Fmc Greenville Vs Fmc Aberdeen

ANALYSIS OF ABERDEEN PHILOSOPHIES APPLICABLE AT GREEN RIVER

Presented to

Frank Barone

Mgt. Professor

College of Business

Ohio University

By

Jared Black

Russ Colello

Justin Cook

Patrick Daugherty

Jessica McCoy

October 14, 2002

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Purposes of the Report

The purposes of this report are (1) to give a general overview of the organizational structure of the Green River plant and also (2) give an overview of the Aberdeen plant. We will also, (3) compare managerial styles between the two different plants and (4) show how these styles affect worker/company performance and satisfaction. Finally, (5) we will give our recommendation for the changes that can be made to Green River to increase productivity.

We used a couple of different types of research to get our information for this analysis. Various books, internet sources, and the case itself were used in the analysis of this topic. These resources gave us more than enough information to come up with and idea of what we feel Green River should do in this situation.

Aberdeen and Green River

Aberdeen and Green River are both plants that work under the FMC corporation. Aberdeen is a fairly new company that was founded on the beliefs of participative management and empowerment to its employees. Even though it's only been around for a short period of time, it's proven to be a very profitable and productive plant. Aberdeen only has one product line, but they have proven to be very efficient with the production of it. The techniques, and managerial style used at Aberdeen give workers a greater sense of responsibility, and has a primary focus of trust between workers.

The plant at Green River has been around for a much longer period of time and has a much more diverse product line. They specialize in different chemicals that are used in a variety of different industries. The manager at Green River considers himself to be open-minded and willing to give more responsibility to his employees, but he's not sure if it will work. Green River already has and organizational structure that they've been using since the fifties. It could be difficult and in some cases impossible to change the structure of their business with any kind of efficiency.

Our View on Green River and Aberdeen

We feel that, although it may be difficult, Green River can adopt some of the aspects that make Aberdeen so productive. We divided Green River into three separate parts: (1) Its traditional above ground plant, (2) It's below ground mining facility, and (3) The three new plants being built for specific products. We decided that these three categories all could handle a different structure. Some ideas that will work for one of them would be counter-productive for the other, so we came up with different suggestions for each.

Table of Contents

Page 1 Green River Overview

Page 2 Aberdeen Overview

Page 5 Managerial Comparisons

Page 8 Recommendations for Green River

Page 9 Recommendations for the New Plants

Our analysis of this case has shown our problem to be one of change. Should an established, proven company change it's structure and managerial styles for a possible gain in profit and productivity. The old saying says "if it's not broke, don't fix it," but is this true in every case, or is there exceptions. This analysis is trying to answer this question. It's a question of risk, and a company's ability to deal with change. The two companies we're dealing with are both branches of the FMC Corporation. One, Green River, is a traditional plant, with a traditional hierarchy of managers and workers. The other plant, Aberdeen, is a newer plant with plenty of revolutionary ideas. They place a lot of emphasis on participative management. Our analysis is meant to highlight the aspects of Aberdeen that can be applied to Green River successfully.

Green River Overview

The Green River facility in Wyoming has a pretty unique structure, but in the eyes of site manager, Kenneth Dailey, there's always room for improvement. Green River is the employer to 1,150 employees. The plant's primary focus has been the sale of a variety of chemicals since 1948. "The Green River plant is part of the Alkali Chemicals division of FMC that supplied sodium-based chemicals to the detergent industry, the glass industry, and large commercial chemical plants." Their refineries were organized by the steel worker's union. The power plants for the site rely on coal and natural gas, because of how abundant these resources are in the high Wyoming/Utah/Idaho basin. The plant is currently working on building three new, smaller plants.

Dailey decided on reorganizing the way things are done at Green River for these new plants. Instead of having separate managers for the mine and surface plants similar to those in the past, he now has a manager for the soda ash business in both the below-surface and surface facilities. He also has one manager to oversee the three new plants under construction, and one to look after all the services required by the plant. This is a departure from the way things were typically done by FMC's plants.

The market for the products at Green River looks to be very strong over the next ten years. As of now, about one-quarter of Green River's business comes from overseas. A large cost of Green River's is shipping their product. Freight makes up about twenty-five percent of the final product cost. Green River has been spreading out their distribution costs to different railroads by shipping ten percent of their products by truck across different railheads.

FMC's main competition is with companies like Texas Gulf, General Chemical, Rhone-Poulenc,