CASE STUDY: “Jieliang Phone Home!

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Team 8 - Dillon Dewald, Andres Crosby, Jacquelyn Turner, Biagia Rosinia, Musunna Galib

I. Frame

During a visit at Precision Electo-Tek's production facility in Dongguan, China, the company’s head of
manufacturing process and technology, Marty Cole, witnesses a tense interaction between a line
supervisor and line worker. The line worker, Jieliang, was being reprimanded for not following the
company’s TQC’s (step-by-step instructions) for her assigned work station. Through investigation and
discussions, Cole realizes the change in process resulted in a big speed-up for the manufacturing
process. This incident uncovers potential issues in the facility’s organizational culture which may be
hindering the company’s goal of continuous process improvement. The key issues were:

 Why did Jieliang not share her process improvement through available lines of communication?
o Cole noticed that the comment box at the front of the line was empty. Operationally,
Jieliang has made a change to her process and not considered communicating with
management. Her actions suggest a lack of trust in management (they don’t read or
care about suggestions) and the interactions between supervisors and line workers
indicate a hierarchal management system.
o The supervisors are seen as very authoritative and the Direct Line employees (DL’s) are
viewed as only being able to complete mundane tasks without having to think very
much. It seems as if supervisors do not trust their employees and communication is top-
down. If the DL’s are treated in such a way, it can be assumed that the DL Supervisors
are treated in a similar fashion by their managers.
 Did Jieliang know that her change in process resulted in a process improvement?
o From the layout of the manufacturing process, the engagement and performance by the
process line workers is narrow focused and limited to very strict parameters. It does not
appear that cross-functional knowledge of the line process is something that
management values or encourages among line workers. Management has set up TQC’s
with visual representations of every step that each person has to follow which really
limits the amount of critical thinking that is expected of any employee.
o It is assumed that the line workers do have a drive to comprehend. Through the
recruiting events, we can see that the people being recruited into the company have the
potential to be very skilled workers. Precision Electro-Tek requires a high school degree
before being hired. In addition to the educational requirement, recruits need to appear
reliable, motivated, and hard working. With such qualifications, these recruits are also
paid an above average wage which helps entice these recruits to work with the
company.
 Why was Jieliang being reprimanded for something that ultimately improved the manufacturing
process?
o Margins in contract manufacturing are razor thin. The key goals in this industry are
production efficiency and continuous improvement. Marty Cole is the head of
manufacturing processes and technology in which he has a vested interest in making
improvements throughout the company, not only in Dongguan. Jieliang’s actions caused
 for punishment as compared to praise for something which aligns directly with the
industry’s primary goals.

II. Recognize

In thinking about how to approach this issue, we identified multiple approaches and their relative
probabilities of succeeding.

 Engagement surveys could be used to identify areas where employees really feel that the
company is lacking or underperforming.
o The biggest issue with this approach is that employees are not always going to respond
to or respond honestly to surveys as we read in “Where Measuring Engagement Goes
Wrong” (Cappelli, Eldor). Especially in a company like this, employees might be scared
to speak up. Implementing this approach wouldn’t hurt, but we believe there are better
ways to go about creating a feedback culture.
 Cross training employees would be a good way to help them understand how their actions
could have a ripple effect on the whole production process. Like Cole was saying in the article,
he wasn’t sure if Jieliang was aware that something she did could throw off the whole sequence
of production. If the managers could figure out some sort of rotation schedule, employees
could get a chance to work on various stations and maybe even find areas that they excel in.
This could even reduce the current average turnover rate of 1.5 years at Precision by keeping
employees from getting bored with their jobs.
o One thing we would have to be careful of in implementing this approach is to be sure
we are not disrupting the workflow. The last thing Precision needs is a lag in production
because employees are having a hard time adjusting to change.
o Within the rotation schedule, managers could also build in opportunities to “re-train”
employees and expand on things they learned in the initial 2-day training period.
o If cross training was affecting production, we would modify this approach to just be a
longer training period for new workers. Based on the information we are given in the
article; it does not seem that the current 2-day program touches on topics like
communication or company culture. It only mentions covering the history of Precision,
safety tips, the TQC, and Precision “jargon”. Precision should use this training program
to get new workers excited about being a part of the company.
 Precision could introduce a rewards system of some sort to promote suggestions and even
incentivize workers to hit production goals.
o Employee engagement could go up if workers felt like they were working towards a
goal, and that they might even be rewarded (monetarily or otherwise) for hitting that
goal. This way, workers have a reason to maintain the same standard of work
regardless of if supervisors/managers are overseeing them.
o Small tokens could be given out to workers for every suggestion they put forward to
encourage communication between levels of the hierarchy.
o Something to be cautious of with this model is the possibility of workers throwing out
random suggestions to capitalize on rewards; there would have to be some sort of
limitation put in place.
  As an alternative to increasing/changing the training of workers, managers could find ways to
promote team building at each workstation. Workers could start to feel like they are a part of
something bigger if they felt the support of a team and might stay at the company longer.
Teams could even elect a representative to relay concerns/questions to upper levels.
o Team building, however, does require a good amount of training so it would be an
investment for the company, and managers would have some added responsibilities in
monitoring teams. However, as the majority of the employees live in company
dormitories, we feel this could also be done outside of the factory.

