Dailey's Green River Facilities As Employees example essay topic

Organization design is a formal, guided process for integrating the people, information and technology of an organization. It is used to match the form of the organization as closely as possible to the purpose of the organization. This design process seeks to improve and facilitate the efforts of members within the organization. With respect to FMC Corporation's Green River, Wyoming facility, under the guidance of this entity's site manager, Kenneth Dailey, the design should be approached as an internal changes within the organization with the entity's members working together to define the needs of the organization then create systems to meet those needs most effectively. FMC Green River (the "company"), in Wyoming, mines and manufactures sodium carbonate soda ash, maintaining the largest sodium tripolyphosphate plant in the world, relying on the coal and natural gas abundant in the Wyoming / Utah/Idaho basin. The company is part of the Alkali Chemicals Division of FMC that supplies sodium-based chemicals to the detergent industry, the glass industry and large commercial chemical plants.

The large underground mine of the Green River facility has 400 employees and produces about 5 million tons of trona ore a year. Green River's first plant was built between 1948 and 1953, producing approximately 1.3 million tons of various grades of soda ash a year. The second refining plant was completed in 1970, producing approximately 1.5 million tons of a single grade of soda ash a year. Currently, Dailey was in the process of supervising the construction of three new smaller plants, one each for 60,000 tons annually of sodium bicarbonate, 30,000 tons of sodium cyanide used in refining precious metals, and 60,000 tons of caustic sodium hydroxide.

Upon discussions held with employees who observed the modifications made at the Aberdeen plant of South Dakota, which deals in the production of a single product related to the defense industry, whose single customer was the US Navy, Dailey is ready to identify key areas of improvement for implementation within his Green River facility based on these procedures and methods placed in Aberdeen facility, as applicable. As indicated in the background of the company above, FMC Green River is in the business of the production of specific chemicals, competing against Texas Gulf, General Chemical, Rhone-Poulenc and Tenne co in these markets. The site manager, Dailey, noted that the market, at the time of this study, for his products was strong over the next 10 years, wanted his organization to implement improvements in order to remain successful and excel within the market. Therefore, a team was sent to the Aberdeen market in order to evaluate this plant's activities and policies, in order to identify potential recommendations for Green River, since Aberdeen seemed to continue to improve and excel within its market and in terms of its management and output.

In analyzing the ability of management of Aberdeen, one may note that this facility can be described as laid-back and easygoing. As begun with the initial Aberdeen plant manager, Bob Lancaster, then proceeded by Jeff Bust and finally Roger Campbell, Aberdeen was managed as a family instead of a simple work plant. As noted within Clawson's, Custom Business Resources, Aberdeen was "built on trust of every employee". Lancaster's view was to manage in a manner to eliminate fear in his employees and instead increase productivity and potential beneficial risk taking, by "organizing self-directing work teams, expecting the employees to assume and exercise responsibility and maintain high standards of quality and service". Teams were created for every division with respective team leaders elected to help manage "the family". Management made their employees feel trusted and implemented an almost self-directed system with just the appropriate amount of upper level development in planning and implementing such systems, as noted by Dailey.

Although Green River is a much larger organization, Aberdeen only having about 100 employees, Dailey can proceed to utilize such a managing style, attempting to function and organize his facility in a manner that demonstrates trust and a personal desire of his subordinates to help his facility excel in the market. It may be a good idea for Dailey to create separate teams, probably ones larger than 3-16 members within his individual department or employees within the respective product lines and implement a similar system, where management is not particularly feared but instead respected as a member of this facility family, in which the employees want to work hard and achieve as a group. Dailey, as a manager or controller, should proceed to monitor these activities and instead of instilling fear and resentment in his team, offer advice and take suggestions of how production or implementation of the new plants can be better functioned. In terms of organizational commitment, Aberdeen has created an environment in which the collection of feeling and beliefs of the organization per the employees is positive and extremely high. This coincides with job satisfaction, as the employees of Aberdeen not only have good feelings about their organization, but have good notions about their individual jobs as well. Aberdeen employees continue to perform better as their work moods are high, as the affective, cognitive and behavioral components per the Aberdeen employees are encouraging.

This is facilitated by Aberdeen's environment build like a family organization where each individual has a say in the functions and activities within the company, with the periodic meeting in which each employee participates, also with the trust and freedom, for example, to order on their own the supplies needed within the organization up to $500, as well as the ability to merely walk into the plant manager's office and utilize his computer or merely share their ideas or concerns. Formulating this form of environment may increase facility loyalty of the employees under Dailey's supervision. Dailey can achieve this by utilizing similar form of employee selection and training based on skills and attitudes targeted by group skills, communication skills, personal skills, problem solving skills and leadership skills. Just as done by Lancaster, Dailey should tell employees that they are to be included in the decision-making process and are trusted with all relevant management information. Additionally, forming similar team organization such as teams determining their own schedules, as long as the work is adequately completed, as well as teams actually monitoring fellow team member performances in clear and open communication for use of recommended salary increases and rewards, may build morale in Dailey's organization and increase the employees' desire of productivity and accomplishment for their respective work "family". The option for employees to increase their trade skills and potentially earn more money as they achieve further certification sends the message that everyone is welcomed to succeed and become more valuable to them and to the organization.

Organizational commitment and job satisfaction can also be achieved via the facilitation of the feeling of family, through the notion that management truly cares. This can be reinforced through the same notions provided by Aberdeen of creating a variety of social events that help build the family culture such as plant sponsored events of sports teams, fun sport tournaments and annual social functions and or plant / team parties. Organizational ethics can be achieved by instilling trust within the organization and its employees. Aberdeen did this well, by allowing employees to make their own decisions and judgments on the job that they felt would benefit the organization. As noted within Clawson's, Custom Business Resources, morale at Aberdeen was consistently high. "People commented on how much they appreciated being trusted by management, having management's help in times of need, having management who listened to their concerns and having control over their work environment, pace and structure".

This form of environment may also benefit Dailey's Green River facilities, as employees who feel important and always feel that management will support them will willingly work better and be more productive because they will truly feel like they work as a family.