an example of a company that appears to have successfully implemented a change is Ethicon Ltd, a medical device company who, at the time, manufactured sutures for medical applications. The late 1990s saw the company restructures ; one of the aims at the time was the relocation of the research and development function to Germany with the UK site to concentrate on manufacturing.
In managing this change, Ethicon set up new in-house systems to refocus people’s ideas on three main goals:
- to improve process cycle times;
- to decrease costs, and
- to improve quality.
Throughout the change process the company communicated well with employees and made them aware of the intentions and the benefits. A number of project managers were put in place to drive through change. Ethicon also introduced cross-functional teams that broke down interdepartmental barriers and encouraged open forum discussions. They managed to involve the workers in project and made they worked. This initiated change across the whole company. They also set in play a system of measurements against objectives in order to the greatest achievements gained from from this redesign project was the true sense of teamworking. The end result was a measured increase in productivity levels. The new ways of working were implemented throughout the company and the hope was that they would produce positive results and cost savings to the company to ensure that Ethicon remained competitive.
Questions
1. How did management at Ethicon get it right’?
2. What particular aspects have encouraged the successful change?
Analysis
The change implementation process proved successful at Ethicon because of the following factors:
- the management team shared their vision on how it was going to be implemented..
- they employed project managers as change agents who were responsible for the initiation and implementation of the transformation process and monitored these changes
- The progress of the implementation was communicated to the employees both directly and through newsletters that highlighted improvements made as a result of the changes.
- They encouraged the formation of coalitions, to work together in teams towards a set of common goals.
This is a textbook example of how to manage a complex change situation. Vision was shared, communicated and implemented in a holistic manner. The OD changes may also be seen to be further evidence of the value of integrative, participative and iterative planning as detailed in the TPM introduced Chapter 7.