Treadway Tire Company; a Case Study Analysis

Introduction: Treadway tire company is the major tire supplier to companies such as Ford, Chrysler and General Motors as well as to tire replacement markets. It was also a major source of income for more than 9000 employees in North America. (Skinner & Beckham,2008)

Background: The Lima plant, located in Ohio was one of Treadway's eight tire Manufacturing plants and rated one of the highest in terms of quality and productivity. After shut down of the Greenville Branch, Lima took in most of the employees from Greenville's location and changed its hours of operation from 12 hours to 24 hours/day with 4 rotating shifts to adjust to the increased employee volume and to improve productivity and reduce costs at the same time. (Skinner & Beckham,2008)

Problem: Low employee Morale due to high job dissatisfaction, lack of advancement opportunities, frequent power clashes with production workers and misunderstandings with management leading them to feel undervalued and disrespected. This led to 43 % turnover of employees. Of the 50 line foremen at the Lima plant, 23 left in 2007 alone. (Skinner & Beckham, 2008)

Opportunities:Improved communication with area managers and supervisors, more comprehensive training through a formal mentorship program where in area managers/supervisors could guide foremen on how to handle common workplace situations. (Skinner & Beckham, 2008)

Recommendations:

a.Empathy training (Coles, 2013) both for managers/Supervisors and for the Foremen as well, as part of the formal mentorship program: This would improve communication between the foremen and their superiors, by making each aware of the other’s situation. An example of where empathy training would have worked was when, for instance a foreman fired a production worker for not showing up and his decision was reversed without consulting with them (Skinner & Beckham,2008). This made the foreman in question feel resentful since he felt his decision was not valued by...