The Goodman Company Case Analysis

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Background

The Goodman Company operates one plant that manufactures small rubber automotive parts, these products are sold to assembly plants for new trucks and cars. Robert Goodman is the president of the company, under him is Joe smith who is the production manager, he reports directly to Mr. Goodman. Under Mr. Smith are three supervisors, these supervisors are: Cleverson Anthony, Norm Leonard and Bob Jackson, they each manage a one of the three shifts.

The production process was handled by each individual worker, the production process consisted of: Sheets of rubber are purchased, each worker would obtain this material and cut it down to the size of the product, they then place the material on a steam-fed curing press which consist of 12 molds, the press is then activated, while this is happening the workers trim the excess rubber from the parts, the parts are then put into boxes and moved to the shipping area.

There was an increase in demand for their product, as a result Mr. Goodman sought to increase productivity without having to purchase equipment or expand the company considering there was not money available to do these things. He then hired Ann Bennet whom is very qualified with a degree in finance, to generate recommendations for wringing greater productivity from the plant. Ms. Bennet developed a plan based on Mr. Goodman’s desires, this plan however had adverse effects which caused the output for the first and second shift to fall.

Ms. Bennetts plan meant that each worker will no longer performs the entire process and that each stage was assigned to a worker. Her plan consisted of: One worker was assigned raw material preparation, another assigned material handling, another was assigned to activate the press and put the product on a conveyer belt so that the one assigned to trim the excess rubber would receive the product.

The first shift department was considered to runs itself,what the first shift supervisor is Cleverson Anthony who was to retire in 8 years’ time. The shift production output was good and the quality of the products were considered to be very high according to Cleverson Anthony and Fireball. However the shift workers felt like the company did not appreciate them considering they felt like they contributed allot to the company over the years..

After the plan was implemented Cleverson asked for early retirement. The shift began to complain of the new process, and the products quality fell as well as the output. They were also upset that they were now being paid a per piece rate instead of an hourly rate. This also pushed the belief further that they were unappreciated because there work was simplified.

The second shift supervisor is Norm Leonard, he had only worked at the company for three years as a means of extra money to ease the transition into retirement. The shift workers have worked at company for 7 to 8 years and they did not accept him with open arms. Norm’s job is considered easy because when the workers have problems they go to Jim Flask who is a senior man on the shift, who knows how every product and machine should be. Jim is trusted and liked by his fellow workers. 

After there was a dramatic decrease in production as a result of the change. Jim Flask was reassigned as the shift set-up man and mechanic because of his experience. Norm believe that the largest decrease in production was due to this, considering Jim had a higher production rate than the others and he also believed that the plan was being rebelled against because it was implemented by a woman. 

The supervisor for shift three was Bob Jackson his management style is hands on and relationship oriented. He did not believe that he constantly had push workers to reach the company's production quota. He worked side-by-side with his members who are experiencing difficulty with their machinery or materials. This shift was made up of 12 workers they all socialise among members even after work. They were very cooperative with each other and helped fellow employees with mechanical or material difficulties. Bob Jackson notified his shift of the change in production process.

After the change Bob Jackson suggest a job rotation between employees as operators so that they would not grow bored of the repetition which would later lead to low production output and lack of motivation. He also encouraged the workers to break up into two teams and challenge each other in a production race to encourage productivity and motivate them. To ensure that quality of product did not suffer he implemented a scoring system that penalized any gr for defects. He also encouraged their ideas in making their work easier. This caused the shift to out produce both shift one and two.

Core Problem

Ineffective Management was identified as the core problem. Management is defined as the organization and coordination of the activities of the business in order to achieve defined objects. Leadership is defined as the ability to influence a group towards the achievement of a vision or set of goals. Henry Mintzberg classified Managerial Roles into three groups, these groups are: Interpersonal, Informational and Decisional (Robbins and Judge, 2013, P. 6-7).

Interpersonal roles deals with interacting with the workers for the purpose of achieving organizational goals. Interpersonal consist of: Figurehead, Leadership and Liaison. Informational deals with the collection of data/ information in order to achieve the companies goals i.e. Media and internet. Informational consist of: Monitor, Disseminator and Spokesperson. Finally, the Decisional role deals with making decisions based on the informational role. Decisional consist of: Entrepreneur, disturbance handler, resource allocator and negotiator.

Bob Jackson adheres to the roles of an effective manager and understands his role. While Cleverson and Norm failed to adhere to all the roles of an effective manager and did not understand their roles. A figurehead is the social and legal duties that a manager is required to perform. A leader is in charge of motivating, training and discipline workers. As a liaison a manager is required to obtaining feedback and information from external contacts. In regards to the Supervisors Cleverson and Norm they both were unable to motivate their workers, and in the case of Norm not disciplining his workers after they would goof off which was part reason for the fall in production output. In the case of Cleverson his workers felt undervalued

Monitor is the job of obtaining information about the internal and external changes in the companies’ environment and monitoring the performance of employees and their productivity. Disseminator is the act of relaying information from employees or external sources to the company head. Spokesperson is the job of supplying outside sources with information on the company. It would appear that all supervisors did adhere to this roles, as far as Cleverson is concerned he and Fireball would go to the office to inspect a product that was returned and conclude it was one of the other shifts. Norm was aware that Jim flask had a higher output rate than his fellow workers in shift 2. Bob implemented a competition and scoring system to increase output from each individual as well as ensure high quality.