...Case Study Engstrom Auto Mirror Plant: Motivating in Good Times and Bad Engstrom Auto Mirror Plant, in Richmond, Indiana, a privately owned company that has been in existence since 1948. Engstrom was largely successful until the late 1990’s at which time the plant struggled to make a profit. During this period the plant was updating its production lines by adding new technology. This change did not go smoothly which caused delays in production resulting in a loss of customers. The plant manager did not have the knowledge of the new technology to find solutions to the decreased production and could not communicated effectively with the worker’s union. This lead to his eventual resignation in 1998. At this time Ron Bent was hired. Bent determined that the average productivity at 40% of expectation. Bent believed in the power of worker incentive programs and felt that the best option would be a company-wide program. Bent felt that a Scanlon Plan would be the best option. The Scanlon Plan was developed by Joseph Scanlon with the concept that employees, the employer and the union have much in common and that every employee can contribute to making improvements. These improvements would help the company’s position in the marketplace and provide increased job security and provide bonus earnings to employees for any improvements. (Hess 1976, pg.141). Bent communicated the Scanlon concept in multiple ways to the employees and engaged them in the process to develop the Scanlon Plan for...
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...Introduction Engstrom Auto Mirror plant is a privately owned business that manufactures mirrors for trucks and automobiles in Richmond Indiana. In May of 2007 the managers were experiencing a crisis at the plant. The most pressing issue at the time was the slow pace of productivity. Low productivity was increasing costs in other areas. Not only was Engstrom having productivity issues but they were having product-quality and moral problems as well. In order to explain the source of these problems we must analyze Engstrom’s history. A company’s past can greatly affect the present and future state of an organization (Schweitzer, S). Engstrom had enjoyed considerable success since it’s founding in 1948. However by the late 1990’s the company stopped being profitable during a period of transition to new technologies. Ultimately this resulted in the replacement of the plant manager with a younger more tech savvy individual. At this time employee moral was extremely low and productivity was at 40% of expectations. After studying the positive results of nearby plants the new management built the support needed to implement a Scanlon Plan at the Engstrom plant. The Scanlon Plan is an incentive plan that pays bonuses to employees. A key component of the plan is the concept of participative management. The idea behind this being that individuals will work harder to achieve an organization’s goals if they have the opportunity to take responsibility for their actions and apply their...
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...Milestone 2 Engstrom Auto Mirror Plant: Root Cause Case Study Analysis Sharon McClain SNHU The Engstrom Auto Mirror plant is located in Richmond, Indiana and employs around 200 or more people. The plant has been going through some changes over the last few years and has seen a decline in employee motivation. The focus today will be to determine some of the root causes of the problems facing the plant from an organizational view and a human behavior issue. The bottom line is determining how to solve the issues the company is facing and move forward. Some of the questions that will need to be answered is, “why is motivation at an all-time low, is the Scanlon plan benefiting everyone in the company and can the plan be revamped with the employees input?” From the beginning of the Scanlon plan, the employees were happy when production was good and they were receiving the bonuses. When the profits and sales decreased, so did the bonuses which led to disgruntled employees. It seems the employees were agreeable with the plan at the beginning even though they did not fully understand the concept of how the bonuses were calculated. So is it the Scanlon plan the root cause or the employees? As explained earlier, the Scanlon plan was put into place in 1999. It worked for many years then the company started facing issues with productions, profits, bonuses and employees. To answer the questions of the root cause, it is all stakeholders. First, in order to receive a bonus...
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...suggestions for reducing this burden, to Washington Headquarters Services, Directorate for Information Operations and Reports, 1215 Jefferson Davis Highway, Suite 1204, Arlington VA 22202-4302. Respondents should be aware that notwithstanding any other provision of law, no person shall be subject to a penalty for failing to comply with a collection of information if it does not display a currently valid OMB control number. 1. REPORT DATE 3. DATES COVERED 2. REPORT TYPE 01 NOV 2009 4. TITLE AND SUBTITLE 00-00-2009 to 00-00-2009 5a. CONTRACT NUMBER 5b. GRANT NUMBER 5c. PROGRAM ELEMENT NUMBER 2009 Report to Congress of the U.S-China Economic and Security Review Commission 6. AUTHOR(S) 5d. PROJECT NUMBER 5e. TASK NUMBER 5f. WORK UNIT NUMBER 7. PERFORMING ORGANIZATION NAME(S) AND ADDRESS(ES) U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission,Washington,DC 9. SPONSORING/MONITORING AGENCY NAME(S) AND...
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