Shop Floor Management Research Paper

Self-Managed teams, An Innovative approach to shop floor management

Rajendra Joshi & V.A. Upadhye

Purpose: To develop an innovative approach to manage shop floor through

Empowered Self-Managed Teams

Abstract

Background: Hierarchical approach to manage the shop-floor assumes that the people , higher up in the hierarchy ,automatically qualify to be the decision makers and leaders even for knowledge and skill based routine jobs on shop floor and thus end up doing repetitive tasks .They ignore their strategic and developmental tasks.

In Self- managed work teams concept, employees on shop floor get an opportunity to organize and control their work.

For efficient shop floor management, it is critical to create shop floor teams. This paper

They own the responsibility of implementation through shared learning. They also achieve the deliverables with joyful ownership and collaboration as evident from the survey.

In old organizations who have operated in the traditional way,

• It is difficult to overcome the mind-sets of dependency, authority, power through position and comfort of doing repetitive jobs.

• During the transition, tremendous amount of energy is required to combat the reactionary tendencies. Change Management assumes the profile of old v/s new rather than innovation.

1. This model can give excellent operational and human potential developmental results. Role of supervisor becomes redundant; reinvention of a more diversified job profile has to be done.

2. Excellent and empowered shop-floor teams are created.

The concept reconfirms the basic values of human nature of recognition and freedom which has been overshadowed by the age old management practices.

Management is a mere facilitator in this model .It is an enhancer and not a watch dog or monitor and therefore it is an original innovation.

SELF MANAGED

On one hand Western world has to develop democracy under the foundations of authority, privacy, responsibility, and justice. On the other hand they have focused on building management systems that operate under the simplistic perception of a machine where every part (including person) needs managed. This in turn has grown to become an obvious incongruence and annoyance of many 21st Century citizens who no longer want to be the slaves of business owners.

This paper is a discussion of the concept of self-management for modern corporations in a postmodern society.

This paper also tries to address this issue by adopting a different organization structure with commensurate roles, responsibilities and authorities with empowerment as a theme for the shop-floor employees or associated as they are often called instead of operators. The shop-floor is managed by people who actually do the work, produce or who do supporting activities on the shop floor like maintenance, inspection