Hills Hats Case Study

Section 1. Project Identification

Project Proposal for Hills Hats workload issue
By Ella Smuts-Kennedy, Emma Young and Oriana Warnock
For Weltec, dated 21 December 2016

Section 2. Introduction/Background

Hills Hats, located at 30 Fitzherbert Street, Petone, Lower Hutt, manufactures and sells fabric, leather and oilskin hats and berets for fashion, formal, outdoor and uniform wear. Chas Hill opened the original NZ hat factory in 1875 since when demand for all varieties of hats has significantly increased, such that this year the factory has been full-on completing orders for domestic and international markets (Hills Hats, n.d.). Thirty-five percent of the Hills fashion hats are exported, mainly to Australia, Japan and the United States.

Objectives

Wishing to maintain their current range of hats and hopefully grow their place in the hat market, Hills Hats and our project team have identified the following possible objectives or solutions:

1. Employees continue to work overtime to meet the sales demand – the do nothing option.
2. Expand the workforce to create the needed capacity.
3. Contract out (ie, outsource) some work.
4. Develop more efficient hat manufacturing processes.
5. Some appropriate combination of the above options.

The project deliverables will be the creation and adoption of one or more of the five options identified above, designed to most effectively create additional capacity to meet a growing demand, the ultimate benefit being to satisfy customers and maintain and preferably improve business productivity and profitability to thus enhance the business’s chances of longer-term

In order to be able to show the sponsor plans, graphs and images, and record any important information during meetings, each team member needs to have access to a portable computer, iPad or tablet.
● The project sponsors time is limited, so in order to maximise the time the team can spend with him each team member should have access to reliable means of travel and plan for travel time, traffic and other factors to ensure they are on time at all meetings.
● All information being provided to the sponsor should be written clearly and presented professionally. Folders should be use to organise information logically, and all graphs and images should be relevant and easy to understand.
● As one of the main forms of communication between the sponsor and the liaison/ team members is email, the liaison should have access to a mobile phone that is able to send and receive emails so that queries can be asked and answered easily. Also, for quick questions that need answering promptly telephone calls should be made as to save both the liaison and the sponsors