Case Analysis

一个小锯木厂公司的案例分析~

Case Analysis

ArbreCorp Ltée, a small sawmill company located in Québec, Canada, mainly deals with the business of cutting, planning and packing wood. The organization consists of six departments, packaging, sawmill, shipping, planer, sawmill, maintenance and boom, with the pyramid structure of one manager, 16 supervisors and support staff as well as unionized employees from top down. The middle and high management are paid monthly, whereas the unionized employees are paid hourly. The company adopts job shifts, morning shift from 6 o’clock, afternoon shift from 2PM, and night shift from 10 PM only aimed at the maintenance department. 
As large numbers of sawmill sell millions of building-grade lumber, and the goods are relatively undifferentiated, the attraction or competitiveness largely rests on the quality of packaging and presentation. ArbreCorp Ltée used to do a good job in packaging, but recently the quality of packaging declines, and the manager seeks the cause and solution.
Probably due to the greatly increased productivity of planning and sawmilling department, which should be accounted for the better operator training and fewer machines breakdown, the packaging department could not follow the pace. A large backlog was stockpiled outside the packaging building. The overtime work could not solve the problem well, and increased the cost. Besides, probably for the reason of no supervisors at present, some packaging employees extend the break period or leave the work earlier than required, which partly explains their low productivity. As the work demand increases and productivity decreases, the quality is no more guaranteed. T
To better solve the problem in the packaging department, a focus on the incentive is needed. For the employees in the packaging department, the company can pay them on the basis of the quantity they finish, with the bonus on the quality. The rate pay can put a great incentive to the employees, motivating them to do their job quickly, thus meeting the work demand. But large amounts of attention should be paid to quality. That is why a bonus should be set for high quality. Aiming at the absence of supervisors, owing to the long distance from the packaging building and sawmilling, the company can put some packaging employees in charge of the supervision, and pay him some extra money for the extra job. Besides, the supervision job in the packaging department can also be rotated from person to person. Therefore, the company can solve the problem in a reasonable and efficient way.