Rl Wolfe Harvard Business Case Study Solution

Background
John Amasi is the Director of Production and Engineering at RL Wolfe, “a $350M privately held plastic pipe manufacturer headquartered in Houston, Texas” (Gavin & Collins, 2009). John is Director of two companies soon to be three and is looking to implement Self-Directed Teams, (SDTs) into RL Wolfe’s third company which will be called Corpus Christy. RL Wolfe’s other two companies are unionized and are facing many issues. Amasi has done much research and has learned that Self-Directed Teams has led to high productivity. “Wolfe’s other two plastic pipe manufacturing plants were running at 65%-70% of design capacity, and in Johns view, “High productivity was 95% or more of design capacity” (Gavin & Collins, 2009).
The Problem
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6). As for the employees not wanting to be individually recognized, the proof is when Winslow, the onsite manager of Corpus Christy states, “We’re successful at group recognition, but individual recognition is a Pandora’s box” (Gavin & Collins, 2009, p. 6). “When a coordinator posted a list of outstanding performers, people on the list didn’t like and asked for it to be taken down” (Gavin & Collins, 2009, p. 6). Winslow states, “I think small teams are far more effective than larger teams, but I’m struggling with how to define smaller teams on the factory floor” (Gavin & Collins, 2009). As for the proof that the problem exists with overtime, vacations and policies, Winslow states, “Teams want control over the amount of overtime they work, and when they work it” (Gavin & Collins,
“For instance, when defining your boundaries, she suggested considering these factors: the number of hours you’ll work; under what circumstances and conditions you’ll work overtime; which people, if anyone, you’ll give your personal cell phone number; and if you’ll date co-workers” (Tartakovsky, 2014).
As for the basic solution to individual recognition, “You don't want to design a process in which managers select the people to receive recognition. Employees will see this type of process forever as managerial favoritism. Or, they will talk about it in words such as, "Oh, it's your turn to get recognized this month”. This is why processes that single out an individual, such as Employee of the Month, are rarely effective” (Heathfield, 2016).
The basic solution for the size and composition of the teams, “On a smaller team, people knew what resources were available and felt they could ask questions when things went wrong. The situation was more controllable,” Mueller states. “But in these larger teams, people were lost. They didn’t know who to call for help because they didn’t know the other members well enough. Even if they did reach out, they didn’t feel the other members were as committed to helping or had the time to help” (Mueller,