INDUSTRIAL MANAGEMENT. Controlling ensures that there is effective and efficient utilization of organizational resources so as to achieve the planned goals.

1. Controlling
By
HIMANSHU KUSHWAHA

2. Definition
• Controlling ensures that there is effective and efficient utilization of
organizational resources so as to achieve the planned goals.
• Controlling measures the deviation of actual performance from the
standard performance, discovers the causes of such deviations and
helps in taking corrective actions.

3. CHARACTERISTICS OF CONTROL
1. Control Process is Universal
2. Control is a Continuous Process
3. Control is Forward Looking
4. Control involves Measurement
5. Management Control is a System
6. Control is aimed at results not at people
7. Control is goal oriented

4. TYPES OF CONTROL
Feed forward Control
• Feed forward control focuses on the regulation of inputs (human, material, and
financial resources that flow into the organization) to ensure that they meet the
standards necessary for the transformation process.
• Feed forward controls allow management to prevent problems rather than having
to cure them later.
• Unfortunately, these control require timely and accurate information that is often
difficult to develop.
• Known as preliminary control, pre control, preventive control.

5. Concurrent Control
• Concurrent control takes place while an activity is in progress. It involves the
regulation of ongoing activities that are part of transformation process to ensure
that they conform to organizational standards. Concurrent control is designed to
ensure that employee work activities produce the correct results.
• Concurrent control involves regulating ongoing tasks. Concurrent control
sometimes is called screening or yes/no control, because it often involves
checkpoints at which determinations are made about whether to continue
progress, take corrective action, or stop work altogether on products or services.

6. Feedback Control
• This type of control focuses on the outputs of the organization after
transformation is complete.
• Feedback provides managers with meaningful information on how effective
its planning effort was. If feedback indicates little variance between
standard and actual performance, this is evidence that planning was
generally on target. If the deviation is great, a manager can use this
information when formulating new plans to make them more effective.

7. Steps in the Control Process
(1) Establishing standards and methods for measuring performance
(2) Measuring the performance
(3) Determining whether performance matches the standard
(4)Taking corrective action

9. Establishing standards and methods for measuring performance
• Standards means simply the criteria of performance.

10. Establishing standards and methods for measuring performance
• Standards could include sales and production targets, work attendance
goals, safety records etc. In service industries, on the other hand, standards
might include the amount of time customers have to wait in the queue at a
bank, or the number of new clients attracted by a new advertising campaign.

11. Measuring the performance
• The measurement of performance against standards should be done on a
forward-looking basis so that deviations may be detected in advance of their
occurrence and avoided by appropriate actions.
• There are many activities for which it is difficult to develop accurate
standards, and there are many activities that are hard to measure.
• It may be quite simple, for example, to establish labour-hour standards for
the production of a mass-produced item and it may be equally simple to
measure performance against these standards.

12. Determining whether performance matches the standard
• It is an easy but important step in the control process. It involves comparing
measured results with the standards already set. If performance matches the
standard, managers may assume that "everything is under control". In such a
case the managers do not have to intervene in the organisation’s operations.

13. Taking corrective action
• If performance falls short of standards and the analysis indicates that corrective
action is required. The corrective action could involve a change in one or more
activities of the organisation’s operations.
• For example, the branch manager of a bank might discover that more counter
clerks are needed to meet the five-minute customer-waiting standard set earlier.
• The emphasis should always be on devising constructive ways to bring performance
up to standard rather than on merely identifying past failures.

14. Importance of Controlling in Management
1. Coping with changes: Each and every modern organisation has to cope
with changes in the environment. New products and technologies emerge,
government regulations are two often amended or enacted, competitors
change their strategies. The control function helps managers to respond to
these environmental changes as and when necessary

15. Importance of Controlling in Management
2. Creating better quality: Modern industries follow total quality management
(TQM) which has led to dramatic improvements in controlling.
Employees are empowered to inspect and improve their own work and this also helps
change their attitudes and approaches to achieving effective control.
TQM program had helped restore quality, decrease cost and increase production of
giant organisations that confronted threats of shutdowns owing to low quality, high
cost and declining productivity

16. Importance of Controlling in Management
3. Creating faster cycles: Control helps speed up the cycles involved in
creating and then delivering new products and services to customers.
Customers expect not only speed but also customized products and services.
It is clear that the most successful companies try to personalise things and
tailor them to individual needs. They most successfully target narrow
customer niches with specific models.

