Fhe, Inc. Case

OIS 3660-003

Case Study: FHE, Inc.

FHE, Inc.

FHE, Inc. is a manufacturer of pumps and fluid handling products. This case details the problems and challenges Lum Donaldson encounters as the product development engineering manager for FHE, Inc. He was evaluating the process FHE used to introduce new products. Three of the company’s departments, marketing, engineering and manufacturing, have encountered some challenges in their workflows for introducing new products. In the current process, engineering and marketing conference together to discuss if the new product will proceed to development. There are confusions on the lines of responsibility between the two departments and Lum would like that to be clearer. There is also a major communication breakdown between these two departments and manufacturing. Once a product is developed, it is handed over to manufacturing without them having much input into the development. Donaldson has also discovered a problem with the workload in the engineering department. Since FHE, is constantly introducing new products, engineering often finds itself having to develop numerous new products at the same time, using the same resources, causing major fluctuations in the workload. Donaldson’s challenge is to streamline the introduction of new products for FHE, which will include finding reasonable solutions to these problems.

The case states that engineering may be juggling up to twenty new products at any given time. With that amount of development going on, it is extremely important that Donaldson evaluates the cross functional coordination between all three departments. Decision making on what products are released, how they are develop and how they will be manufactured needs input from all three departments. The idea that each department is proceeding on their own will only lead to breakdowns in the process. If the cross functional decision making is improved, each department manager can share in the decisions...