How to Successfully Implement Technological Change - Essay Example

As stated in the article, “Everything went wrong when the venerable boilermakers turned to build pressure vessels for atomic reactors. The whole electric-power industry felt the consequences” (Strategos, 2008). The problems that occurred at Babcock and Wilcox were attributed to quite a few different factors, namely technological difficulties. The company had built a plant at Mt. Vernon on the Ohio River and had pre-sold an entire year of pressure vessels. Before long, they noticed that every single one of the pressure vessels they were manufacturing was behind schedule (Strategos, 2008).

Other problems abounded at the Mt. Vernon plant. Labor shortages, malfunctioning machines, rigid standards, and added expenses plagued the company, causing unprecedented delays to take place. Critics of the company’s management team also say that corporate arrogance played a role, as had the choice for the location of the plant in the first place (in an area where labor was short and people were very difficult to train).

A lot of money had to be spent in vain training workers that only 33% stayed behind after training to actually work for the company. In addition to being short on labor, the company was also short on skilled labor. The company also had equipment problems. These led to even further delays in getting the pressure vessels out (Strategos, 2008).
Its customers were so frustrated by the delays that they began to take partially-manufactured units out of the Mt. Vernon plant and have the company’s competitors finish them. The costs associated with these customers waiting any longer were just too high (Strategos, 2008).

Kaizen Event for NC Machining
According to the case study for this particular machining company “A Kaizen Event helped a jobbing-type machine shop implement work cells and set the stage for dramatic improvements in inventory, delivery, productivity, and quality.” In this particular case, the results were that “In the three months after cell startup, the pump assembly line was never once stopped or inconvenienced by a parts shortage from this cell. WIP inventory went from three months to three days. Productivity improved by about 50%. Capacity was released for increased production demand. Quality improved” (Strategos, 2008).

Mechanical Control Cables
This case study tells about an older organization that had grown to be very successful, but as has often been the case, met up with technological times and hit a roadblock. Their traditional way of doing things had led to too much overhead. After 2-3 consultants spent a great deal of time at the company and “taught, learned, experimented, and cajoled” (Strategos, 2008).

According to the case study for this particular company, “In the end, five work cells were in place and a macro layout showed the locations of remaining cells. The training was well along and teams were developing. Supervisors were learning to deal with the cell environment. Mechtrol carried on this work in the years that followed” (Strategos, 2008).

Compare & Contrast
The last two cases are similar in structure but are completely different from the first case. In the first case, major problems are causing unforgivable delays that rocked an entire industry. In the second and third cases, a few relatively minor adjustments in cell layout needed to be made in order to maximize speed, efficiency, productivity, and overall profitability. The decisions were also better thought out in the second and third cases, and the management teams took things impressively slower instead of making decisions in a panic.

Conclusion
“It is by now a truism to say that any single technology can be used in multiple, and sometimes unexpected, ways. But we need to add to this observation that, in each different use, the technology is embedded in a complex set of other technologies, physical surroundings, people, procedures, etc. that together make up the socio-technical system. It is only by understanding this system that we can parse out the ethical issues” (ComputingCases, 2008). The purpose of this paper has been to discuss how to successfully implement technological change using sociotechnical principles: lessons from case studies.