Assignment:
When Jim Keller took over EMS Corporation, a linen and bedding manufacturer, the company was near bankruptcy and employee morale was at an all-time low. EMS was losing $2 million a year and was plagued with high absenteeism, employee turnover, and accidents. At his first meeting with employees, Jim saw a level of apathy and abandonment that spurred his determination to revitalize the plant and its employees. He realized that the only way to save the company was to rekindle the employees' interest in its survival.
Jim, along with key employees, developed the "Initiative, " a program he designed to get employees interested in the plant and to raise productivity. He set simple goals for product quality, safety, cleanliness of workspaces, and productivity. When the employees attained 100,000 hours with no recordable accidents, Jim closed the plant for a day and everyone celebrated with a "Barbecue Bash." When Jim had the departments compete against one another for a trophy, production increased dramatically. As a result of the company's setting measurable performance goals and offering rewards, employees began to care about the company's fate. After just four months, EMS showed a profit for the first time in years.
Keller improved the "Initiative" by offering all employees a full range of business courses-accounting, plant auditing, purchasing, etc.-to help them under-stand EMS's production reports and financial status. The goal was to get employees to understand the huge amounts of data required to monitor the firm's performance. Keller wanted employees to be able to gauge the impact of their activities on the plant and set their own performance standards to help improve the company.
Employees were given constant reminders of how they were doing. An electronic message board running continuous production reports was installed in the cafeteria. Employees who exceeded their production quotas were given a bonus under a plan known as "Output is sunny ... now give us some money." Employees also received bonuses for ideas that improved the company's operations.
The employees were motivated to make EMS succeed because they understood not only the physical aspects of their jobs, but also how the company was doing and what needed to be done for success. When the company did well, so did they. Jim Keller's efforts and plans were enormously successful.
Questions:
1. What schools of management thought is Jim Keller applying in revitalizing EMS?
2. What other management theories could you apply in the revitalization effort?
3. Contrast these actions against those that a factory manager of the early 1900s might have taken.