Introduction:
In 2003, RL Wolfe had purchased moon plastics – a small plastics manufacturer in Corpus Christi. The design capacity of this plant is 2250 tons of high density polyethylene pipes per year (Garvin & Collins, 2009).
Background:
A 300,000 square foot facility in Corpus Christi ran four plastic extrusion lines to produce high density polyethylene pipes for the natural gas and oil industry (Garvin & Collins, 2009).
Problem:
RL Wolfe’s Corpus Christi plant was under performing at 80% to 82% of design capacity and management wants to run the plant at 95% or more of plant capacity (Garvin & Collins, 2009).
Opportunity:
The Corpus Christi plant can increase the annual production by building relationships between employees, modifying job description and improving the moral of the employees.
Recommendations:
Employee needs lot of training in team skills, employees on the team must be interdependent and the team must be established for the tangible business reason (Caudron, 1993). Need to improve recognition and reward system because these are the primary factors which affect the employee’s values and beliefs (Boon, 2005).
Conclusion:
The move to the self directed teams requires changing the attitudes of people, organizational structure, information patterns, rewards and compensation system.
References:
Boon,Q.EE. (2005, March). Self directed work team’s effectiveness: The impact of team characteristics and team task design. Retrived March, 2005 frot http://eprints.usm.my/25634/1/SELF_DIRECTED_WORK_TEAM%E2%80%99S_EFFECTIVENESS_THE_IMPACT_OF_TEAM_CHARACTERISTICS_AND_TEAM_TASK_DESIGN.pdf Caudron,S. (1993, December). Are self directed teams right for your company. Personnel Journal, 72(12), 76-84.
Collins, E. & Garvin, D. A. (2009, December). RL Wolfe: Implementing self-directed teams. Boston, MA; Harvard Business School.