MBA7061 Cardiff Met: Analyzing & Improving Service Adhesive Operations

This report analyzes the business operations of Service Adhesive Ltd., a mid-sized company specializing in adhesives for the FMCG sector. Despite past profitability, the company faces challenges including rising production costs and stagnant product quality. Previous improvement initiatives, such as TQM and Lean, have failed, leading to employee turnover and reliance on temporary labor. The report draws inspiration from a competitor, Happy Products, known for its successful team-based work structure and HRM practices. The proposed improvement initiative roadmap focuses on implementing a team-based organizational structure to foster a culture of continuous improvement and operational excellence. The report identifies potential risks, provides a time schedule, and emphasizes the importance of teamwork motivation and employee empowerment to drive successful change and achieve a competitive advantage. This analysis aims to provide a comprehensive strategy for reengineering Service Adhesive's processes and achieving sustainable growth.

Running head: HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Name of student
Name of university
Author’s note:

1
HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Table of Contents
Introduction....................................................................................................................2
Discussion......................................................................................................................2
Case study description................................................................................................2
Improvement initiative roadmap................................................................................7
Team work motivation and employee empowerment..............................................12
Time schedule report................................................................................................17
Risk register.............................................................................................................17
Risk matrix...............................................................................................................21
Conclusion................................................................................................................21
References....................................................................................................................23

2
HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Introduction
This report aims to discuss the various processes and the functions at Service
Adhesive Ltd. The present business operations approach of the service adhesive Ltd. Has
been briefly stated in this report and the need for the enhancement of the business process is
briefly stated in this report. A critical description of the improvement initiative roadmap that
is adopted by the Service adhesive for improving the operations is provided in this report. A
critical description of the teamwork motivation and the employee empowerment approach
that is adopted by the company is provided in this report. The potential risks are identified
and then description of the risks are provided for ensuring the maximum success of the
improvement project is provided in this report and the time schedule report is provided in this
report.
Discussion
Case study description
The company in consideration is the mid-sized company that was founded over
twenty years ago for producing the specialist adhesives that is majorly used in the consumer
goods that are fast-moving businesses where the adhesive had to be ensured as non-irritating.
Largely due to the patented adhesive formulation and the outstanding record in the
development of the new adhesive products, this company has always achieved significant
profit. Even though the company gained significant raise in the sales revenue, these present
times has been a slowdown for the company as the business process that is presently
employed is incapable of maintaining with the pace of the market growth. As per the senior
management of the service adhesives, there are majorly two reasons for this downfall, which
are the rise of the production costs rapidly than the sales revenues and secondly due to the
product quality, even though it is acceptable, could not significantly provide better products

3
HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
than the competitors. The issues was recognised by the senior management for numerous
years and then several improvement initiatives with the focus on the process improvement
and the product quality have been deployed but were incapable of producing the proper
enhancement of the processes. These reengineering of the business process has led to the
even declining of the position as compared to the competitors. Moreover, none of these
initiatives has been completely taken hold and tehn delivered as it has been promised.
In the last years, Service Adhesives Ltd had intended to embrace numerous initiatives
and the philosophies about the modern operations like the TQM or Total Quality
Management as well as Lean, and all the projects failed significantly as these projects could
not impact the working of the business properly. It could be determined why these strategies
failed and the company invested significant time and money as the remedy of the project
failure. It was observed that there was significant employee turn-over rate and this made the
company to recruit short term contract labours as the solution for controlling the fluctuating
orders. A significant portion of the recruits were from the region of eastern European Union
member states like the Czech Republic and Poland and it was accounted for majority of 20%
of the complete shop-floor personnel. There were some devastating issues with the temporary
staff who were not adhering to the quality procedures or the referring to all the written
material that was majorly written in English. In spite of this, the management of the company
understood the utilisation of the migrant labour as increasingly positive, which was that these
people were significantly hardworking and it offered the opportunity of saving significant
costs. Nonetheless, there were some tension among the temporary and the permanent
employees over the aspects that were observed as the perceived threats to the jobs of these
individuals. The operations Director of the service adhesives, was specifically concerned
regarding the failure of the initiatives of improvement and this forced him to organise
numerous visits to several other companies with same profiles and also to several customers

