AL-Najah National University

Electrical engineering collage

Al-Arz
Mini project

Instructor: Dr. Walaa Johari

Student names:
Muhannad Azmi Omar 11611963
Ahmad hamdan 11613789
Khalid sheikh lbraheem 11612220
Karam ghassan ghanem 11614371
Table of Contents
Introduction 3
The mission of the organization 4
How the firm is organized 5
The processes for control 6
The leadership style 7
Innovative managerial practices 8
Appendix 10
Conclusion and References 10

Introduction:

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Al-Arz is a private company that was founded in the 1950 by Mohammad Anabtawi,
where it started off as a company that produced dry ice that would be used in stores and
the like in order to preserve consumables from going bad. In addition to that, their work
also extended to include cooling off water. Fast forward to today and Al-Arz has
become the standard for successful companies nation-wide as it has evolved to the point
of being the company that holds the market of producing ice cream desserts in an iron-
fist. The current CEO of the company is ZahiAnabtawi.

It didn’t take long for Al-Arz to start its expansion activities as it has taken the first
steps towards that by having another branch being set in Jordan. And it didn’t stop there
as Al-Arz was able to acquire many certificates along the line. Most notable of which is
the HACCP certificate which stands for Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points.
What it entails is that Al-Arz has achieved a high level of systematic preventive
measure to ensure the quality of the ingredients used in the production process and their
safety from biological, chemical, and physical hazards.

It should also be noted that they were one of the first companies in the dairy
consumables production field that acquired such a certificate which goes to tell how
much ofthey regard their vision to be a pillar to the Palestinian economy as the highest
priority.

Figure 1.1: The HACCP certificate of approval.

the mission of the organization:

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As we know, planning is one of the most integral parts in the management process. We
need to review the company’s plans so we could determine the objectives it sets for
itself and the methodology it follows to accomplish goals.

As we would expect from a successful company of this magnitude, they have a strategic
plan in place. Strategic plans extend from 3-5 years. And in addition to that, they have a
contingency plan set in place if the situation ever gets to the point of needing to utilize
such strategy to cut down the losses as much as possible. Of course what this entails is
that the company acknowledges the imperative need to be persistent in reviewing the
current situation and try to come up with a plan upon taking an extensive and broad
look at the situation. It has been also stressed to us that they have periodic reviews in
place to help get as much clear assessment of the situation as possible. And having a
contingency plan in place goes to show the vision the company has for anticipating the
future occurrences which helps in making the company even more flexible. The top
management puts the strategic plan in place.

The way they handle their contingency plan depends on the fact that they have seasonal
workers and their contracts are temporary so if the market’s situation isn’t helping, they
can stop employing so many people at the time and cut down any losses that may
happen.

The goal of such plans is to help Al-Arz reach more markets in the middle-east and thus
increase its sales and consequently grow bigger as a company. This can be seen as
we’ve mentioned before in this report regarding Al-Arz taking steps towards opening
branches in Jordan. But it doesn’t stop there because there are plans in place to help Al-
Arz reach as far as Oman next. And we understand now how that will help in the
development and evolution of the Palestinian products in the global market.

In terms of the customers, dairy products such as ice cream are wildly popular and is
consumed by people of wide range of ages. The competition that Al-Arz faces is that of
having Israeli based products likeStraus ice cream and such being imported into
Palestine. The way Al-Arz is dealing with this by having very competitive prices with
high quality products to back it up so it could gain the edge.

Vision :
All of this works into the priorities Al-Arz has set in place. As the ultimate goal is to
advertise its products and improve the revenues attained by the company. And such
behaviours have led to the gaining the great image that the company has built up in our
society which in turn increases the trust we have in it. Ultimately the company would be
one of the most companies that people want to be hired with which will also make it
improve the QWLs within itself.

Such plans helped Al-Arz gain and edge more and more each year in its overall sales.

How the firm is organized:

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The act of organizing is allocating and arranging people and resources to work together
so we can make realistic steps towards accomplishing the goal set by the planning
process previously. We will discuss the structure that the Al-Arz company has in place.
Focusing more on the tasks given to each department, the reporting process, and the
linkage between the various departments within the company that helps achieve such
quality this company provides.

