The Group Of Employees Involve In Product Development

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Identify the challenges in establishing a high performance project team

The roles

Required knowledge

Commitment

Potential conflicts – resolution

ABC Company is faced with a dilemma to either layoff 30% of its workforce or lost its competitiveness and market share. The company has decided to change their vision, mission and strategy as part of downsizing effort. One of the ways to continuously creating employment was to extend the product range into niche markets. In view of rising oil prices and increasing awareness of rapidly deteriorating environmental conditions, ABC Company sees a potential in developing and building hybrid model and targeting buyers who are environmentally conscious with high income.

With the combined efforts between employees, management and unions, the ABC organization adopted a downsizing approach that protected employment in exchange for workers’ agreement to reduce working time by working only a four-day week. In fact, about 1% of workers accepted early retirement packages. Even so, there is still a need to reduce redundant teams and elimination of hierarchical levels.

After the redundant workforce is being removed, new product development team has to be formed to take charge of the development of hybrid model. The project teams need to be flexible and able to learn fast to respond to market needs and technical challenges while developing creative popular products. ABC Company adopts Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP) for their product development process. The APQP consist of 5 phases the team consists of production people, product engineers, manufacturing engineers, customers, business development manager & quality engineers.

Before a team can begin the first phase of APQP, it is a challenged to get traumatized surviving employees engaged and focused. Firstly, their confidence is seriously upset because they have uncertainty of when they will suffer the same fate as those being layoffs. Some of them may suffer from "survivor’s guilt". There are changes to work relationship which they have no idea how to relate to others in the workplace, the grief of losing their mentor, friends and skilled workers. People begin to view their colleagues as competitors, depreciate in teamwork; there are gossip, rumors and result in reduced productivity.

Secondly, their work redistributed where survivors try to learn the jobs of lay off employees while still doing their own jobs tend to become increasingly stress and overworked. This cause tension and pressure to the work environment. When people are overwhelmed, they tend to make mistakes, become highly irritable. There are increased in staff turnover, increased absenteeism and sick leave, decreased in creativity and risk taking and resist to take responsibilities.

A major factor of organization performance is a related to the morale of employees. Therefore the attitudes of the surviving workforce are crucial to organization business condition to improve and prosper.

There are five actions to be taken straightaway to help lessen the post layoff effects on surviving employees.

Meet with the group of employees involve in product development

Honestly communicate to them the current situation even it is bad news, and how they can contribute to short and long term business goals. Managers must prevent employees from speculating more layoffs are inevitable and begin to spread rumors that can have a negative impact on productivity. Any vague statements will add on to employees’ anxiety.

Demonstrate sincere empathy

Manager must be prepared for employees to be emotional such as anger, depressed, guilt and aloof. It is crucial for managers to invest time to pacify them and acknowledge the fact that their behavior is understandable. The manager must be readily asked for resources from organization to support their employees. For example, an overworked employee may ask for time off to spend time with his family and as a manager should not reject his request even at the expense of delay in work schedule. Also, the manager must identify unreasonable requests. In every instance, he can "push back" with a clear and professional assessment and offer an option that does address the same matter. The bottom line is to make employees feel that the manager has done their uttermost to help them and is genuinely care for them. Therefore employees should be able to reciprocate to trust him to make the right decisions.

Recognize work frustrations due to reduction of headcount

Some of the employees may feel worried, some wondering whether work will be tougher than before. Some feel worried when they can’t get along with new team members, and not exactly sure how they can fit into the team. Hence the manager has to help them deal with changes and explain to them the different approaches to do their work that will positively affect the future.

Managers need to proactively help employees search for work related solutions. Describe the area of support he attempt to help them prioritize their work and identify duties that can be eliminate among the tasks other employees have to take up.

Develop survivor’s skills

As more people have overcome the grief of missing their friends and colleagues, will be the best time for them to pick up additional duties. Hereafter, manager anticipates changes in roles and communicates these changes the employees. Additionally, manager needs to provide them with on the job training for those surviving employees.

The Belief System states that employees need to believe they can do the job, there will be reward their performance by management and the outcomes will justify them.

