Who Dropped the Ball?
In October 2011, Industrial Water Treatment Company (IWT) introduced KELATE, a new product that was 10 times more effective than other treatments in controlling scale buildup in boilers. The instantaneous demand for KELATE required that IWT double its number of service engineers within the following year.
The sudden expansion caused IWT to reorganize its operations. Previously, each district office was headed by a district manager who was assisted by a chief engineer and two engineering supervisors. In 2012, this structure changed. The district manager now had a chief engineer and a manager of operations. Four engineering supervisors (now designated as group leaders) were established. They were to channel all work assignments through the manager of operations, while all engineering-related problems were to be handled by the chief engineer.
Each group leader supervised 8 to 10 field service engineers.
Bill Marlowe, district manager for the southeast district, has just received a letter from an old and very large customer, Sel Tex, Inc. The letter revealed that when Sel Tex inspected one of its boilers last week, it found the water treatment was not working properly. When Sel Tex officials contacted Wes Smith, IWT's service engineer for the area, they were told he was scheduled to be working in the Jacksonville area the rest of the week but would get someone else down there the next day. When no one showed up, Sel Tex officials were naturally upset; after all, they were only requesting the engineering service they had been promised.
Bill Marlowe, perturbed over the growing number of customer complaints that seemed to be coming his way in recent months, called Ed Jones, chief engineer, into his office and showed him the letter he had received from Sel Tex.
Ed: Why are you showing me this? This is a work assignment foul-up.
Bill: Do you know anything about this unsatisfactory condition?
Ed: Sure, Wes texted me immediately after he found out. Their concentration of KELATE must have gone up, since they're getting corrosion and oxygen on their tubes. I told Peter Adinaro, Wes's group leader, about it, and I suggested he schedule someone to visit Sel Tex.
Bill: OK, Ed, thanks for your help. [Bill then calls Peter Adinaro into his office.] Peter, two weeks ago Ed asked you to assign someone to visit Sel Tex because of a tube corrosion problem they are having. Do you remember?
Peter: Oh, sure! As usual, Wes Smith contacted Ed instead of me. I left a text message for Dick to assign someone there because my whole group was tied up and I couldn't spare anyone. I thought Dick would ask another group leader to assign someone to check it out.
Bill: Well, thanks for your help. Tell Dick to come on in here for a second.
Dick Welsh, manager of operations, came into Bill's office about 20 minutes later.
Bill: Dick, here's a letter from Sel Tex. Please read it and tell me what you know about the situation.
Dick: [After reading the letter] Bill, I didn't know anything about this.
Bill: I checked with Pete, Wes's group leader, and he tells me he texted a message for you to assign someone since his group was all tied up. Didn't you get the message?
Dick: My phone is flooded with messages. Heck, I'm the greatest text message handler of all times. If I could schedule my people without having all the engineering headaches unloaded on me, I wouldn't have all these messages. Sure, it's possible that he left a message, but I haven't seen it. I will look for it, though. Anyway, it sounds to me like they've got an engineering problem, and Ed should contact them to solve it.
Bill: I'll contact Sel Tex myself and try to explain the situation to them. You and I will have to get together this afternoon and talk over some of these difficulties. See you later, Dick.
Questions
1. What problems does Bill Marlowe face?
2. Are the problems related to the way IWT is organized, or are they related to the employees?
3. How could these problems be resolved?