As we can see in Fig 1.2, the approach taken by the company is more of a functional
structure one. This means that it has the head of a certain department within the
company being the main supervisor to report to in terms of the work that gets given to
each department. This would mean that the company would have more effective and
fast solutions to any problems that may arise within a certain department by having
people with similar education backgrounds and expertise working together hand in
hand. This would also mean that the chances of any confusion of turmoil will be
drastically cut down because of the straightforward set of rules and guidelines that the
employee is asked to follow and perform.

The way the decision making happens within Al-Arz is by having the head of a
department analyse the problem at hand by gathering as much information on it as
possible. To put things in perspective, the head of the production department is the one
that deals with any predicaments that arise within that part of the company. While any
other problem that might concern employees gets handled by a board of trusties after
going through the supervisor that the employee works under. What this highlights is one
of the most important managerial concepts which is to have a connected line between
the absolute top management to the lowest point of the diagram. It should be noted that
the management changes according to the market needs to avoid losses.

Figure 1.2: The organization’s formal structure.

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Controlling is the process of measuring the performance of the current progress towards
the objectives set to make sure the desired results are achieved. We will be discussing
the type of controls and which one Al-Arz adapts.

They adapt a mix of the concurrent type of control and the feedback one. We have been
told that whenever a problem arises as in a production line for example, it gets analysed
and resolved as its happening. This would mean that they keep monitoring the plans to
make sure that they are going according to the steps that have been put before.

They try to make sure to solve the problems as they happen and thus start making a
separate plan that would be the first step towards starting a feedforward cycle. And the
other half of their plans consists of making sure that the solutions that have taken place
working properly.

In terms of the operational control, as we have seen in the Fig 1.2, they have a
department just to make sure that all the machinery is working in the most optimum
way. They have what they call a “seasonal repair” period and an “emergency” one. The
seasonal repair period takes place after the season of which the company outputs the
most work so it’s after the period between February to September. But the emergency
one is if a machine or a production line breaks for whatever reason. The former is called
a preventive measure and it will consequently lead to making the emergency repairs less
frequent.

However, when it comes to financial control, we have mentioned before that when it’s
off-season, there would be about 80 people working in the factory. Any more workers
get hired during the season in accordance to the market need. So as we can see, this is
what we call theinfluence of market competition on the behaviour of organizations and
their members.

The information systems are supposed to coordinate the delivery of many of these
services of this company. It seems that this step is done in a very traditional manner as
there isn’t much automation when it comes to having distributers be ready or having the
process of asking for new material whenever the inventory is running lower than a pre-
set point to be delivered to the factory so it can keep on functioning and manufacturing
seamlessly.

The leadership style:

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The leadership is the ability to inspire people to accomplish set goals and objectives. As
it has been mentioned, inspiration is the keyword in the previous statement that
determines the employees’ willingness to do the tasks given by their supervisor. And in
this section we will discuss what Al-Arz has set to inspire its employees.

It has guidelines in place to increase one’s income every 3 to 4 years. Which is a way to
encourage employees to be more loyal to the company which in itself creates a more
stable environment within the company with the people wanting to do their tasks the
best they could. Though there are talks about making a new system of punishment and
reward that will be implemented in the future.

Another side of being a leader in an organization is the fact that you have to carry out
punishment and coercion measures to ensure that everything is working within the
polices that have been put by the top management. And this it creates a sense of feeling
safe and knowing that the management has a keen eye to look for any problems that an
individual might commit (it’s separated case by case according to if the damage that had
been done was intentional or not) and it handles the problems in the most optimal way
possible; putting the intricate nature of each situation under consideration.

In terms of communication within the different departments, we have been told that
there is a lack of that within the organization. This will be a point that we will discuss
later on in the report about how to make things run even better within Al-Arz. This
could introduce a whole set of problems because employees need to rely on their
supervisor to get into connection with other departments which would create a type of a
barrier between them. This might lead to the sense of cooperation and common purpose
to slowly erode and thus creates a narrow view of the performance objectives for the
organization as a whole.

Though upon asking about the relationships within Al-Arz, it seems that it tends to be
more informal than formal. This will creates an access to the interpersonal relationships
between the employees of the company that might balance off the functional structure’s
shortcomings and overtakes the barriers set by it between the employees. This will most
definitely make the process of getting things done because it will increase the
cooperation and make the span of control wider.