4
HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
of the Service Adhesives. One of the competitors of the company who were the Happy
products.
The competitor company are the global company and the market leaders in the
respective field. And even though the various plants in distinct sectors off the world
comprised of the various approaches for organising the production operations, this complete
group had significant reputation for comprising the human resource management. This plant
visited by the Service adhesives was in third year of the five-year programme for introducing
and embedding the structures which was majorly focused on the teams and the culture of the
teams. The Service Adhesives company recognised the reason for the immense success of the
company that was the implementation of the team based work structure and the combined
efforts of the entire company towards progressing one major goal. This company also
produced the high selling adhesives that were utilised by the common people and were
immensely successful in implementing the required changes in the work flow. This company
also implemented the successful strategies for combining the technological aspects to the
working strategies of the organisation. This technological development of the factories were
considered as the first operator towards the growth and the progress of the company whereas
the second operator was the specialised individuals of health and the safety representative.
The third factor was the trained quality representative who liaised along with the quality
department. The fourth factor was the trained maintenance engineer who could perform the
tasks of the engineer with extensive precision and accuracy. The teams of the company had
the extensive support of the production process engineering, logistics and the quality
departments. Majority of the problems that were encountered on the daily basis regarding the
operations of the company were resolved immediately with the implementation of the
mitigation strategies and prevent this disturbances from happening again. It ensured that the
output of the production, the quality of the products and the efficiency of the line were

5
HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
controlled effectively and efficiently. The individual roles of the teams allowed the team
members to provide the required contribution and then take the immense satisfaction in the
knowledge that were playing as the important in the success of the organisation. The roles of
the team specialists also provided the effective opportunity for the networking with the
counterparts in several other plants all across the world. There was effective encouragement
among the international communication and it was added to sense of the belonging and the
goal orientation of the organisation. there were many teams who were involved in the
determination of the annual performance targets for some of the particular areas. Using this,
the company annually there were filtering down to individual plants by the business direction
that was identified using the corporate strategy and the developed requirements of
performance for each of the business division. The plants devised the strategic targets for the
sections as well as the teams on their own developed the list of the activities and the projects
for meeting along with exceed the targets of the business. Using this method, the individual
operator on shop floor had the direct influence on the future and the business future.
These methods of business process were extensively analysed and assessed by the
service adhesives company and this provided the required motivation for the reengineering of
the processes of the business and gain the extensive growth of the company. The decision
makers of the company came to the conclusion to implement the required methods and the
steps for improving the business functions and gain significant competitive advantage. It was
discovered that the Service Adhesive company was missing the cohesiveness that was
majorly demanded by the customers of the company. Until this time, moreover, the
management of the Service Adhesive Ltd. were priding themselves on the conventional
hierarchical structure of the organisation. This organisation had the five layers of the
operational management from plant director at top to the shop operatives placed at the lower
section. This chain of command had been strictly enforced by the operating procedures that

6
HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
were intertwined with the long-established and the extensive system of the quality assurance.
But in the present business with the increase of the competition among the various companies
it was required to implement the new technological discoveries into effect for matching the
business pace of the markets.
The company discovered the new approach that was the learning from visit. It was
decided to change the methods by which the working of the organisation was executed and
also make the radical improvement to the operational effectiveness of the organisation. It was
further decided that the new variety of the organisational culture was required for the
challenging situations in the business market and the best response to the challenges of the
business market is the responding by effective learning from all the best practices that could
be discovered and analysed from the market functions. It was analysed that the customers
preferred the companies who considered themselves as effectively forward thinking and had
the courage of taking risks and came up with the new innovations that could be used by the
common people for enhancing the daily life. It provided the required motivation to the
company to invest significantly on the technological solutions and implement these features
in the business processes of the company. The company came up with the plan of adopting
the team based structure of the organisation and with the major aim of the establishment of
the culture of improvement and also gain the operational superiority. The structure of the
team based lateral formation is the organisational chart that performs the grouping of the
employees on the similar level in the teams who could perform the particular job functions.
The structure performs the bundling of the low-overhead, nominal structure of the
management of the lateral structure with team efforts to any hybrid structure. There are
several advantages to the lateral structure of the organisation that is majorly based on the
teams. There are several benefits of the team based structure of the organisation that are
intended to be exercised by the Service adhesive organisation. Some of them includes the

