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 Tenneco 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 .
