Lesson 17ª

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

The Organization: Integral focus.

It is essential to obtain a processing orientation to promote an integral focus of the enterprise.

Historically, an employee what was necessary in what concerned his own job, but he wasn't much interested in the implications of his labour in later productive stages. Pfeiffer pointed out the necessity of implementing a processing focus since employees and the enterprise in itself think in "functions". This refers to their department boundaries. On the other hand, clients think about processing goals, which may be reduced delivery time, acceptable price, high performance products, etc. (Pfeiffer 1996).

It is crucial that the entire enterprise adopts the same vision when concerning the achievement of goals, which have been identified as those the client requires during the planning process (see lesson 3), to combine the different goals of each one of the parties.

Process focus

In the process of orientation towards a process focus, it is imperative to define the necessary levels of hierarchy correctly. At first, during the introduction of a total quality system, you experience the so-called “Lean Management” since employees are trained to work in an autonomous manner without the need of constant supervision by their superiors (Seiling 1994). The conclusion would be: the less complexity, the better it would be. This is also confirmed by findings from McKinsey consulting, which stated that highly productive enterprises from the electronics sector counted with a simple type of organization; very little complexity, problem solving oriented, high performance from employees. All of these characteristics made it virtually impossible to imitate (Cimento, Knister 1994).

To achieve this low level of supervision, it would be necessary to train employees additionally through continuous molding in their tasks and well beyond them. We will detail this on the next lesson. On the other hand, it is important to define the tasks to be performed well. This means, jobs requirements and obligations should be properly designed (James 1997). According to this author, there are several options for developing an optimal design, and thus, work effective:

•  Simplifying: reduction in work specialization in order for the affected person to perform the least amount of necessary difficult tasks (ability reduction).

•  Expansion: work development, increasing the variety of activities to be performed.

•  Rotation: planned rotation of workers on different working areas with the purpose of increasing knowledge in other productive processes.

•  Enrichment: development of work content, increasing the ability of employees and growth potential through education, molding, achievements, recognition and responsibility.

These procedures must also be performed in agreement with previously defined objectives. They must be combined with the chosen organizational structure, thus creating linked autonomous entities which are capable of functioning in an integrated manner, improving independently to be able to provide their top performance for the system as a whole. One of the most common types of work which achieves great optimising effects is team work. Team work must be promoted in an unconditionally manner (Oess 1989).