...The organizational issues in the Engstrom Auto Mirror Plant: Motivating in Good Times and Bad stems from both the organization itself and the people employed at the plant. The main organizational issue in this study is that the plant manager, Mr. Bent, refuses to see that the Scanlon plan is no longer working and needs to be replaced by a more suitable program or adapted to the current situation the plant is in. The Scanlon plan, while a fine one for a production department, operates too much on a custodial model of organizational behavior. Newstrom (2015), states that the employees in the custodial model “become psychologically preoccupied with their economic rewards and benefits and as a result…, become well maintained and reasonably contented.” So long as the rewards and benefits continued to come in the employees remained happy and productive, but as soon as the bonuses became less frequent the more irate the employees became. In the Engstrom Plant case, these benefits and rewards bred passive cooperation; productivity went down so rewards weren’t as frequent which in turn affected employee morale and productivity lowered even more especially since the employees were no longer producing at their full capabilities. All of this was happening at...
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...Gunby November 29th, 2015 Southern New Hampshire University Final Project Submission Engstrom Auto Mirror Plant and Work Analysis Case Study Abstract During May 2007, the Engstrom Auto Mirror Plant faces a low employee morale issue. The newly appointed manager, Ron Bent, sees a decline in work place productivity and culture throughout his recent years of working at the plant. When Bent joined the company, it was facing a similar issue of low morale. He then decided to introduce the Scalon Plan, an incentive program for the employees, to raise morale. The program was successful when it was first introduced but ran into problems time after. Bent was faced with many challenges with the Scalon Plan that caused him to ask many questions. 1. Should he remove the Scalon Plan and try another? 2. What is the root cause of employee morale declining? 3. Should there be revisions to the Scalon Plan and who oversees it? In order to answer these questions, it is suggested that Ron Bent and the other management team work together with employees to identify the root cause to their issue of low morale and work productivity and come with a possible solution to fix the issue. Introduction Engstrom Auto Mirror Plant is a privately owned business that manufactures mirrors for trucks and automobiles in Richmond, Indiana. The mirror manufacturing plant employed over 209 people. Engstrom Auto Mirror has operated since 1948 and has seen many years of success. In the late 1990’s...
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...Engstrom Auto Mirror Plant: Motivating in Good Times and Bad Quavian Belton Southern New Hampshire University ORGANIZATIONAL IMPROVEMENT OUTCOMES When it comes to a professional business, it becomes very important to begin to initiate advanced strategies for improvement in efforts to increases the organizational performance. When improvements are successfully implemented, beneficial results are obtained within the competitive market. There can be many different improvements when the improvements are made. However, when implementing these new improvements many challenges may arise. When the problems arise, this where the organizational behavior is a good focus to find the solution to many of the issues. According to cognitive evaluation theory, when a task is presented, it is evaluated in terms of how well it...
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...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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...COLLINS Engstrom Auto Mirror Plant: Motivating in Good Times and Bad There had been several rough quarters at the Engstrom Auto Mirror plant in Richmond, Indiana, a privately owned business that manufactured mirrors for trucks and automobiles and employed 209 people. For more than a year, plant manager Ron Bent and his assistant, Joe Haley, had focused their Friday meetings on the troubling numbers, but the tenor of their May 14, 2007, meeting was different. Both men sensed that they now faced a crisis at the plant. Bent was talking animatedly to Haley: “This is the third productivity problem in, what, two weeks? We can’t climb out of this downturn with performance like that.” He scowled as he signed the authorization to air-freight a large order to the Toyota plant where Sam Martinez managed the assembly line. The difference in cost was astronomical, and it had been necessitated by the slow pace of productivity at Engstrom, which meant in this case that a job due for completion on Monday wasn’t completed until Thursday. But Bent couldn’t afford to make a late delivery to Martinez; he was a prized but demanding customer who had designated Engstrom as a certified supplier one year earlier. Only one other supplier for Martinez’s plant had achieved certified supplier status—a recognition of both extraordinary reliability and quality. The worry lines on Bent’s face deepened. Certified status meant that Martinez had personally authorized Engstrom products to be used on the auto lines...