7
HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
lower overhead management, efficient teamwork and the elimination of the delays. The
organisational structure that is focused on the team structure is very similar to the
conventional lateral structure in the carrying of the minimal overhead management for
causing the delays in the delays of decision making and the implementation of the best
practices or the new ideas. With the elimination of the requirement of climbing the chain of
the command for receiving the approval for the ideas or the changes to the business model,
the team based lateral structure could provide the required changes easily and permit the
rapid response for the various conditions of the market. With the spreading of the
responsibility among the team members instead of having any sole individual in the charge of
any decision making or the management of the any business area, the decisions could be
provided using the quorum and the it could be provided to the team members as the team
members could be assigned to the research areas of requirement, then implement the required
changes or even work on any other problems while any other team member focusses on the
present situations or the business practice.
Improvement initiative roadmap
The improvement initiative roadmap that has been adopted by the company is the
teamwork based organisation structure that would help the company to work in the complete
synchronisation. The activity of the group of some individuals who are working
cooperatively towards the achieving of the shared goals using the various differentiation of
the roles and the utilising the elaborate systems for communicating is the basic in the team
based organisational structure (Chu, KrishnaKumar and Khosla 2014). The present
enthusiasm for the team working in the organisations provides the evidence of the deeper,
unconscious recognition about the idea that it might be the appropriate method of working
provides the assurance of the immense progress than it could be have been achieved earlier
using the individual endeavour or using the mechanistic approaches of working (Frost 2014).

8
HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
As it can be observed from the above discussion of the case description, there is the lack of
the teamwork among the individuals of the organisation that have resulted in the inefficient
growth of the company and which led to the requirement of implementing the changes for the
organisation. The service adhesives formed the efficient teams with the suppliers for boosting
the quality, decrease the costs of the organisation and ensure the continuous enhancement
(O’Grady and Akroyd 2016). The company formed effective alliances with the various
suppliers from other countries for ensuring the best raw materials is gained by the
organisation. In the present times, the organisations are hiring the employee who might be
from various organisational and national loyalties from the distinct cultural backgrounds and
the unequal status for enhancing the working process of the organisation and provide the
effective growth for the employees (Cheng et al. 2016). The teams who work on the
marketing and the awareness sectors link towards on a common ground for allowing the
efficient marketing campaigns (Sørensen et al. 2015). The stages of the team based working
for achieving the team based organisational structure are the decision of the team based work,
developing the systems for supporting the working of the organisation, the appropriate
selection of the team members and the team leaders, development of the effective teams,
sustaining and reviewing the effectiveness of the teams and then ultimately reviewing the
team based work (Smets et al. 2014). The first stage of the team based work comprises of the
understanding of the value and the benefits of the team based work and then conducting the
required organisational review. Prior the introduction of the team based work structure is
done, there is an important aspect that needs to be comprehended, which the culture and the
extent of the team are working in organisation (Hoffmann et al. 2014). This initial phase
includes the development of the plan for effective implementation of the team based work
structure. The next stage of the team-based organisation structure requires the examination of
the support systems that are associated to the team based work structure like the training,

