________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ HBS Professor David A. Garvin and Elizabeth Collins prepared this case solely as a...

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After reading the RL Wolfe: Implementing Self-Directed Teams case from the HBSP course pack and going through the lecture PPT, please answer the following questions.


________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ HBS Professor David A. Garvin and Elizabeth Collins prepared this case solely as a basis for class discussion and not as an endorsement, a source of primary data, or an illustration of effective or ineffective management. This case, though based on real events, is fictionalized, and any resemblance to actual persons or entities is coincidental. There are occasional references to actual companies in the narration. Copyright © 2009 President and Fellows of Harvard College. To order copies or request permission to reproduce materials, call 1-800-545-7685, write Harvard Business Publishing, Boston, MA 02163, or go to http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu. This publication may not be digitized, photocopied, or otherwise reproduced, posted, or transmitted, without the permission of Harvard Business School. D A V I D A . G A R V I N E L I Z A B E T H C O L L I N S RL Wolfe: Implementing Self-Directed Teams On a clear day in May 2007, John Amasi looked down on the city of Corpus Christi, Texas, as his plane approached the airport. As director of Production and Engineering at RL Wolfe—a $350M privately held plastic pipe manufacturer headquartered in Houston, Texas—he was looking forward to visiting the company’s plant in the city. Four years previously, in 2003, when RL Wolfe had purchased Moon Plastics—a small, family- owned custom plastics manufacturer in Corpus Christi—Amasi had seen an opportunity to implement self-directed teams (SDTs) at the new plant. He had been interested in SDTs for several years, since taking a business school executive education course on workforce motivation and team structures. Amasi had been intrigued by reports of 30% to 40% improvements in productivity and quality for SDT-run units, when compared with traditional manufacturing facilities, and returns on investment more than three times the industry average.1 Those reports had come from a variety of industries—food and beverage, consumer goods—but Amasi felt he saw evidence that he could use the SDT model to drive high productivity in a plastic pipe manufacturing plant. The Corpus Christi plant, once retooled and back online in 2004, had a design capacity of 2,250 tons of high-density polyethylene (PE) pipe per year. “High productivity,” in his view, was 95% or more of design capacity. Wolfe’s two other plastic pipe manufacturing plants were running at 65%-70% of design capacity. Amasi’s first step had been to gain the board of directors’ approval to approach the workers’ union and offer a long-sought concession in health care coverage to clear the path for what became known as “the Corpus Christi experiment.” The new plant would not be unionized, in contrast to Wolfe’s other two plants. His second step had been to lure 35-year-old Jay Winslow from Wolfe’s top competitor to become plant manager. 1 David A. Garvin, “Understanding Self-Managing Work Systems,” Technology and Operations Review, 1997. 4063 R E V : D E C E M B E R 1 5 , 2 0 0 9 For the exclusive use of A. MOHAM, 2022. This document is authorized for use only by ALYCIA MOHAM in Organizational Behavior MGMT5320 Summer 2, 2022, Karst taught by Rusty Karst, Texas A&M University Corpus Christi from Jul 2022 to Aug 2022. 4063 | RL Wolfe: Implementing Self-Directed Teams 2 BRIEFCASES | HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL When Amasi and Winslow sat down to design the work system, they both envisioned a flattened and simplified organizational hierarchy and committed work force with a high level of satisfaction in their work (see Exhibit 1 for background on the theory of self-directed teams). That commitment and sense of ownership, they believed, would inspire the workers to continuously improve processes, thereby increasing productivity and quality. Now Amasi was on his way to tour the plant and talk with Winslow. He was a frequent visitor at the plant, eager to see firsthand whether SDTs could help him achieve and sustain high productivity in a plastics manufacturing plant. So far, the plant was running between 80% and 82% of design capacity annually, but he and Winslow were not satisfied with that result. He and Winslow planned to use this visit to tour the plant and to address the barriers that were preventing higher productivity. Background: Plastic Pipe Manufacturing at the Corpus Christi Plant The new plant used plastics extrusion to produce high-density polyethylene (PE) pipes primarily for the natural gas and oil industries. Lightweight, noncorrosive, chemically inert, and available in long runs, plastic pipe was the preferred method of distributing natural gas and oil in many parts of the world. PE pipe was easy to handle: a 500-ft length of 1-inch pipe weighed approximately 100 pounds. To create extruded plastic pipe, raw thermoplastic beads (or resin) were loaded in a hopper and mixed with additives such as colorants and IV inhibitors. The hopper fed a highly automated extrusion manufacturing line composed of an extruder for melting and mixing the raw materials, a die that determined the ultimate shape and diameter of the pipe, a vacuum tank for sizing and cooling, and cooling tanks. At the end of the extrusion line, the pipe was moved to a finishing line where identification marks were added. Stacked lengths and spools of pipe were moved to an inspection area, where the outer diameter, pipe thickness, and other quality parameters were confirmed. Finally, the pipes were packaged and prepared for