Business Analysis of FMC Corporations Green River Facility Essay

Business Analysis of FMC Corporation's Green River Facility FMC Corporation’s Green River facility is a large organization with many different product lines that cater to many different customers. The industry it serves is the chemical industry. With over 1,000 employees, they service over 100 customers with several different product lines. The Aberdeen facility on the other hand, has only 100 employees who service to only one customer with a single product. The Aberdeen facility, although small in numbers, has proven to be successful in growth and organizational effectiveness to the point that the Green River facility is interested in its organizational behaviors to incorporate them into their own facility. The Aberdeen facility was founded on the beliefs of participative management and empowerment (George & Jones, 2005) to its employees. The basic principle behind the success of this idea is trust. According to Bob Lancaster, the founder to Aberdeen’s management system, trust eliminates fear and allows employees to really focu s on what is needed to be done as well as getting it done. By organizing self managed teams (George & Jones, 2005) along with a team leader, employees are encouraged to manage many different aspects of their own organizational behavior. Employee selection is a rigorous process designed to attract people with not only technical skills, which is minor determining factor based on the philosophy that technical skills were easily trained, but a range of : personal skills, group skills, communication skills, problem solving skills, results orientation, and leadership skills (Clawson, 2005). These employees would have to be able to thrive in the environment were they are not needed to be told what to do, but to just do it. Teams are designed to manage virtually every aspect of the plant. They schedule work hours, purchased materials and tools, planned work schedules, coordinated with other teams, evaluated team members performances, recommended salary increases, generate reports, and deal with virtually every problem that arises (Clawson, 2005). This is where trust is displayed. These teams are comparable to a family. Each person depends on each other to get jobs done within the team. They openly communicate and have meetings when necessary to discuss and resolve issues as they arise. There is no communication gap betwee... ...ith responsibility and would rather just take orders from someone else. This attitude will not work with this system. Implementing this system may take some time to accomplish due to the size of the Green River facility, but the system is possible to achieve at this facility. The reason the Aberdeen facility has prospered is simply that the employees feel that their part is truly essential to the functioning of the facility, and that makes them feel good about their job and they are constantly seeking ways to improve their team’s production. Once all of the teams are in place and employees are put with the product specialized for them, the ball will get rolling. Slowly but surely things that need to be corrected will be done, employees that can not conform to the new responsibilities will be eliminated, and employees will start to feel the job satisfaction that is really the driving force behind this system. References: Jennifer M. George & Gareth R. Jones (2005). Understanding and Managing Organizational Behavior. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall James G. Clawson (2005) Custom Business Resources. FMC Aberdeen. Boston, MA: Pearson Custom Publishing