Eagle Crest Manufacturing is an auto body and chassis component manufacturer in rural
Tennessee 45 miles outside of Nashville. Eagle Crest has approximately 150 employees and is a
subsidiary company under the large international Magnum Corporation which is headquartered
in Toronto, Canada. Magnum Corp. has approximately 150,000 employees with 300
manufacturing operations in 30 countries.
Executives at Magnum Corp. headquarters sent Albert to be the Plant Manager at Eagle Crest
last year in order to broaden his understanding of how the manufacturing side of the business
operates, and he is being groomed for an executive position within Magnum Corp. Albert is
originally from Eastern Europe, but moved to Ontario to study management in college. After
college Albert worked for GM and then Ford and has deliberately sought job titles that would
fill out his resume to get him promoted as quickly as possible. Albert is in his mid-forties and
has a singular ambition to move up the corporate ladder. Albert has been plant manager for
approximately one year and has told employees at Eagle Crest that he hoped he would not be
there for more than one more year. Albert carries himself confidently and takes great care to
maintain a professional appearance (as the only person at Eagle Crest who wears a suit
everyday) but is considered by some to be arrogant and aloof. However, he has a very strong
track record for improving profits wherever he goes, which is why he was selected to take over
as plant manager at Eagle Crest.
Albert relies heavily on his two top level managers who answer directly to him at Eagle Crest,
Frank and George. The employees jokingly refer to Albert, Frank, and George as “the big three”
which also refers to GM, Ford, and Chrysler in the automotive industry. Frank is director of
manufacturing and is in charge of managing all the workers on the manufacturing floor,
maintenance, and basically the hands-on aspects associated with manufacturing. Frank has a
high school education and served in the military for eight years after high school. After
returning home, he began his career as a press operator at Eagle Crest almost thirty years ago.
He worked his way up to the management position by consistently working over sixty hours per
week. Frank is known for paying attention to detail which has served him well; however, this
personality trait also leads toward his micromanaging his employees. While Frank treats his
employees fairly, he is very demanding, and his high expectations leave no room for lenience
for sub-standard work, laziness, or excuses. If Frank decides an employee is not up to his
standard, he has Albert’s full support in letting that employee go. Frank is in his late-fifties, his
entire family lives in the area, and he is not willing to relocate and plans to stay at Eagle Crest
until he retires.
George is in charge of managing all the other aspects besides manufacturing that keep Eagle
Crest running including engineering, quality control, accounting, purchasing, shipping &
receiving, etc. George is a college educated mechanical engineer from Quebec in his late
thirties. However, because the primary role of engineering at Eagle Crest is to support
manufacturing, there is significant crossover in responsibilities between George and Frank.
George was a competent engineer at another subsidiary of Magnum Corp that provides the
design and engineering for the automotive parts that are produced by Magnum Corp. George
went back to school in the evenings to earn an M.B.A. while working full-time as an engineer.
After graduating with an M.B.A. George served as an engineering manager for several years
before he was offered the position at Eagle Crest as an opportunity for greater management
and leadership responsibilities. George has been at Eagle Crest for five years. George is
generally personable and down to earth; however, he quickly becomes impatient and does not
manage stress well and tends to take out his frustration on his employees with veiled threats of
being fired if they do not produce.
You have been hired as the new Engineering Manager to be in charge of engineering and
quality control, and you have only worked at Eagle Crest for three months. Technically, George
is your boss; however, because of the overlap between engineering and manufacturing Frank
sees you as working for him as well. Albert rarely if ever interacts with the department
managers including you. The engineering department consists of two industrial engineers, a
mechanical engineer, and two quality assurance technicians that do not have four-year college
degrees but have extensive working knowledge of the manufacturing processes from their roles
in working in maintenance as mechanics and machinists followed by several years working in
quality control.
Recently you have noticed “the big three” (Albert, Frank, and George) in the conference room
for meetings with department managers and various other employees from around the plant
which is highly unusual. First of all, Frank and George rarely meet together because Frank feels
like he does not need Georges’ help since he could and should be able to manage the plant as
he sees fit. George is keenly aware of this general disrespect from Frank and thus tries to avoid
him whenever possible. Moreover, Albert is rarely, if ever, in meetings with employees let
alone meetings with people from every aspect of Eagle Crest.
Finally, you are called into one of these meetings with “the big three”. It turns out that Albert
has been “ever so slightly” inflating the figures of the actual expenses which he assures you is
common practice and simply used as a buffer to manage fluctuating budgets. However, these
cost records are used for setting prices of products sold by Magnum Corp every quarter, and
not-so-coincidentally this “adjustment” resulted in Eagle Crest showing record profits in the
previous year. However, Eagle Crest has been notified that they are being audited, and the big
three need to “get everyone onboard with the cost adjustments for the good of the company”.
In the meeting, you are asked to make changes to documents created by the previous
engineering manager whose position you filled after she resigned three months ago.
You are in no risk of legal repercussions since you were not working at Eagle Crest during the
previous year. However, because of your personal financial and family situation, you really
need the pay check for the next six months. You also have a personal interest in doing your
best to see if you can resolve this ethical dilemma while also doing your best to solve the
technical problems associated with your position. Thus, you not only have technical problems
to solve, you also have interpersonal issues to address because you will not be able to please
two bosses at the same time. Moreover, you have an ethical issue to address as well regarding
the request from the big three to alter documents dated before you were hired.
George has asked you to have the engineering department look into a quality control problem
and Frank has asked you to research a production problem. Both bosses expect their respective
problem to be your top priority and to be solved as soon as possible. Each problem will take a
different amount of time to collect the data, and even if you only select one to give a technical
answer for, you still need to address how you will manage the projects given the timelines.
The two technical problems to solve as soon as possible are one for George and one for Frank.
You need to think through a plan to as to how you plan to manage these two projects as well as
communicate this to both extremely demanding bosses that each expect you to focus solely on
the problem he wants you to work on. You had a similar issue last month, and Frank
threatened to fire you on the spot if you did not get results on his timeline. You have also felt
similar pressure from George because Albert is pressuring him to increase profits from
production. Moreover, the director of Shipping & Receiving had a similar problem with Frank
and George both expecting results at the same time, and this director went directly to Albert to
discuss the problem of trying to serve two masters. Albert did not want to hear it, and Frank
fired her for insubordination for going over his head and involving Albert without permission.
Discussion items:
- Address how you would manage all three projects’ timelines even though you are only
providing a technical answer for one in question 4 (either 4.1, 4.2 or 4.3).
- How will you manage the interpersonal and ethical issues with “the big three”?
- How you will communicate with your team and lead them to a successful resolution.
please address solving the
following problem:
George received a complaint from a customer that a critical part diameter may be out of
specification on the most profitable assembly in the plant. The diameter specification is 0.5 ±
0.010 inch. For this process, only five assemblies are produced per day, and you need twenty
samples. You task your quality team to collect diameter data for the five samples per day for
the next twenty days. The data is recorded as deviations from the nominal half inch
measurement and recorded in thousandths of an inch.
