Oilwell Cable Company, Inc.

1026 Words3 Pages

Oilwell Cable Company, originally known as Chord Cable Company out of New Jersey, has been acquired by new management and relocated in Lawrence, Kansas. Original manager behind this move was Gino Strappoli, who came up with a corporate structure that determined company’s success. His vision of the company was for everyone to have some responsibility, all the way down to the workers in production. One of the reasons behind this approach was that this was a continuous manufacturing process that involved a lot of decision-making involving employees on the spot. In a few short years, the company broke even and actually has reached some significant milestones. In 1985, Gino has left for another position, and was replaced by the production manager Bill Russell, whose position in turn was replaced by Norm St. Laurent. Bill Russell continued to operate the company under Gino Strappoli’s principles, until the company has hit a down point due to the stagnant economy and in the oil industry in particular. Then certain alterations to the management process were made. After this the company’s management has been faced with the decision, should they continue to operate the same way, as they were before, or should they let management make more decisions, without the involvement of the teams and employees in general. The response from the employees was such that even though they do appreciate that the management consults with them on certain aspects of the business, they would not want to have certain responsibilities and would also like not to be involved in certain decisions that could be resolved without them. Because of this situation Norman St. Laurent a production manager was faced with a decision, whether he should go ahead with the microp... ... middle of paper ... ...1, if their numbers were actually going up. According to their management model and based on their previous history (1985-1989 growth spur), they would hire more people with their production going up and not lay people off. My recommendation for Norm would be to continue to involve the teams on such major decisions like the introduction of microprocessors conversion, however smaller scale projects; I would not get the teams involved. I would also work on creating a team that would act as a project management team as a buffer group between the management and the teams and involve them heavily in the decision-making process and in the getting feedback from the teams. This would make the whole decision-making process go smoother and quicker and will let the management make the decision, while getting feedback from the teams, but not involving them in the actual decision.

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