RL Wolfe: Implementing Self-directed Teams

In SDT every employee in the system work as a team and share their ideas and methodologies with other without thinking about the status or seniority or other means, they work as a team for the time allocated to them to ensure the desired outcome and improve the output of the system. This method enlightens the leadership qualities in every member so that the employees gets a moral belief in themselves and strives hard for the success of the organisation with his own knowledge and good spirits.

In this method the whole unit of different categories assemble themselves as a unit and work with good understanding among themselves in order to minimize the time loss; they take each and every decision as a team so that no other person have any problem or difficulty by doing so. By this method the organisation gets a great deal of profitable outputs if it is done in a systematic and planned manner.

THE PROBLEMS

John Amasi is the director of production and engineering of the plastic pipe manufacturing company RL Wolfe, he comes to Texas to attend 3 day meeting with Winslow along with 4 managers of different regions in order to increase the output of the company with a new way that is Self Directed Teams (SDT) John Amasi along with Winslow wanted to introduce the SDT system into the selected RL Wolfe Branches where the output was about 80 to 85 % and wanted to increase that figure by the SDT.

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They have seen so many organisations improve the outcomes by this method but the other 4 regions was operated in traditional methodologies with unionised employees.

The SDT system introduces two different section for the organisation one for the production and one for the maintenance in which line operators and technicians work in different sections and there was communication clashes between line operators and technicians of the maintenance personals as the line operator should wait till the arrival of the maintenance person to come and rectify the fault and give the clearance for the line operator in some cases the line operator knows the troubleshooting solution but he was stopped to do the troubleshoot and wait for the maintenance personal to arrive and the maintenance and production workers was not paid equally as the maintenance workers, the maintenance workers got higher wages which led to the discrimination between them.

They used promote production workers to maintenance after completion of 1 year by seeing all this John amasi and Winslow decide to implement a two job level plan that is having two set of employees firstly line operators and second technicians Line operators used to do the basic operating works along with material handlers in both production and maintenance works and the Technicians was given higher grade work along with technical works and another set of employees was selected for maintenance and production in a unique selection process adapting SDT techniques.

THE PROOF THAT PROBLEM EXISTS

The selection and interview was done in unique manner where different reactions were observed by the interviewed candidates. Some of them enjoyed the way of doing ,so after completion of the hiring process they selected about 20 personals who were expertise in different categories and they decided to form a team of 26 personals to work as a team for a day shift for 8 hours in specified planned manner. But later they were divided as 12 -14 members per a team by the coordinators. They recommended considering one coordinator on floor per shift and taking their own decision where the coordinator acts as sheer anchor role in taking the decision. As the work progressed the team continued to work in their respective shifts and the output which was desired was coming but John amasi and Winslow decided to held a meeting on the status of SDT implementation they came to know the problem that came through the implementation of SDT, first thing that came out was the line operators and material handling personals thought of lacking status with respect to the other employees and so many employees was confused by the daily routine work and some was employees was thinking about the overtime calculations and some of the employees was dismissed as they were opposing to flow the SDT technique. But the safety record was excellent when compred to the earlier records and the total coordinator role, team work and decision making was up to the mark.

SOLUTION

The SDT is a great technique but it should have proper planning and well planned team. The Team should have right persons accordingly on the bases of different sections and specializations so that they can form a great team together and take the decisions more accurately and they should take the responsibility of any work or decision as a unit by which they can make every decision count accordingly. The coordinators should take equal responsibility to boost the personals in team individually so that he can pull out the decision making skill and leader ship qualities in every person. The employees should also be given the independence of sharing their thoughts and ideals so that each and every personal maintain a strong bond as a team and work as a confident unit to achieve the desired outcomes for the organization.

MY Recommendation:

• Every employee should be treated as their assert in their respective field and recognize their works towards the organization and give them some appreciation in order to boost their efforts in development of the organization

• The coordinator should maintain a separate worksheet for individual employee to see their individual progress in the team.

• Employees should be treated equally and wages should be given accordingly with respect to their profession and skill.

• The team and coordinator selection should be done by seeing every prospect of the employee according to their skill set and experience.