Resonus Corp

Resonus Corporation is a hearing aid designer and manufacturer. Production of the latest product has been delayed by two months. Bill Hunt, CEO of Resonus believed that Resonus operated best through informal relationships among its managers. Only production director Jacqui Blanc opposed this informality. Doc Kalandry, the research director, informal reports directly to the CEO (Hunt) and has never considered the director as his boss. Doc always underestimates how long it takes to get the new technology into production, and when other employees try to stop him, Hunt backs him up. “Frank really needs to draw a line of new development so we can hit our deadline for once.” Says one manager. Frank noticed soon after joining Resonus that when production staff finds a design fault, they directly contact the research design engineer who developed the technology rather than the ESD group who prepare the specifications. So when sometimes needs to be corrected, the designer steps in rather than have the clean-up work completed by ESD engineers. Also Choy noted that production routinely complains about every little specification error, many of which are due to design changes made by the research group. Choy’s latest troubles occurred when Doc told Hunt about new Nano-processor technology that he wanted to install in the forthcoming high-end hearing aid product. As with most of Doc’s previous last –minute revisions. Hunt endorsed this change and asked Choy and Blank (the production director) to show their commitment, even though production was scheduled to begin in less than three weeks. Choy wanted to protest, knowing that his department would have to tackle unexpected incompatibility design errors. Instead, he quietly agreed to Hunt’s request to avoid acting like his predecessor and facing similar consequences.