Precision Factory Case

Precision Factory Case

Crystal

Jane

Ramona

MBA-612-FTAM

Northwood University

(1) Problem Statement

Jieliang, a worker at Precision, has been reprimanded for violating TQC by implementing her own short-cuts to the manufacturing process; Maty Cole witnessed this reprimand on his visit to the company and is concerned that this kind of negative feedback will hinder innovations which might increase the productivity in the future.

(2) Analysis

1. The management doesn’t understand how employees are motivated, which may have caused workers not to speak up and share when they have small innovations for faster assembly.

Motivation plays an important role in an organization. It not only encourages employees to perform their job well, but also to go beyond their current situation. However, different employee need be motivated in different ways based on their different personality and needs. At the same time, different tasks should be motivated differently based on intrinsic or extrinsic rewards as well.

Precision works as a lean manufacturer; they are looking and expecting the best practice to improve the productivity. Therefore, hearing from local teams’ new ideas is valuable for the company to improve the productivity and eliminate wasted time, effort and motion. However, implementing the best practice without sufficient consideration of how their direct workers are motivated would have led to unexpected outcomes, such as demotivating workers. For example, they might not want to find a new way to do things quickly, or even if they did, they are not willing to share the idea or speak up.

Workers in Precision are basically doing machinery tasks, which involved only mechanical skill. According to Dan Pink, monetary rewards work in these kinds of tasks. “If you do this, then you get that”. Most workers came from the countryside; they came to Precision to make money in order to support their family. For most employees, they thought precision...