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The MRD Concept is a new business management concept that stands for The Materials Resources Deployment of the organization. In business, we refer to four major resources: Money, Manpower, Materials and Machineries. The materials are the raw materials that an organization uses to manufacture their products. The machineries help to manufacture the products with the help of manpower. Money helps to provide all three.
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Book: The MRD Concept
Publisher: Outskirts Press
Author: N. Satishkumar
Total Pages: 160
Price: US$ 16.95/-
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In an organization’s functional terminology, we refer to “money” as the Finance function, manpower as the HRD (human resource department), machineries represents the Plant and materials stand for the Inputs required for the final product. In our present organizational set-up, under the Plant, we have the operations/manufacturing, engineering, quality control, and R&D and under Materials we have procurement, warehousing and logistics (transportation). We have marketing & sales as a different function, by itself.
A department head oversees each specialized function and they perform their role and work in coordination with the other functions. While there is nothing wrong in the present set-up, The MRD Concept suggests a paradigm shift in our present organizational structure. It suggests combining the materials resource related activity under one head, which can vastly improve the way these vital functions work. This would ultimately help in the efficiency of the business process resulting in higher productivity, reduced wastage and increased profit.
Therefore, upon identification of the direct materials resources users and the indirect materials resources functions, the MRD Concept helps to create a MRD department of the direct materials resources users. This places the Marketing, Finance and HRD departments as the indirect materials resource users and the four major functions (Manufacturing/Operations, Engineering, Materials and Sales) under the direct materials resource users.
The coming together of these four departments collapses the supply chain within the organization to form a seamless department with individual functional responsibility and combined responsibility for the other three functions. This results in synergizing their abilities, strengths, capabilities, knowledge, experience and expertise to perform as a team and achieve results better than they are achieving as individual departments and functions. In other words, we have the best of technological and commercial brains working together and taking charge of the entire materials resources of the organization.
Now that you know what The MRD Concept is, allow me to explain how it helps the environment. Pollution of the environment, by the industry, is often caused during the process of manufacturing. At a macro level, we can have rules and regulations, penalties, and legal actions on the polluting industries. However, at a micro level, we must look at how we can reduce or remove the problem from the pollution creation point. This is where the MRD department comes into play.
Today we have a scenario in any given organization that if we ask the operations or manufacturing why they have wastes in any form in their process, they will blame the engineering department for not providing them with the right technology. Engineering will blame manufacturing and operations for not operating the process in the required manner or levels. They will also blame procurement for not providing the right technology manufacturers for procurement. Procurement will blame the management for the limited budget!
Now, under the MRD Concept, passing the buck stops. This is because all these functions come together under one head and will have all the opportunity in the world to brainstorm and debate about the right technology before procurement. They will now definitely ensure selection of a process that will minimize the process pollution. Even the unavoidable pollution that still occurs will be looked into by the MRD department for its reuse, ability to be sold for reuse, or disposed off in an environmentally friendly manner.
With all of the concerned functions working together, actions taken will not be a one-time shot, but a sustained effort. The ocean is made up of many drops. If every business unit, be it large or small, starts using the MRD Concept, they will begin to avoid waste and pollution, thus helping to save our environment, and will increase efficiency and improve supplier-customer relationships, thus increasing profits.
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