Recognition and rewards

Sincerely thank everyone for trying to understand the difficulties ahead and yet choose to stay. There may be no bonus or merit increase, but manager can bring them out for lunch or buy them a gift to let employees know that he is aware of the addition hard work and appreciate their contributions.

Once the morale of surviving employees has been rebuild, the first phase of APQP was started – plan and define the program.

The manager will present customer requirements supported by market research done by Sales & Marketing Manager and proposed his business plan to the team. To reach a consensus on goals and targets cause a lot of conflict between the department representatives. The manger have to bear in mind to separate the problem from the person so that the real issue can be tackle without affecting work relationship. With the help of internet, it is easy to gather information for industry standard for benchmarking. These data can help to identify the "gap" between current process and they make good inputs that can aid in brainstorming for possible resolutions to conflicts.

The team will draft preliminary process flow chart and bill of materials and determine final goals in design, reliability and quality.

The second phase of AQPQ is Product Design and Development. The role of Quality Engineer and Mechanical engineer have to work closely to workout design output including ways to simplify, improve, innovate and minimize waste using methods like Design of Experiment, Tolerance Studies & design FMEAs. The group of employees supporting Mechanical engineers is Computer Aided Design (CAD) designers who have worked in the same area for a long time. Due to downsizing, they have the opportunity to take on more responsibilities in product design process which tap into their experience to improve product feasibility.

The Mechanical Engineer will need to conduct design verification and design reviews and finally finalize Engineering Drawings and material specifications. The purchasing manager will start sourcing for material; Manufacturing Engineer will plan for new equipment, tooling and facilities. Lastly, the team must agreeable with the proposed design and sign Team Feasibility Statement.

The third phase of APQP is Process Design and Development. The Production Engineer use engineering concepts regarding operation research, production planning to finalize process flow chart and the completion of Process FMEA. This includes identifying bottlenecks caused by toolmakers with high turnover. They need to stand, and often need to bend, crouch for long hours is physically demanding can give them back and leg problems. The management decided to provide regular breaks are and limit the number of work hours per day.

The quality manager will be involved in Gauge Repeatability and Reproducibility analysis and reliability engineering. Then, to design measurement systems analysis plan to include inspection and test equipment designated on the control plan.

The fourth phase is Product and Process Validation. The biggest challenge for this phase is to pass production validation testing. The data collected from production trial are used for process capability studies in charged by Quality Manager. Those new technical staffs who are women of younger age will be suitable to support first article inspection. But the Quality Manager does not have time to provide them with on job training. To overcome the issue, the quality manager managed to convinced an ex Quality Inspector who left the company to take care of her young children to work on a part time basis. The quality manager allows her to bring her children to the company while she is conducting training.

The team has to revise control plan, conduct many rounds of FMEAs and measurement system studies. At this time, generation conflict becomes prominent when brain storm for ideas to revised control plan. They have different perspectives and expectations as they relate to goals and their leaders. Under the pressure of approaching deadline, these people end up getting angry and blaming and agenda often get side tracked. Each generation has their strengths and the manager must recognize it and proclaim their contributions to the workforce. Once each generation has proven their value in contributions makes it easier for the different generations to accept each other. Subsequently there will be discussion to allow actively listening of each other’s viewpoints to come to hand.

The Manufacturing Engineer will create production control plan by applying the results of manufacturing system studies such as Lean Manufacturing.

The last phase is feedback, assessment and corrective action with a focus on continuous improvement requires the commitment of everyone. The three areas need to be continually assessed in every area: Variation (quality & manufacturing), customer satisfaction (sales & marketing) and delivering and service (logistics & purchasing).

74http://wlv.openrepository../wlv/bitstream/2436/33734/1/Atkinson%20thesis.pdf

Green, T. & Hayes, M.(1993) The Belief System: the Secret of Motivation

and Improved Performance: Beechwood Press

Advanced Product Quality Planning and Control Plan (APQP)". aiag.org. 2012 [last update]. Retrieved September 24, 2012.

*need attached sample of team feasibility statement.