Case Study : Manufacturing Plant Named Engstrom Auto Mirror

In May 2007, the Engstrom Auto Mirrors plant was facing the crisis. The business was doing badly and the sales had started to decline in 2005. Thus, there was a steep reduction in plant productivity and employee morale was all time low. The company used Scanlon Plan as an incentive for staff. The core element or foundation of the plan was concept of participative management, where management and staff together will decide the bonuses based on revenues for that year.

In 2006 the company suffered from the labor surplus. The demands for Ford automobile were decreased, so that the company couldn’t afford to produce more automobile. The profit decreased and further more they have gone to debt. There was 54, 000 US employee, 23,900 salaried workers in North America and about 12,000 US worker eligible for retirement. The company was paying them their salary and other benefit, but no benefits for the company. So, the labor cost has increased but the values added in the company by those employees were decreased.

Duplox Copiers Canada Limited is experiencing several severe issues that are affecting the profitability of the firm. The main issues at DCCL are: employee turnover is increasing, employee morale is low, and customer satisfaction has dropped while customer complaints have increased, and ultimately the biggest issue is revenue and profits have both decreased. From analyzing DCCL, it was determined that several strategic issues, including the current reward and compensation system, are having negative effects on employees, management, and the organization as

Henderson Printing is a small-to medium sized firm that manufactures account books, ledgers, and various types of record books that are used in business (Long, 2010, p. 512). This company’s compensation system will be analyzed based on the five contextual variables as discussed in the textbook. The environment in which Henderson Printing operates can be classified as stable, as well as simple. This can be justified, as the company produces stable annual sales, thus it can be concluded that product lifestyles are not short, and product and service demand is constant (Long, 2010, p. 40). Additionally, the product/service provided is fairly simple, and the technology is not complex (Long, 2010, p. 512). The

The Scanlon Plan can be used as a major catalyst to turnaround the plant by emphasizing more on productivity. The more they work the faster they roll towards their bonuses; this magical spell is a win-win situation for both the employees and the management. The management can cruise steadily over the wave of bonus motivated productivity and the employees can reap the benefits from the high production rate in terms of bonuses. The plan can be redrawn and a slight change can be made by making the entire plan revolve around the concept of productivity. When productivity assumes a prime position in the plan, employees will strive hard

In this portion of my case analysis, I will be showing ways for suggested solutions in order to help improve the situation at the Engstrom Auto Mirror Plant. I will be showing ways in which organizational improvement outcomes can directly help remedy some of the issues and recommend strategic actions that would lead the organization in a proactive production workforce. The recommendations are creating committees, rework how the Scanlon Plan bonus works, create or use their marketing and sales department to the full capacity, and to help empower the workforce work to achieve Corporate Social Responsibility. (CSR)

During May 2007, the Engstrom Auto Mirror Plant faces a low employee morale issue. The newly appointed manager, Ron Bent, sees a decline in work place productivity and culture throughout his recent years of working at the plant. When Bent joined the company, it was facing a similar issue of low morale. He then decided to introduce the Scalon Plan, an incentive program for the employees, to raise morale. The program was successful when it was first introduced but ran into problems time after. Bent was faced with many challenges with the Scalon Plan that caused him to ask many

Ron Bent should have thoroughly evaluated the whole situation. The cases study clearly stated that the organization was facing a crisis. Which was a downward turn of sales in the past two years. This decline in sales was the reason behind Ron Bent having to lay off twenty percent of his employees. Productivity was dropping, product-quality issues had begun to surface, and employee morale was low, I believe all these issues were all occurring because of the lay off in employment. They have faced this situation before, the solution to that previous issue was the Scanlon plan. The Scanlon plan was created as a company-wide incentive program, in the past it was critical in building morale, product quality, increasing productivity. Leading in too a huge turnaround for the company. That was not the case this time around, into the second year of decline in sales. Ron Bent got rid of the Scanlon plan. While not taking in to consideration that the decline in sales was the root problem in the

To answer these questions, the recommendation is the Ron and management team work with employees to comprehend the underlying issues behind their dwindled productivity, identify likely solutions to the issues and make changes to the Scanlon Plan to enable the incentive plan effectively motivate the employees. It is important that employees are involved throughout the entire process and that any adjustments, no matter how small are presented honestly to the employees.

Victoria Heavy Equipment’s most recent organization has been lacking effective communication practices amongst all of its divisions. The company has been suffering from lack of clear goals in measurable terms, for its divisions. The idea of each division functioning as an independent unit, whether it being cost or profit center, is a remarkable beginning. However, clear goals and key measurable need to be set for each center, which in our case have been overlooked. As a result, many of these centers have over spent, resulting in over expenditures, something we can definitely not afford with anticipated slower market.

Engstrom Auto Mirror plant, as a privately owned business, it manufactured mirrors for trucks and automobiles. The managers aimed to increase productivity for sustainable development of the company. Back in 1998, to pursue highly productivity, the plant was redesigning its production lines to incorporate new technology, however, the transition was not smooth, some problems had emerged, such as the staffs' moral and efficiency declining and the internal contradictions being intensified between the managers and employees. As the result of it, the previous manger resigned in 1998. After that, the new manager, Ron Bent believed in the power of worker incentive programs and wanted to establish one at Engstrom. Eventually, the plant adopted the

Diffusion of responsibility played a major role in how this whole problem started and continued to get worse. Upper management created the incentive program, and when doing so they had to have some kind of idea about what might occur because of these new quotas. They had to know that if they didn’t include any ethical aspects to the program, then there would probably be cases of unnecessary repairs taking place because of the pressures of meeting the quotas. But since they said nothing either way regarding this issue when they implemented the program, they could brush of blame and responsibility for these problems by simply claiming that all they did was implement the program, they didn’t tell employees to perform unnecessary repairs so therefor they didn’t believe it was their fault.

To fully understand why the organization wasn’t heading down the path to success many different tools were used to help analyze the situations. Models such as the service profit

The Company has had an increase of re-work and wasted time and money in the last few years due poorly trained employees, aging work force and culture renovation. The company has not prepared for skilled employee selection to replace the retiring aging workforce, where stringent job screening for qualified and experienced personnel selection has not been implemented. The company does not require higher education for production management, which leads to poor decision-making during the hiring process of production personnel.

This case study is about B.R.Richardson Timber Products Corporation a lamination plant located in Papoose, Oregon. Part of the management team determined that there was a need for change in the organization and decided to reach out to Jack Lawler a management trainer and consultant for help. The issues which needed to be addressed were the low morale in the plant, the authoritative plant manager, and the fact that there was a resent fatality in the plant. Bowman was in charge of industrial relations at the plant and felt that a motivation course was needed.