Custom Chip Industry

Custom Chip, Inc.

Situation:

Frank Questin is a product manager in custom chip, Inc - a semi conductor manufacturer in custom chips. He is doing his role as Product Manager from last 14 months and it is his first managerial position. The sales of the company exceeded $ 25 millions in 1986 but due to higher competition the growth had come to standstill.

Problem / Issue:

Following are the problems, which I am enlisting on priority level, while others are the symptoms due these causes.

a) Frank Questin Product Manager is ineffective in some areas.

b) Lack of Top Management Commitment.

c) There is a problem with the organizational structure.

A) Frank Questin, Production Manager is not effective in some areas, why?

He is not effective because he often could not complete his tasks on time e.g. a) On Monday he stated to prepare his to do list and did not complete it till the evening, b) The over due appraisal, he still forgot to return etc.

He is not a good conflict manager; the example is that when he is dealing with Mr. Rod over some conflict he like to not talk as defensive way and frank is not a good negotiator e.g. when he was negotiating with Mr. Rod and asking him to support him by allowing him to use the senior operators in training to other junior operators on product plans the was unable in negotiating with him.

The entrepreneur role, manager should play but frank's was unable to turn the problems and opportunities into new plans for improvement e.g. in the meeting when one of his subordinate engineer in the meeting recommended for the new testing equipment which would lead savings in labor and improved, the frank denied immediately without having discussion on that even the machine is able to pay back its value within the 9 months of time.

Frank is not performing his decisional role effectively, e.g. he knows that the major reason for lower yield is because the product division is conveying inadequate technical information for the manufacturing of products, it shows his poor decisional role that he could not make his priorities what to do first instead of making documents first he gives a lot of time in day to day problems. This also shows his negligence in resource allocating in proper way.

b) Lack of Top Management Commitment?

Second problem is the lack of top management commitment e.g. Mr. Frank when ever took the issue of conflict with manufacturing department to his boss, the voice president in charge of engineering, do not like to be aggressive or doing confrontation or taking these interdepartmental issues in the notice of other vice president or the president. Also frank was not exactly told what targets he has to accomplish. And the application engineers are being appreciated / acknowledged by the top management primarily for satisfying customers through designing new / modified products, which results in giving less priority to the manufacturing problems by application engineers, which shows imbalanced reward / acknowledgement procedure adopted by top management.

c) Problem with the organizational structure

Another problem is that there is some hidden conflict in objectives of manufacturing division and product division, which is because of the problem in organization structure. As product engineers plays a role of liaison between the application engineer and manufacturing engineer / supervisors and also make assure the quality of every run, which some times result in stoppage in production of unsatisfactory test run which resulting in delaying meeting manufacturing department production targets / objectives. These differences between these two divisions have become more prominent because both divisions are reporting to independent vice president which shows the flaw in structure of the organization.

How can be things made better?

Before recommending the different solutions, I am making the following assumptions:

I. Merging of departments into each other is possible.

II. Employees from one department can be transferred into another.

III. Resources are available for over time.

And following are the constraints I am keeping in mind:

i. Limitation of budget because the company is stand still in growth.

ii. Prime objective of the frank is to increase the performance of the product department.

a) For Mr. Frank Questin:

Mr. Frank, in morning should daily give 30 minutes spending in making time schedule for the day by allocating his time more to the most importunate tasks and should not leave his task incomplete. The advantages of this possible action are 1) in this way he will remember his important tasks, 2) he can prioritize his to do list. The disadvantage are that his working time will be reduced for 30 minutes 2) some of his tasks will remained totally un touched. I am recommending him to do that.

Mr. Frank should not be every time very aggressive when having conflict with other department e.g. with manufacturing department, it may possible many times it is there department fault e.g. from last one year they have not completed there proper technical documentations, which is totally there product department's fault, so he should also listen to others point of view some time by remaining defensive.

Frank should improve his entrepreneur role, if he thinks there are budget problems even then he should not immediately reject any suggestion as he did in the weekly meeting, in fact he can try to work out these opportunities to be converted into the practical achievements. He may rationalize the purchase of equipment i.e. by buying the equipment at once he can go for some installment plan or can rationalize the equipment part or can convince his bosses the effectiveness and the running cost reduction because of this equipment.

I will suggest that Mr. Frank should allocate his time as per the following table to become a good manager effective manager:

 Training / Developing: 8%

 Motivating / Reinforcing: 10 %

 Planning: 10%