Reference no: EM131689967

The rapid rise in demand for IMs pianos means that more manufacturing employees will be needed. How many new employees will be needed and where will these additional employees come from? Traditionally, Ivory Melodies has promoted from within and provided ample training for its employees who were interested in moving around/up in the company. There is a strong desire to continue this tradition, but given the surge in demand for pianos, management is unsure if their current manufacturing employees will be ready fast enough to be promoted when needed. At the beginning of last year, the manufacturing employees were all in one of four jobs as follows: 300 employees were Assembler I’s, 200 employees were Assembler II’s, 30 employees were Assembling Supervisors and 70 employees were Quality Control Specialists. By the end of the year, 23% of the Assembler I’s were promoted to Assembler II’s, 20% of the Assembler I’s left the company, and 5% were promote to Quality Control Specialists. At the end of the year, 10% of the Assembler II’s were promoted to Assembling Supervisors, 10% left the organization, 5% were demoted to Assembler I’s, and 3% became Quality Control Specialists. At the end of the year, 40% of the Assembling Supervisors had left the company, 5% had been demoted to Assembler II, and 10% of them became Quality Control Specialists. Finally, at the end of the year, 8% of the Quality Control Specialists had left the organization, 10% had become Assembling Supervisors, and 20% had become Assembler II’s. To adequately address the higher demand for pianos, it is predicted that in 2018 the company will need 40% more employees in both the Assembler I and Assembler II jobs, 20% more employees in the Assembling Supervisor job, and 33% more employees in the Quality Control Specialist job than it had in 2017. If previous trends in internal employee movement continue, what can you say about the firm’s ability to use its internal promotion ladder to meet this additional demand? Will Ivory Melodies have enough employees moving into each job category internally to cover these predicted increases in headcount or not? If not, then how many employees will they need to hire externally in each of these jobs?