9
HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
reward systems, interteam relations, communication and then making the appropriate plans
for adapting or developing these plans for the team based work structure (Mahembe and
Engelbrecht 2014). The phase that is associated after this step is the establishment of the
criteria for the team member and the team leader selection and then the implementation of the
suitable process of selection and the recruitment (Santa 2015). The training of particularly the
team leader is significantly important that comprises of the activities of leading the teams and
it could be challenging task as it is immensely different from other types of leadership and
this raises the issue of equipping the team leaders with the required knowledge, attitudes and
the skills (Weaver, Dy and Rosen 2014). The next stage that is connected with the
implementation of the team based work structure is the understanding and the enabling the
process of team development that includes the clarification of the objectives, communication
processes, roles and the process of the decision making. After the completion of this phase,
the next stage includes the appropriate coaching of the teams for setting the criteria for
evaluation of the performance of the teams as well as discover the required changes for
enhancement of the performance (Loufrani-Fedida and Missonier 2015). After the
completion of all the stages, comes the stage of the reviewing of the team based work
structure. It includes the evaluation of the contribution of the team based work structure to
effectiveness of the organisation and then making the required changes for ensuring the
continuous and optimal contribution of the team based work structure for the growth of
organisation (Sokhanvar, Matthews and Yarlagadda 2014).
The introduction of the team based work structure in the organisation might not be
effective immediately. It takes significant time prior achieving complete effectiveness
(Malmelin and Virta 2016). The procedure of the introduction of the team based work
structure needs the deep as well as wide ranging modifications in the organisation. The
complete achievement of the modifications intakes significant time and the organisation is

10
HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
required to understand that the initial implementation would intake almost one year along
with extra two years for ensuring that the modifications are implemented successfully and it
produces the required results that were intended (McGaghie et al. 2014). Team based work
structure needs the change of the structure, as an instance the alteration of the process of
working of the people with each other, share any information and then make the pathway that
would help the organisation to understand the methods by which the people could work
effectively in teams (Xavier 2014). Additionally, the working in teams needs the various
knowledge, attitudes and the skills. This is the main reason why several organisations would
be significantly affected during the process of the development of the teams (Gjeraa, Møller
and Østergaard 2014). Hence the managers are required to include the sufficient number of
staff members in the process and not only the teams of management. Changes within the
organisation might impact significantly in the organisation. Therefore, the changes requires
the adequate knowledge of the leaders in the advance of all the contents of all modules and
the proper knowledge of the map of the journey prior embarking on process of the
introduction of the team based work structure (Salas et al. 2015). The leaders must have the
backing as well as the confidence of the team of top management in organisation. Leader of
the change process would have to tolerate and manage the resistance, conflict and the pain
that is linked with introduction of such a major modification in the organisation. The leaders
are required to possess the strongly held and the positive vision of value of any process for
achieving the effective growth of the organisation (Sherr et al. 2016). The leaders would play
an important role in the conveying of the value and significance of the process all through the
organisation. The change leaders are required to have the proper idea of the area from where
the required support could be taken and it would include the members of the team of the top
management (Griffiths 2016).

11
HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Due to the process of the introduction of the team based work structure in the
organisation would be significantly complex and challenging and it is essential to maintain
the detailed log of all the progresses that could be utilised for both the monitoring of the
process and the enabling of the change manager or the leader for communicating efficiently
regarding the process with various groups who provide their effective participation in the
training sessions (Zingg et al. 2015). As much as the information is stored in this process
would help the organisation to provide the briefing to each of the groups who participate in
training sessions. The communication is the crucial part during the process of the introduction
of the team based work structure and with gaining increased ability of understanding about
the processes of the organisation would help in providing the required knowledge to the
participants in the training sessions and make the transition smoother and easy without facing
many obstructions (Liaw et al. 2014).
There are some reasons why the team based work structure might not be completely
implemented and it could lead to the failure. Some of the reasons are the lack of important
tasks for the teams, lack of effective freedom and responsibility of the teams, structuring of
the teams around the individual work, unavailability of the proper leaders for the organisation
and the conflict among the strong and responsible teams (Okuyama, Wagner and Bijnen
2014). If the organisation is unable to provide the effective and developing work for the
teams, it might lead to the misuse of the teams. The organisation might face significant
damage due to the inefficiency of utilising the teams that are built for working on any project
(Dey et al. 2015). The creation of the teams in the organisation and then being unable to
provide them with the freedom and the authority in making the appropriate decisions, which
would allow them to achieve the tasks in most efficient method could have negative impact
on the working of the organisation. The organisation need to implement the team based work
structure and provide the adequate tasks to the team members for allowing the efficient use of