Fmc Leadership

BACKGROUND

FMC Corporation is based out of Chicago. In 1989, sales stretched over five major businesses totaled $3.4 billion. The five major businesses that FMC operates are: Industrial Chemicals, Performance Chemicals, Precious Metals, Defense Systems, and Machinery and Equipment. The company specializes in the production of military equipment, a variety of industrial chemicals, gold and other precious metals, agricultural chemicals and a selection of specialty chemicals, and an extensive range of specialized machinery and equipment for the material-handling, petroleum and food industries. When FMC Corporation won a bid with the U.S. Navy to build and supply surface-ship missile launching canisters, they decided that a new plant should be built to fulfill the contract.

FMC Green River

The Green River, Wyoming facility of FMC Corporation, first opened in 1948, supplies sodium-based chemicals to over 100 worldwide customers in the detergent industry, the glass industry, and large commercial chemical plants. The resources are obtained from a large underground mine and numerous plants. The underground mine produces trona ore (a mixture of bicarbonate of soda and soda ash). Two refining plants turn out various grades of soda ash every year. The Green River facility also runs the largest sodium tri-polyphosphate plant in the world. The United Steel Workers of America organizes the 1,150 employees of FMC Green River.

Kenneth Dailey has been the site manager for FMC Green River for 18 months. In the past, there were separate managers for the mine and for the surface plants. However, Dailey reorganized the complex and now has a manager for the soda ash business on both below-surface and surface facilities, a manager to supervise the three new plants under construction and another manager to look after all of the services required at the plants.

While Dailey believes that his management style is interactive, he would like to consider a much more open management style where employees take ownership of their positions, the company and themselves. He already has a high regard for the flow of information and the process of decision-making, but feels that it could be improved upon. The union that organizes the labor force is considered progressive and Dailey believes that they might be open to a change in the management style and changing the old standard job descriptions.

The largest obstacles that will hinder a management style change are the union and the current infrastructure of the Green River FMC plant which was built decades ago and was set up to isolate managers from the employees.

FMC Aberdeen

FMC's Aberdeen, South Dakota, plant was built to facilitate a U.S. Navy contract to build surface-ship missile launching canisters. Originally the missile canisters were going to be produced at FMC's Naval Systems Division (NSD) headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota. However, because the canisters are viewed as a volume product with a fixed-price contract, NSD felt that the new operation was much more commercial, unlike the cost-plus government contracts that NSD usually worked with. Therefore, after researching business environments in the region, NSD suggested that they relocate the new division to Aberdeen, South Dakota, because of tax regulations, community support, labor pools and favorable wage rates.

Bob Lancaster was chosen as the manager for the new plant. During early negotiations with Ron Weaver, NSD's director of manufacturing, Lancaster stated that he wanted to build a participative-management system at Aberdeen. This system would be based off of the principles of trust that involved the establishment of self-directing work teams to eliminate fear among employees. Lancaster began the implementation of his participative-management system by hiring 5 managers to build and manage the new facility. His criteria for these managers was that they needed to have a history of participative-management interests, be open to new ideas, be dedicated to the customer's needs, and be willing and eager to create something new.

After Lancaster's leadership team was chosen, they began the process of establishing the principles that would govern the plant. The highlight was that the organization would be built off of trust for every employee so that they could eliminate fear. There would be no supervisors or lower-level management because all employees would be organized into a self-directing work team. Employees would exert responsibility and their salary would be based off of their ability to contribute to the organization, with many chances to grow in ability level, and thus on the pay scale. The bottom line was that Lancaster expected all employees to contribute, take ownership and never forget that standards were high for quality and service.

While the Aberdeen plant has a very proactive form of management, they only have one customer to service and a limited labor pool to choose employees from. If they lose the U.S. Navy contract, the facility will be unable to continue operations until another revenue sources becomes available. FMC Aberdeen will also have difficulties finding employees that want to work somewhere that they are not told what to do and how to do it.

WORK GROUPS AND TEAMS

In an organization, an effective work group is able to contribute to the accomplishment of organizational goals by giving the organizational valuable outputs. Outputs can be finished products, properly filled out forms, satisfied customers, and behaviors that are good for the citizenship of the organization. A work group will be the most effective and perform at the highest level when they are able to minimize difficulties in performance and process losses.

When groups are able to perform at their potential performance - the highest level of performance that the group is capable of achieving - performance difficulties and process losses are minimized. However, potential performance is difficult to measure and can change as the situation changes. Managers and work groups need to work together to make sure that a group's actual performance is as high and close as possible to its potential performance so that the organization and the group can attain its goals.

When a work group's actual performance is lower then its potential performance, the organization will experience process losses and a drop in performance. Managers must attempt to eliminate as many process losses as possible to assist the work group in achieving its' potential performance.

When managers find new ways to increase