Custom Chip, Inc. Case Analysis

Custom Chip, Inc. Case Analysis

Summary Custom Chip, Inc case describes the situation of a company where lack of coordination and cooperation among different departments is hindering them to achieve their common or ultimate goal as a single business entity. Applications engineering, product engineering and manufacturing are all inclined towards achieving their individual objectives and timelines rather than collaborating and synergizing their efforts in order to attain a common goal of effective production with improved cost reduction. Few of the primary reasons are insufficient and unorganized company policies for coordination and cooperation, poor networking with in the organization especially on management level, lack of communication and influence among managers and VPs, insufficient human resource, and measuring a department's effectiveness solely on its performance based on individual objectives, rather than checking its effects on over all company's performance.

Key Issues Frank has been working as product engineering manager for 14 months but he had not been told clearly about his objectives as a manager, sometimes he questions his effectiveness as a manager. He is not been able to prioritize his tasks and he often forgets many things he has to do in a day. He tries to be organized by maintaining a TO DO list but still is unable to achieve them. Product engineering department faces the biggest problem of not being able to develop elaborate and error free manufacturing documents which are required by manufacturing to build a product designed by applications department. The current documentation is very poor and its causing delays in production as inexperienced operators are unable to proceed with certain products, als...

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...tuation" . This requires a lot of harmony within the organization with continuous research and innovation. Sometimes improved policies and ease of performing daily operations can appease the need of immediate human resource. In order to survive and excel in a competitive environment, custom chip should "focus on quality, speed and flexibility which require not only multi-skilled workers but also demands a high degree of employee involvement and commitment. This means that management must give employees the power to make on the spot decisions which requires a high degree of team work between individuals and groups who might have some natural tendency to be uncooperative" . Thus by improving policies for collaborating and coordinating within the organization, custom chip Inc. can achieve the desired results.