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...ENGSTROM AUTO MIRROR PLANT MOTIVATING IN GOOD TIMES AND BAD CASE STUDY REVIEW 1) Other than the Scanlon, what are some common types of employee incentive plans? Provide a brief overview of what they are and how they work. My research found that basically there are four types of programs classified as gainsharing. These include: the Scanlon Plan, the Rucker Plan, Improshare and Custom plans. These gainsharing plans are all similar. The differences appear in the way they calculate bonus and the level of employee involvement required to support the plan. The Scanlon Plan appears to be the oldest and most widely used type of gainsharing plan. As was shown in the case study: Engstrom Auto Mirror Plant: Motivating in Good Times and Bad, the Scanlon Plan is based on the historical ratio of labor cost to sales value of production (Beer & Collins, 2008). Because it rewards labor savings, it is most appropriate for assembly line companies. The Rucker Plan is based on the idea that the ratio of labor costs to production value (actual net sales plus or minus inventory changes, minus outside purchased materials and services) is historically stable in the manufacturing industry (Recardo & Pricone, 1996). This principle became the fundamental guideline of the Rucker Plan, which tracks the value added to a product as a measure of productivity. Because this plan utilizes a multi-cost formula, it is most appropriate for organizations that want to improve other variables...
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...This case study deals with a privately owned company, Engstrom Auto Mirror Plant, which manufactures mirror for automobiles and trucks. The company was managed by Ron Bent and his assistant John Hayley. Engstrom quickly became a certified supplier for Toyota under Bent’s management. Brent brought a system to Engstrom he had been part of at his former job. He modeled that system once he came to Engstrom, that model put in place was known as the Scanlon Plan, a company-wide employee incentive program, proved critical in building morale, such as reinforce teamwork and cooperation across work groups while they focus attention on cost savings and motivating employees to “work smarter, not harder” as well as increasing productivity and quality leading Engstrom in a major turnaround success. Bent had begun managing at Engstrom during a decreasing time for the plant. His purpose of working at the plant was to increase productivity and to make a turnaround in sales. The decision to use the Scanlon Plan would be implemented only if a substantial majority of workers agreed to want to use it. The plant had a long stretch of a number of years where the plant showed improvement. The workers responded well to the system that was put in place and productivity and sales had increased. For several subsequent years Engstrom workers received regular pay bonuses. Situations occur with any company, majority of the time there is a stretch when the business has a slow period. For Engstrom, it was a...
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...Final Project Milestone 1: Introduction Organizational Issues at the Engstrom Auto Mirror Plant October 11, 2015 Final Project Milestone 1: Introduction, Organizational Issues at the Engstrom Auto Mirror Plant My review of the Engstrom Auto Mirror Plant: Motivating in Good Times and Bad case study allows me to identify certain organizational issues within the company. There is an older incentive (Scanlon) plan put in place which worked very well for this company and its employees, helping them to rise up from an unproductive state in the 1990’s. Now that it has been in place for quite some time, it is getting stale. No bonuses have been given in months. The employees are not satisfied with the management of the company and overall efficiencies have decreased. There is a lack of leadership including social and emotional intelligence and this is now leading to very low employee morale. The management doesn’t seem to be motivating their staff. Also the employee suggestions which worked well in the past have now been declining. The suggestion rates from employees have dropped to just 50 a year, showing that employees no longer feel like they are contributing successfully to the plant (Collins and Beer, 2008, p. 5). It seems that there has been no management feedback, which is crucial for employees to realize their potential and become more motivated. Thus, the employees are no longer taking an active interest in the company. My suggestions for steering...
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...STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM Ron Bent, the plant manager, is ultimately responsible for solving the problem of declining employee motivation at Engstrom Auto Mirror Plant. Over the past two years, productivity, employee morale, quality of work, and sales have all declined. These are the results of the larger issues of employee motivation and communication within an organization. Things like productivity, quality of work, and sales are relatively short-term problems. Up until two years ago, they had been at exceptional levels ever since the implementation of an employee incentive program known as the Scanlon Plan in 1999. The plan was extremely effective in turning around the productivity and attitudes of many employees, as is evident by the employee feedback that management received. The case study presented by Beer and Collins offers workers’ praise for the new program such as, “I’m getting rewarded for thinking, not just for performing the same tasks every day”(Lutz, p.5) and, “People see themselves as a more cooperative workforce— Engstrom is now a better place to work than it was before we brought in Scanlon”(Andrews, p.5). Employee morale and motivation is a long-term problem for many organizations and that includes Engstrom. Before the Scanlon Plan was introduced, productivity was poor and tensions were high. In hindsight, Engstrom learned that its employees didn’t feel valued by management because they were not involved in changes that had large impacts on them. Much...