shipment to customers. Workers also performed quality inspections on raw materials. The plant established its own procedures for testing incoming resin based on melt index, density, tensile strength, and environmental stress crack resistance (ESCR). Computerized controls were used both in the raw materials quality inspections and throughout the extrusion line. Corpus Christi, a 300,000 square-foot facility, ran four extrusion lines 24 hours a day over three shifts (7 AM to 3 PM; 3 PM to 11 PM; and 11 PM to 7 AM). The strong hum on the factory floor was punctuated by the hiss of cooling pipe. Each shift required 27 floor workers, with most of the activity focused on bringing raw materials to the hoppers, running the lines, and transporting pipe away from the finishing lines. Corpus Christi in 2004: Moving Toward a Self-Directed Work Force Back in 2003, Amasi and Winslow had asked the managers of Wolfe’s Austin, Texas, and Columbus, Ohio, plants to join them on the Corpus Christi implementation team. The four met in Corpus Christi for three days of planning meetings addressing job definitions, hiring, team setup and responsibilities, and the role of the coordinator. For the exclusive use of A. MOHAM, 2022. This document is authorized for use only by ALYCIA MOHAM in Organizational Behavior MGMT5320 Summer 2, 2022, Karst taught by Rusty Karst, Texas A&M University Corpus Christi from Jul 2022 to Aug 2022. RL Wolfe: Implementing Self-Directed Teams | 4063 HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL | BRIEFCASES 3 Job Definitions For Corpus Christi, Amasi and Winslow strongly advocated pushing aside the job distinctions and roles currently in place at Wolfe’s two unionized plants and creating semi-autonomous work teams in their place. The Austin and Columbus plant managers provided similar descriptions of the traditional roles at their plants. First, plant contracts with the 62,000-member Glass, Molders, Pottery, Plastics & Allied Workers International Union and other unions divided workers into two categories—production and maintenance—with work assignments further determined by job classifications and seniority (see Exhibit 2 for a partial organization chart for one of the unionized plants). The implementation team maintained that these traditional divisions would not provide the flexibility and equality that were necessary to make SDTs a powerful source of continuous improvement ideas. A related issue was associated with conflicts between maintenance and line operator personnel at the two unionized plants. No workers on the line, foremen included, were authorized to perform maintenance on equipment. Maintenance personnel were paid a higher wage than production personnel, and production personnel were promoted to maintenance positions only after at least one year at the plant. Even if a line operator knew how to fix a problem, the extrusion line would halt to wait for a maintenance worker to fix the problem. Maintenance workers and line operators often disagreed on the reasons for the breakdown of equipment as well as the best way to troubleshoot the line. Further, line operators had an often-justified fear they would be blamed for any drop in the line’s productivity while a fix was being made. To compound the problem, maintenance workers on the Austin plant’s third shift called in sick at a rate 20% higher than third-shift workers at comparable plants. For the Columbus plant, the rate was 35% higher than at comparable plants. The implementation team agreed on two job levels for workers on the factory floor. The first classification included line operators and materials handlers. The second level, called “technicians,” would be assigned to the more technically demanding work on the plant floor. The job descriptions for line operators and technicians were very similar, but technicians were expected to take the lead in technical problem solving (see Exhibit 3 for a partial organization chart for the Corpus Christi factory floor). Hiring The team recognized that the innovative work system planned for Corpus Christi would require characteristics that were not traditionally sought in factory floor workers. Winslow was committed to flexible work assignments at Corpus Christi and wanted, ideally, every worker to learn every job at the plant. But fully participating in self-directed teams would clearly require both management and workers to learn a new set of skills. Winslow and the others documented a set of personal characteristics to use as hiring criteria, including problem solving and a thirst to learn, performance reliability and adaptability, judgment, organizing skills, and initiative. Then they set up
Answered 3 days AfterAug 08, 2022

Answer To: ____________________________________________________________________________________________________...

Tanmoy answered on Aug 12 2022
62 Votes
RL Wolfe        4
RL WOLFE
Table of Contents
Answer 1    3
Answer 2    3
Answer 3    3
Answer 4    4
Answer 5    4

References    5
Answer 1
    A self-directed team is a group of organizational members which attracts various talents and utilizes them to achieve the best results without any difficulties in the management. The advantages of the group decision making are that it increases the interest along with collaboration, enhances the strength of the organization and helps in building team activities. The disadvantages are that it takes long-time, few members deter to participate in the group decision making activities and domination by few members of the group e.g., the Nazi party’s autocratic rule by Dominique Clique in Germany during the WW2 (Moore, 1987).     
Answer 2
    If we accept the problem, analyze the condition, work in collaboration with each other, share the interests and keep confidential problems secret are some of the ways to manage...
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