5. Economic and organisational knowledge

The topic

As a production manager, you are faced with several company-relevant questions every day: Should I invest in a new machine to increase the efficiency of production? How do I select my employees to strengthen the team? How do I calculate the costs for a product or the use of materials? And what rights do my workers have?

To answer these questions, you will sooner or later encounter topics such as accounting, controlling, personnel planning and labour law. But what sounds complicated at first is only half as bad. On the following pages, we will try to find our way through the jungle of terms and get an overview of a company’s economic and organizational basics.

In this module you will learn about:

• You know the sub-areas of accounting
• You know the principles and tasks of controlling
• You can define the terms income and expenses
• You can define the term costs
• You can name the objectives of human resource planning
• You can define qualitative human resource planning and describe the procedure in qualitative human resource planning
• You can define the terms payment system and remuneration
• You know the European minimum requirements of working conditions
• You know the EU regulations to improve work-life balance
• You know what questions they are allowed to ask during a job interview