Case Study 4 – Custom Chip Inc.
Introduction
“Custom Chip, Inc.”, is a fictional(?) manufacturing company that supplies components for communications systems globally. With 300 employees and rapid growth since 1977, the company enjoyed a shield of a niche market to protect it from downturns, but lately has seen interdepartmental conflict which must be resolved in order for the company to maintain stability and survive any economic environment.
Major Issues
The two major issues highlighted within the text are the workflow problems between departments, and the current conflicts that have appeared between the departments themselves.
Department Conflicts: There are obvious goals between the departments that are not the same, and every department feels superior. Application, Product and Manufacturing engineering departments all have a key role, but cannot operate correctly if each department feels it is more important than the others.
Workflow dependence between departments: The current company setup indicates that the workflow to get from design to completed product is entirely fragmented and one problem cascades through the flow and halts entire production lines. This is expensive and further increases interdepartmental tension.
Relevant Theories
Organisational structure: departmental functional grouping is relevant here as it describes the old-school style method of running a company, in a very secluded methodology which does not allow for cross-collaboration or formation of project teams. Given that the organisation effectively is a series of projects, this company layout is entirely unsatisfactory.
Suggestions
Formation of goals and mission that encompasses the whole organisation: If the company has a shared objective, there is a much greater chance that it will work in a unified matter to meet these objectives. In addition to this, if everyone is reaching for the same missions and objectives, then it becomes much more logical to cooperate and...