On Sept. 19 I posted a short article about the "control" function that is part of the management process. If you have already taken your Principles of Management class, then you have an appreciation for the points I was making.
You may remember that I said control functions apply to many aspects of the enterprise--budgets, production, quality control, etc. To illustrate just one of these I suggested this situation:
Your factory fills containers with catsup. The individual containers state that they contain 12 oz. of product. Your equipment, however, does not always dispense exactly 12 oz. into the containers. In fact, there is a statistical variance of plus or minus 0.1 oz. in the process. Question: what is the correct setting for your equipment?
The answer, of course, is 12.1 oz. It doesn't matter that the amount of catsup going into the containers will now vary from 12.0 to 12.2. The fact of the matter is that we can never go below 12.0 oz. because that would be cheating the consumer.
So, practical considerations sometimes play a part when we apply control theory to manufacturing processes. Can you think of others?
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