Treadway Tire's plant in Lima, Ohio must confront strong job dissatisfaction and high turnover among its line foremen. The foremen are caught in the middle of an adversarial relationship between the union and management, and they must cope with the needs and interests of both. They also perceive limited opportunity for career advancement. Solving the problem requires rethinking the philosophy that guides workforce management and changing the Treadway culture that has grown up around that philosophy. Facing mounting pressure to reduce costs and increase productivity, director of human resources Ashley Wall must work quickly to analyze the root causes of the problem and provide an action plan to reduce turnover of the line foreman segment.
A new political appointee with years of volunteer experience takes over a highly responsible job in the state government and is met with bureaucratic inertia. Describes a successful strategy to overcome organizational resistance to change.
For more than ten years, American manufacturers have been trying to improve productivity--and thereby enhance their international competitiveness--through cost-cutting programs. But costs have not declined enough, nor has international competitiveness much improved. Instead, our decline has intensified. Real productivity improvement is not easy. Approaches that pare down direct labor costs and make factory workers more efficient have proven fundamentally flawed. Manufacturers need to direct their thinking away from straight cost cutting toward quality enhancement, strategy, and product technology. McKinsey Award Winner.
Sixty years of executive attention to human resource management (HRM) theories fail to make employees productive, loyal, and motivated because of unrealistic management expectations, contradictory theories regarding employee performance and relations, the problematic role of personnel management in corporate decision making, and the undermining nature of management assumptions regarding employee motivation. A new approach to human resources planning depends on management's ability to replace mistaken assumptions with premises that emphasize the importance of the personnel function in corporate development, and concentrate on basic HRM skills such as supervision and communication.
An analysis of the activities of key managers in 31 case studies suggests that managers who consistently accomplish a lot are notably inconsistent in their manner of attacking problems. These high achievers persist, however, in careful situational analysis and self-discipline, which permits them to be inconsistent in personal and managerial style. They consider operating skills and strategies flexible and adjust these to changing circumstances. They recognize classical patterns of problems and solutions and are able to choose discriminatingly among the wide variety of action-techniques available.
New political appointee with years of volunteer experience takes over highly responsible job in state government and is met with bureaucratic resistance.
U.S. business considers the "productivity crisis" a competition problem. One solution to the problem is the use of the "focused" factory system to increase productivity. This type of plant concentrates on performing a couple of manufacturing tasks extremely well. Overhead costs are lower and quality higher than in the typical factory. Current high factory costs are a result of "professionalism" in the plant and product proliferation. A manufacturing focus can be achieved through explicitly outlining corporate strategy, translating this strategy into manufacturing functions, examining the product system carefully, and reorganizing the system to produce a "congruent" focus.
Corporate strategy affects manufacturing goals and processes. Manufacturing must pay attention to the cost, time, and quality factors that go into production. Trade-offs in efficiency, cost and productivity become necessary in pursuing specific markets. As a result, product quality suffers. Computer specialists have replaced efficiency experts as the reigning technical experts in manufacturing. Top management shies away from both of these technical areas. Companies must develop and use a management policy for manufacturing.