17. Importance of Controlling in Management
4. Adding value: An organization that strives to survive through competition
should be able to "add value" to products or services so that customers prefer
them to those offered by the organisation’s rivals.

18. Importance of Controlling in Management
5. Facilitating delegation and teamwork:
Under the traditional system, the manager would specify both the standards
for performance and the methods for achieving them.
Under a new, participative system, managers communicate the standards, but
then let employees, either as individuals or as teams, use their own creativity
to decide how to solve certain work problems.
The control process, then, lets the manager monitor the employees' progress
without hampering employees' creativity or involvement with the work.

19. Requirements of an Adequate
Control System

20. Controls must reflect nature and needs of the activity
• An adequate control system must reflect the nature and needs of the operation
concerned. A system of control useful for the vice-president in charge of
manufacturing will almost certainly be different in scope and nature from that of
the foreman in one of the shops under his supervision.
• The basic control tools of the sales department will vary from those of the finance
department, and these from the controls of the purchasing department.
• Small business will doubtless need different kinds of controls from a large business.

21. Controls must reflect nature and needs of the activity
• Certain techniques, such as budgets, break-even points, standard hours or
costs, or various financial ratios have general application in many business
situations.
• It is the task of the manager to be alert to the strategic factors in his plans
and operations that call for control and to make sure that the techniques
used are suited to them.

22. Controls must report deviations expeditiously
• Manager can- not do anything about the past and even rather little about
the present, the best control system is one that will report deviations from
plans expeditiously.
• The ideal system is one that detects deviations before they actually occur. In
any case, the information must reach the manager as soon as possible, so
that he can take action to head off continuing failures. It is exactly because
failures are not reported expeditiously that the typical accounting system in
a business enterprise is often weak in furnishing control information.

23. Controls must be flexible
• An effective system of control must be flexible. Controls must remain workable in
the face of changed plans, unforeseen circumstances, or outright failures. "A
complex program of managerial plans may fail in some particulars. The control
system should report such failures and should contain sufficient elements of
flexibility to maintain managerial control of operations despite such failures."

24. Controls must be flexible
• If a company has a budget system that projects a certain level of expenses, and grants
authority to managers to hire labor and purchase materials and services at this level.
• This budget is based on a level of sales that has been forecast, the budget, as a system of
control, may become meaningless if the sales volume actually experienced is considerably
above or below that forecast.
• What is needed, of course, is a budget system that will reflect sales variations as well as
other deviations from plans if they occur. This has been provided, as will be noted presently,
by the flexible budget.

25. Controls must be flexible
• In the case of production scheduling, the production manager must
be prepared for failures occasioned by the breakdown of a machine
or the illness of a key worker.
• Much of this flexibility in control can be provided by means of
having alternative plans available for various probable situations

26. Controls must be economical
• Any control device must meet the standard of economy, must, in other
words, be worth its cost.

27. Controls must be economical
• The expensive preparation, approval, and administration of complex
budgetary control programs may be a necessity for the large enterprise, and
well worth their cost, but may be uneconomical for the small company.
• Likewise, a finance vice-president may feel that money has been well spent
in incurring many thousands of dollars in cost for careful historical and
forecast data on cash flow or capital investment, but in the same company a
much smaller expenditure might be too costly for tracing the handling of
scrap inventories.

28. Controls must be understandable
• Controls must meet the test of comprehension for the managers who must
use them. One of the problems encountered in some control devices,
especially those based upon mathematical formulas, complex break-even
charts, detailed analyses, and statistical summaries, is that they are not
understandable to the managers who must use them.
• In some cases the manager would understand them if he would take the
time to learn the techniques involved. Clearly, a control system that a
manager cannot or will not understand is ineffective.

29. Controls must assure corrective action
• Thus an adequate control system should not only detect failures but should
disclose where they are occurring, who is responsible for them, and what
should be done to correct them.

30. References
• Principles of Management by Professor Dr. Md. Mainul Islam University of
Dhaka, Dr. Abdul Awal Khan Ex. Professor & Ex. Dean School of Business
Bangladesh Open University
• Koontz, H., O'Donnell, C., & Weihrich, H. (1986). Essentials of
management (Vol. 18). NewYork: McGraw-Hill.
• Prasad, L. M. (2020). Principles and practice of management. Sultan Chand &
Sons.
• Suri, R. K., & Chhabra, T. N. (2009). Managing Human Resource: Techniques
and Practices. Pentagon Press.