III. Optimize
 First immediate approach recommended for implementation would be a cross-rotational
training program. Jieliang’s quicker process of the barcodes thankfully did not impact downline
operations, but what if it did? With a rotational program of some sort, she would have a better
understanding and big picture view of how the full process works.
o A rotational program would also help potentially keep employees from leaving the
factory. If after a certain threshold, they wanted to switch to another similar position in
the factory, they could do so. A rotational program could take longer and slow down
production a bit to implement, but in the long-run would be beneficial for keeping
workers employed at the company and catering more to their needs. In “The Case For
Investing More in People”, we are met with the concept that productivity would
increase by simply investing more in human capital. By increasing training opportunities
and education, human capital would be invested, and the results should follow
accordingly (Garton).
o This approach should be implemented as an optional program for employees to partake
in, at the very least though they would need some sort of training to help them
understand the big picture of the factory. If the program was mandatory, it might give
the employees the sense that they are not doing a satisfactory job in their current role.
o This information will be communicated in one of their daily meetings, stressing how
great of an opportunity this is.
o There should be bi-weekly check-ins to ensure the employee is fulfilling one of their core
needs and to ensure they are absorbing the entire process.
 Second immediate approach recommended for implementation would be a rewards system for
suggestions/continuous improvements.
o Implementing a small token system for their suggestions would help fulfill the
employee’s emotional core aspect, as explained in “Why You Hate Work”, by causing
the employee to feel valued and appreciated for their contributions. Adding to the
employees' core would overall increase the worker’s engagement and productivity.
(Schwartz and Porath). Then, for a suggestion that gets implemented in the factory,
have a quarterly or annual competition for the best employee suggestion that was
implemented in which the winner gets a small bonus of around $500 or so. The costs of
the rewards are small compared to the overall benefit of potentially improving the
process (thus widening the margins) and the sense of fulfillment and engagement the
employee will experience.
 o It is important to create a sense of, “no idea is a bad idea” for communication to start
flourishing. It would also force the IDL’s and engineers to get more involved depending
on the employee suggestion. Typically, engineers or IDL’s would have to test the
suggestion before implementation. By these workers now being on the floor with the
DL’s, this could potentially form more of a sense of community.
IV. Conclusion/Grow
 Looking back on our process, we made a significant assumption that this factory is somewhat
culturally similar to the factories here in the Western part of the world. Going forward, we could
do more research about how factories in areas such as China operate culturally and discover the
kind of framework companies in this area exhibit.
 It’s important to consider everyone’s perspective in an organization, and it is evident the
culture, communication, and ways of process improvement in Precision need to change. We
believe the right approaches were taken in order to help make this needed change.
 An assumption of our own that the team took was that the manager (yellow hat) would want
their employees (white hat) to submit employee suggestions/continuous improvements in order
to potentially make the process better and widen the margins. We can think about approaches
that do not require an on-board manager next time. This assumption was also made because of
the culture in the Western world, not necessarily the culture over in China.
 We learned our team plays a great devil’s advocate, which immensely helped in choosing our
top approaches for Precision to take.
 Works Cited

Cappelli, Peter and Liat Eldor. “Where Measuring Engagement Goes Wrong.” Harvard Business Journal,
2019.

Garton, Eric. “The Case for Investing More in People.” Harvard Business Journal, 2017.

Porath, Christine and Tony Schwartz. “Why You Hate Work.” The New York Times, 2014.