toti

A large, well known Canadian company had found full depreciation of the equipment which was used to make specialized automobile companies for north-American automobile producers. Although the equipment had been well maintained and worked well, it required to be handled by a large number of laborers. The result was the high labor costs that made the company’s brake assemblies, manufacturer, and related products unprofitable. A decision was made to replace the equipment with more highly automated, numerically controlled machine tools. Since the economic value of the old equipment exceeded its value as scrap, the equipment was shipped to the company’s Brazilian operations, where labor costs were considerable lower.

Upon arrival and after the setting up of a new facility, the company received numerous profitable orders from Brazil’s rapidly growing automobile industry. Though the labor hours per product remained about the same the lower Brazilian labor rates allowed the new facility to be profitable. Soon a second shift was added and with it problems began.

The equipment began to experience a growing “downtime” because of machine failures and quality- particularly on part dimensions- declined dramatically.

At a staff meeting the Brazilian plant manager met his staff, including several industrial engineers who had been trained in Canada and the United States. The engineers argued that the problems were almost certainly caused by maintenance since the machinery had worked well in Canada and initially in Brazil. The HR director agreed that it was perhaps the question of maintenance of the old machinery but he also noted that many of the on-machine instructions and maintenance manuals had not been translated into Portuguese. He also observed that the problems began after the second shift was hired.

Questions:
1. From the discussion of job analysis information and job design, what actions would you recommend to HR department?
2. Given the problems associated