Background
A manufacturing unit in a large international technology company had made major
investments in new capital equipment, attempting to improve productivity and better
position themselves in a dynamic and hypercompetitive marketplace. As the new
equipment came on line, expected productivity improvements were not realized.
Initially, top management’s intuition was that the productivity shortfalls were rooted in
the industrial engineering of work processes. Several different forms of work
arrangements were tried, none of which had a significantly positive impact on
productivity. Under intense market and corporate pressure to increase productivity,
management called upon academic-based consultants to assist them in assessing the
role human factors played in their manufacturing operation and to provide a program
to positively impact those factors.