Introduction
Self-directed teams (SDTs) with setting boundary for decision making between Self-directed teams and management will not only yield "High Productivity"(95% or more of plants design capacity) but also committed workforce with high level of satisfaction in their work.
Background
RL WOLF privately held plastic manufacturer head quartered in Houston, Texas brought Moon Plastics a small, family owned custom plastics manufacturer in Corpus Christi. It is a 300,000 square foot facility ran 24 hours a day over three shifts. Each shift has 27 workers with most of the activity focused on bringing raw materials to hoppers, running lines and transporting pipe away from the finishing lines. John Amasi director of Production and Engineering had implemented self-directed teams (SDTs) in 2004, but the plant was running only between 80% and 82% of design capacity annually.
Problems
As SDTs allowed each employee to determine their own job responsibilities and involved in overall process of the organization employees, employees want control over the amount of overtime they work and when they work on it , employees are looking for individual recognition and performance evaluation done by the peers are raising a host of questions.
Opportunities
By increasing the coordination between coordinators and team members and recognizing the employees who are really working will help motivate other employees and will in turn help achieving the goal of 95% of plant production capacity.
Recommendations
Provide awareness training throughout the organization, including coordinator and team members, to set common expectations about the team's work processes, the decision boundaries, well defined job responsibilities (Silverman and Propst, 1996). Coordinators should be trained to gain deeper knowledge of the floor and rate the working instead of asking for peer reviews.
All workers are