1.0 Introduction

Sumithra Hasalaka (PVT) Limited is one of the leading garment factories located in Sri Lanka and it currently exports to number of customers in Europe, Australia and USA. The company was founded in the year of XXXXX with XXXX employees. Today, it has about 4000 employees attached to 4 factories. Within this assignment, the operations function of the firm will be extensively studied with the help of several leadership and management theories learnt. The manufacturing team at Nittambuwa plant will be the main focus throughout the study. The Nittambuwa plant has about 840 employees covering 10 production modules and the entire production team is headed by a General Manager. Each manufacturing division is headed by a manager and every production line has a supervisor. The structure of the Nittambuwa plant will be explained within the next few sections of the report.
When it comes to a garment manufacturing plant, efficiency and productivity are considered at the heart of success. The KPIs such as standard minute value (SMV) are being strictly monitored to ensure the production efficiency. Having identified this, it’s important to understand the role of leadership and management in upgrading the performance of the factory. The strengths and weaknesses of the leadership and management practices will be identified for further improvement. The role of the leadership in creating a productivity driven culture, important leadership traits and characteristics, leadership styles, motivation and conflict resolution skills, power distribution and internal politics, etc. will be discussed within the context of the manufacturing team at Nittambuwa.

2.0 The manufacturing plant at Nittambuwa

As identified before, the Nittambuwa manufacturing plant has about 840 employees attached to 10 different production divisions. The main purpose of the team is to meet the production quantities with the required quality. Timely delivery of orders is also one of the main concerns within this model. This can be identified as challenging business as meeting deadlines and quality standards can sometimes be challenging due to practical difficulties. For an example, there has to be a proper coordination with the merchandisers and other procurement agencies to ensure the quality and timely delivery of orders. Coordination and communication failures within this context often result in conflicts and it can be harmful for the business success. Therefore it’s important to identify the leadership and management role in bypassing these inherent barriers of the business model. The structure of the Nittambuwa production team can be depicted as follows.