ought to be closed.

The Justification for Outsourcing
This country is one of the leading car manufacturers and as such, it has a lot of experts in this field. However, all these experts have not and can never be accessed to be of value to our company because they are either into private practice or they only offer consultancy services. Such fine services, which the company lacks in its employees, can be utilized only through outsourcing. Therefore, these experts ought to be given the work. This, however, does not include all the tasks of the company. Instead, it will only involve those procedures which although not very technical enough to require a lot of expertise, they do not warrant the level of expenditure currently input there. The company has been losing a lot of revenue through the payment of personnel. These costs will be reduced significantly once the work is outsourced (Colander, 2007).

Justification for Off-shoring
The company has been affected by slumping demand due to the financial crisis and the fact that more Americans now desire more fuel-efficient car models as well as those that are environment friendly. The opposite is happening in China, where the demand for cars has for the first time in the history of the world exceeded that in the USA. More Chinese are buying cars in response to the economic boom that is being experienced there at the moment. That Chinas economy is booming is a fact, and it is time the company seriously considered outsourcing production there (Bragg, 2006).

In China, in addition to the ready and reliable market which is bound to keep growing over the next many years has a very low wage bill compared to the USA. In China, production can be undertaken at half the cost being incurred here. Labor costs are very low too, and considering that marketing and transportation costs will be reduced greatly, it will be to the companys gain if some operations are moved there. The main cultural implication is that there is likely to be language problems because Chinese is the main language. However, the company can have most of its staff being from China (Becker, 2000). Another issue of cultural implication is that the Chinese are used to Communist approaches at issues and this might present some challenges to a Western-owned company (Becker, 2000).

Community Implications
The main implication that the closure of the plant will have on the community is the loss of jobs for their family and friends (Becker, 2000). These plants have also been engaged in some community development projects such as funding schools. At the end of the day, such services will be missed. The company plans to have the employees who have been very faithful to the company for a long time accommodated in the other 17 plants whose local operations are to remain largely unaffected. The other workers are to be asked to take early retirement otherwise their contract with the company will be discontinued. This forceful termination of employees will be a very serious public relations issue. The company is likely to lose some customers as a result, but the effect is expected to die off very fast (Becker, 2000).

 Every employee that will be terminated will be compensated according to the level of training one had at the time of hiring and the length of time one has been an employee. The other public relations issue that will result if the decision to offshore is implemented is that the company is likely to be faced with many lawsuits especially those challenging its termination decision. Breach of contract is against the law and the company is preparing its lawyers so that they are ready for any eventualities. This is a business improvement strategy and even if it was not to be carried out, employees would still have to lose their jobs somehow (Becker, 2000).

Conclusion the Bottom Line
The bottom line of all this process is to ensure that the company has both a lean team that is easily manageable, as well as an ability to return to profitability. The company, more than anything else, also desires to make use of the economies of scale that is being afforded by globalization. The company realizes that the world is experiencing a totally new order as far as business operations are concerned. There is no way it can hope to remain competitive in this highly competitive motor vehicle industry without adopting strategies that utilize globalization. In this age of globalization, it is a lot easier for firms to outsource and to offshore. The company is looking forward to ensuring that its production not only increases but that this increase is sustainable. It also hopes to achieve a higher performance target than it has never done before. These and many more are the expected outcomes of this ambitious plan.