The current organization has supervision, quality, maintenance, engineering, continuous improvement and materials resources spread across both product lines. The structure provides flexibility and product knowledge opportunity, but limits responsiveness. When the need to concentrate on a product specific issue arises, responsibility can slip through the cracks since efforts may already be totally concentrated on the other product.
In a heavy manufacturing environment, continuing maintenance and upgrading of the equipment is essential. Techniques such as Total Productive and Preventive Maintenance and Continuous Improvement are implemented to ensure this happens. In the current organization though, maintenance supervisors are used primarily to direct day-to-day fire fighting on shift. Little time is left to plan preventive maintenance checks, predict failures or implement good ideas to improve machine efficiency. .
The Management Leading People and Organizations in the 21st Century text suggests some significant disadvantages to this functional departmentalization, whereby overall responsibility for performance is limited to the chief position and attention to the specific product lines is diminished (Dessler, 2001, p. 194).
The following recommendations are required to improve business effectiveness. According to Dessler, many organizations make organizational changes to speed the decision-making process and to improve customer satisfaction issues (Dessler, 2001, p. 240). Changing the reporting structure to more of a horizontal, team-based structure would allow for direct and indirect reporting to upper management. Having core functional employees grouped around the product lines would allow them to "work together as a team, and do much of the planning, decision making and implementing required to get their jobs done" 2 (Dessler, 2001, p. 228). This structure also allows formal interaction of the organization's network offering quick resolution of issues and a permanent problem determination avenue.