Alcoa History Summary

My summary starts with a bit of Alcoa history. Aluminum Company of America, (Alcoa) was established in 1888 as the Pittsburgh Reduction Company. ALCOA is the leading producer of aluminum. During the mid-80’s the President at the time Fred Fetterolf determined that the organization should achieve values in which they serve. The values that were selected and posted are integrity, environment, health, and safety. Alcoa was based on great values; this suggested that their workers had to learn and follow the core values at the start of their profession. The employees conceded that whatever decisions they made must correspond with what the company was striving to achieve. (Kolesar, P. J. 1993)
Alcoa is known for their progressive and innovative management.

After eighteen months, there were impressive results from the change efforts, recovery of magnesium increased by 5 percent, unit cost declined, and severe injury frequency dropped by 6.5 yearly. In fact unit cost went from $1.48 per unit down to 1.18 per unit, recovery of magnesium increased by 5 percentage points (worth $1.3 million per point) which meant the plant was making 6.5 million more dollars in just 18 months with the new management. The incident in which the layoffs were averted proved to be the most critical because employees subsequently had taken responsibility for applying their own creativity to meeting plant goals over the next two years, the plant became the lowest-cost producer in the world, and shortly afterward had boosted productivity by 72 percent. The president of Alcoa even asked all the plant managers to visit the site and learn from Addy's turnaround. (KRAUSE,

For example, there was an incident requiring disciplinary action on several teams. The teams would have 24 hours to give their recommendations to management on how the discipline should be handled, up to and including termination. Management was responsible for administering the discipline. At least 95 percent of the time the team's recommendation was looked at and then management would take steps to move forward. (Lenahan, T. 1999). Top executives created health and safety policies which workers are required to follow so that the company's objective could be met and the stakeholder's goals could be reached. The intention of having an injury free workplace implied that command took the safety and health of its representatives rather serious. The business put various defenses in place to guarantee that every department was supporting health and safety policies that were incorporated. (O'Kane & Cunningham,