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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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...potential for significant reduction in PM and NOx as well as increased diesel efficiencies [2-4]. The HCCI technique involves the compression of a homogeneous mixture of fuel and air until auto-ignition occurs followed by Combustion that is considerably faster than Spark Ignition (SI) combustion [6]. The HCCI’s engine performance (including brake thermal efficiency, combustion phasing and emissions levels) is commonly predicted using numerical methods. Hairuddin et al [5] discuss the various strategies used in numerical method (such as multi zone and single zone models turbulence model and mixing model) and injection methods of predicting performance among other issues related to the HCCI engine. Various studies have shown that the can improve the thermal efficiency of the engine while simultaneously maintaining low levels of emissions and that HCCI technology can be realized by modifying either CI or SI engines using several fuel combinations [7,8]. In HCCI the fuel/air mixture is lean, and auto ignition occurs in multiple locations. Combustion starts when the air/fuel mixture reaches the chemical activation temperature and it is completely controlled is fully dependent on chemical kinetics [9] Since the homogeneous mixture is lean and combustion depends on chemical kinetics studies have shown that there are several challenges of HCCI...
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...discovery and innovative thinking. Concepts like evidence based management (McShane, 2013) and psychological contracts (Braekkan & Tunheim, 2013) are being employed in some of the world’s leading corporations. For the purpose of this paper, the synthesis of material into conceptual application will be applied to a single corporate entity. By choosing a company with global interests who continues to espouse very personal, individual based value perspectives, Apple is a good representational fit. This paper will highlight not only how Apple in some cases is using these concepts successfully in the market place, but also ways in which their former CEO failed miserably in utilization of these concepts while achieving enormous corporate success. This paper will also look to Apple’s future and how study of these theories along with others may be further developed. Multiple references from a wide array of media sources and fields of study have been researched to show the breadth of Apple’s stakeholder and business positioning strategies from the earliest days up to resources compiled as late as November 2013. As the development of information threads lead to fields like manufacturing, education, supply chains, demography, and even social-psychology; some of the sources revealed information that indicated trending not anticipated at the beginning of the process. Apple is such a global power, certain media outlets and even some academic sources have been overly salacious (Kar, 2010)...
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...2009 REPORT TO CONGRESS of the U.S.-CHINA ECONOMIC AND SECURITY REVIEW COMMISSION ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION NOVEMBER 2009 Printed for the use of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.uscc.gov dkrause on GSDDPC29 with K1 VerDate Nov 24 2008 08:23 Nov 10, 2009 Jkt 052771 PO 00000 Frm 00003 Fmt 6012 Sfmt 6602 M:\USCC\2009\52771.XXX APPS06 PsN: 52771 M:\USCC\USChina.eps Report Documentation Page Form Approved OMB No. 0704-0188 Public reporting burden for the collection of information is estimated to average 1 hour per response, including the time for reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining the data needed, and completing and reviewing the collection of information. Send comments regarding this burden estimate or any other aspect of this collection of information, including 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 ...
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...Learning with Cases INTRODUCTION The case study method of teaching used in management education is quite different from most of the methods of teaching used at the school and undergraduate course levels. Unlike traditional lecture-based teaching where student participation in the classroom is minimal, the case method is an active learning method, which requires participation and involvement from the student in the classroom. For students who have been exposed only to the traditional teaching methods, this calls for a major change in their approach to learning. This introduction is intended to provide students with some basic information about the case method, and guidelines about what they must do to gain the maximum benefit from the method. We begin by taking a brief look at what case studies are, and how they are used in the classroom. Then we discuss what the student needs to do to prepare for a class, and what she can expect during the case discussion. We also explain how student performance is evaluated in a case study based course. Finally, we describe the benefits a student of management can expect to gain through the use of the case method. WHAT IS A CASE STUDY? There is no universally accepted definition for a case study, and the case method means different things to different people. Consequently, all case studies are not structured similarly, and variations abound in terms of style, structure and approach. Case material ranges from small caselets (a few paragraphs...
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