Team Organizational Style of Fisher and Paykel - Essay Example

Team Organizational Style of Fisher and Paykel Introduction: In order to meet the demands of an increasingly competitive market, the manufacturing Company of Fisher and Paykel revamped its team organizational style from a natural formation of teams to a more vision oriented self directed system of team networking, which successfully reduced wastage and led to cost savings and other benefits. However, although the organizational environment has improved, it is not yet clear whether the desired level of benefits has resulted from the investments of time and money so far. Analysis: Earlier, the Company functioned with natural teams that developed around the functional work areas. However these differed from the Everyday Workplace teams in the sense that individual input was not such an important factor. However in the new teams, the aim and objective was to encourage every member to actively contribute to the process of developing a unified approach to team work. This aspect was highlighted by Imai (1997) in his approach, when he highlighted the importance of the shop floor or the teams working on the industry floor in ensuring that continuous improvement takes place within an organization. The advantages of employing such lean manufacturing processes through the Kaizen approach has also been explained by Wilson (2005). Once the new teams were developed, they were engaged actively in the team building process. The changes that occurs were in terms of additional time spent in communication skills and team building, followed by activities that were focused upon the improvement of work performances and promoting team goals and a common understanding. The goal of the process was to bring about changes in a positive manner through the application of inspiration and communication developed among team members. This process is summed up within the Kaizen approach to organizational behavior. The Kaizen philosophy has been defined as "a means of continuing improvement in personal life, home life, social life, and working life. At the workplace, Kaizen means continuing improvement involving everyone—managers and workers alike. The Kaizen business strategy involves everyone in an organization working together to make improvements without large capital investments." (Imai, 1986) The organization took great pains to improve the teams because they recognized the importance of the shop floor to the success of the organization, as highlighted by Imai (1997). They were guided by the Kaizen system that improves team networking and the efficiency of individual teams through a self directed approach rather than a top down approach. Through the process of active interaction and input from every team member, the overall performance of the team improves. Through the introduction of team leaders and interaction with team members, rapid improvements became possible. This was also the case with the Iowa Department of Natural resources which was able to successfully bring staff members together with customers, resulting in significant improvements in cost, elimination of water and better customer relations.(Vonk 2005) The Kaizen philosophy moots a careful attention to small details and thereby improve the efficiency of the infrastructure rather than investing large amounts on purchase of new materials and machinery, therefore this calls for an intimate knowledge of the workplace which is known as Gemba.(Imai, 1986) As Imai points out, most companies pay a greater amount of attention to aspects such as sales, marketing etc, whereas kaizen used in the gemba translates to a more of a back to basics approach that is encapsulated in three steps: (a) attention to housekeeping (b) elimination of waste and (c) standardization. This is what Fisher and Paykel sought to do by going back to the basic teams and structuring them better to function more efficiently in a self directed manner. An interactive, activity based workbook was developed by every team leader, because the focus of the process was to challenge existing “comfort zones” and bring about some changes with full support from the employees. The objective was to train and motivate them to bring about changes facilitating employee acceptance of changes and the development of sensitivity to the marketplace in order to enhance competitiveness through better networking among the team members. This is again supported by the Kaizen approach - a philosophy that is people oriented. There is a responsibility that is placed upon the leadership to motivate teams to continue to demonstrate sustained improvement, such that every member of the team continues to improve on an ongoing basis. Challenging comfort zones could improve production processes, for example through the Just-In-Time production process. According to Imai, the two types of production systems are the batch system or the Just-in-time system which is a competitive means of survival by concentrating on smalls step improvements.(Piramal, 2005). The major thrust of the effort was placed upon the team leaders who had to transform themselves from technical experts into people experts, because the kaizen system is people oriented. The duties of these team members were to develop functional teams, encourage team building and networking activities and encouraging them to develop strategies to improve their general work area and to align their goals with divisional objectives. The teams were centered upon bringing about change, although the ability to bring about the changes that were visualized was often frustrated by lack of resources or means. It appears that the team building work that has been carried out at Fisher and Paykel has been quite effective because it has been able to successfully achieve some cost cuts, fewer reject products, better cycle times and lower rework times. Moreover, teams are now working independently and are able to manage their own workloads efficiently without much supervisory input, thereby improving management efficiency as well. However, there appear to be some shortcomings that have been identified in the manner in which the changes were introduced and the development of a vision in too short a time. Therefore, this suggests that there is some scope for improvement in future implementation of such processes. It must be noted that some team leaders went back to line work, which provides a definite indication that there is a need for leadership training. Possibly, competency models that identify and develop competencies in individuals could have been used to improve leadership skills. (Emiliani, 2003). Perhaps more effort is also to be directed in the future into improving the creativity of the employee in order to achieve even better results. Therefore, in conclusion it may be stated that the new team work that has been introduced has made a good start, however some lessons could be learnt to improve the process for the future. References: * Emiliani, M.L., 2003. “Linking leaders’ beliefs to their behaviors and competencies” Management Decision, 41(9): 893 * Imai, Masaaki, 1986. “Kaizen: the key to Japan’s competitive success.” New York: McGraw Hill Publishing * Imai, Masaaki, 1997. “Gemba Kaizen: A commonsense, low cost approach to management.” * Piramal, Gita, 2005. “The father of Kaizen speaks!” [online] available at: http://inhome.rediff.com/money/2005/jan/28spec2.htm * Vonk, Jeff, 2005. “Process improvements in business permits through Kaizen” Spectrum, 78(2): 33-35 * Wilson, Robert, 2005. “Guarding the line” Industrial Engineer, 37(4): 46-50 Read More