Case Study

Examination of Structure for Major Manufacturing Site

Business Challenge:

A major manufacturing site had just had to reduce their staff considerably (20%). This lead to a decrease in the amount of department managers the site could support. They wanted to have a structured way of identifying how to cope with this situation so that the remaining department managers would have reasonable roles.

Goals:

Reduce the number of department managers.
Maintain effectiveness of the site
Ensure retention of remaining department managers

Process

Each department was broken down to its major components
An analysis was done to examine how each part interacted with every other
The components were then grouped sensibly into departments
Systems identified to support strong links between departments
Meeting process devised to support communications.

Solution

Dedicated parts of a central analytical group were moved out to departments
A Facilities Managers role was created to look after the physical site
Several manufacturing units were combined into clusters with one department manager
Engineering support for the site was split, with short term maintenance going into the units and long term maintenance and projects becoming a central department.
Active selection of managers to retain versus jobs to be filled.

Results

Having identified what departments required managers allowed selection of retained managers to be more focused and reduced turnover.
The Facilities Manager role allowed for further savings to be made
The Central Engineering Group was able to provide longer term and planned maintenance at reduced costs