Describe and analysis the strategic situation of the organization:

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Successful organizations know the significance of innovation in business. It can
improve your products and scale up your business . Innovative management is any
process that involves changes in planning, ideation, technical execution and production
of resources in a way that can make a system more functional for people.

A form of such innovation can be seen through some of the procedures that Al-Arz
takes to make sure that the product that’s being put on the shelves of so many shops is
the best possible quality. As we saw in the Figure 1.2, they have separate departments
fully dedicated to ensure the freshness of the raw materials used in the manufacturing
process. They have high-tech quality assurance department and microbiology testing
lab. And in addition to that, they have some external labs such as those of the Ministry
of Health. These will guarantee the products being put out by the factory to maintain the
utmost of high standards on a local and international level.

The compliance with the local and international quality protocols and standards can be
put into perspective where it has obtained the Palestinian Quality Standards (PSI)
certificate in 2007, and as we mentioned before the Hazards Analysis and Critical
Control Points (HACCP) certificate in 2009 and is now in the process of acquiring the
ISO22000 and FSSC22000 certificates.

Another effective innovation strategy that results in better productivity and higher
customer satisfaction is the fact that Al-Arz uses the cutting edge of technologies when
it comes to making its products and to keep up with the market needs, so it makes sure
to never fall behind.

Entrepreneurship is highly encouraged within the company and was one of the measure
reasons why it has achieved a level of success that it helped it go far and beyond
limiting itself to Palestine. It took measures to start expanding in the middle-east as a
whole.

To keep their reputation as squeaky clean as possible, Al-Arz takes measures to not take
in any employees that had any previous criminal records. In addition to that, both
genders are given equal opportunities to work in the company. Other ethical dilemmas
such as taking care of the environment is an integral part of the sustainability process
that the companies are focusing on as of late. This is why Al-Arz’s factories work
within the international quality protocols and standards that will ensure having the
factories produce as little pollution it could.

The employees are naturally the most important asset within the company. But it seems
that Al-Arz has yet to develop a system that would connect any and every employee can
to each other.This can be a point that can be raised in the discussion of how to improve
the company later on.

Strengths 1- They got qualified maintenance

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 2- They got a separate maintenance
department inside the factory
3- They got the necessary spare parts
to do most of the maintenance
activities
Weaknesses 1- No predictive nor preventive
maintenance
2- Few documentation the employees
do not fill the required reports
completely
Opportunities 1- They got a high market share
Threats 1- Their competitors has a high efficient
maintenance system
2- The obvious chaos in the spare
parts warehouse

What is the needed strategy for this company? :

We came up with a couple of suggestions to help the company improve and integrate
more innovation methods into its style:

1- First of which is by having the employees be more connected with each other and
with the top management. An employee who just finished ringing up a customer at a
retail store may have noticed a way to improve the employee experience. In most cases
the employees have no way to convey their ideas to anyone, they can't get access to
experimental capital to test their ideas, and the organization has no formal program in
place to do anything with ideas that do get suggested. So the idea is to encourage
employees having first-hand experience with the customers to identify and solve
problems so the company can deliver a more compelling experience that would increase
the customer satisfaction.

2- The second suggestion is to make the company less dependent on the functional
structure and have it adapt to a more horizontal structure which is the trend of modern
companies these days which would improve the decision making process and make the
company even more flexible and enhance the feeling of cooperation.

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 Figure 1.3: Comparison between flat organizations and tall ones.

Appendix:

Table of Figures:
Figure 1.1:The HACCP certificate of approval………………………………………3
Figure 1.2: The organization’s formal structure……………………………………….5
Figure 1.3:Comparison between flat organizations and tall ones ….…………………9

Acronyms and abbreviations:

1-HACCP: Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points.

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Conclusion:

Finally after having completed this project, we feel like with the questions that we all
sat down and made resonated with the course we are taking at the moment as we were
able to apply most of the concepts we were discussing in class in the practical life to get
to know the behaviour of a huge company such as Al-Arz that is one of the leading
companies within our society. And now that we understand the various elements that
work within one company, we can safely say that we will apply this knowledge to any
other company that we come across in the future.

References:

1- JOHN R. SCHERMERHORN, JR. MANAGEMENT 12th edition.

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