Essay On Engstrom Plant

Introduction

Engstrom Auto Mirror Plant is a privately owned business with 209 employees and manufactures mirrors for trucks and automobiles. In 2007 the plant manager faced a crisis. Productivity and quality issues brought about a delivery problem and thus increased the risk in losing clients. This had happened before and they implemented a scanlon plan. It was an incentive plan which consisted of monthly bonus, meetings and committee to encourage and evaluate employee's suggestions and helped in improving overall working conditions. This plan was very profitable in the first seven years but then the crisis in the industry put this plan's creditability in question. Employees started complaining about the policies and this caused low productivity.

This has to be done by taking into account the roots from where they have been appearing. This case portrays everyday organizational behavior problems and analyzed issues of building relationship with the employees. Our solutions are based on organizational behavior theoretical background in order to find solutions and alternatives for this case.

The main aim is to figure out how to increase productivity, polish strategy and increase employee motivation. Engstrom plant aims to have maximum turnover but problems such as low employee morale cannot be ignored. As Haley said "We can't climb out of this downturn with a problem like that". Thus we will try to identify problems and look for alternative solutions.

Situation Analysis

The case about Engstrom auto mirror plant talks about the crisis at the plant. Ron Bent, the plant manager and his assistant Joe Haley, have seen productivity decline over the recent years. Ron joined the company when it was facing a similar problem and came up with the idea of implementing Scanlon plan, which is an employee incentive program. It was initially very productive and increased employee motivation to work but now is starting to fail.

Ron faces three main questions

1. Why is employee motivation

So, the Plant Manager, Ron Bent had to take a decision regarding how to increase the productivity and boost the morale of the employees. Ron Bent, before coming to Engstrom worked at Camshaft Plant and had an idea about how to motivate employees, because at Camshaft he had experienced motivational plans working towards increasing the motivation of individuals. Bent thought that a Scanlon Plan was best for Engstrom because of its wide use in various industries and was motivation and incentive driven. Though Scanlon plan was suitable for large enterprises and Engstrom being a small company, the plan had to be tailored only to fulfill the needs of Engstrom. The main decision that was taken with the help of Scanlon Plan was cost saving or in other words producing more per hours of labor spent. They needed cost saving because the cost was very high, productivity was low which means, for example the work which should’ve been completed on Monday was being completed on Thursday and Engstrom feared losing their most important customer like Toyota where the assembly line manager Sam Martinez gave Engstrom a certified