Shoe Corporation of Illinois

Group 8, Section A

Objectives To decrease the task interdependence and improve collaboration and communication Communication of a common goal within the entire organisation. To reduce conflict between various departments as well as reduce role conflicts. To increase the speed of pilot runs and production processes. Reduce the cost of production to compete with its competitors. Recommendations Proper streamlining of production process. In the case of goods that do not require sequential scheduling (simple shoes) the company can opt for parallel production processes so that waiting overheads are reduced. (Note: Short term perspective) Note: Taking a long term perspective: Divide the organization into functional units instead of having a vertical structure Involve participative decision making and reduce burden on the president Clear and proportionate designation of tasks to reduce goal conflicts Invest in IT infrastructure with Forecasting and Business Intelligence tools Reasons for decisions
(Assumption we have made: The case is recent. Presently there is no IT infrastructure and company can afford one in future)

Having functional department like design department where styling manager, designer pattern maker and statistician can work together instead of routing all their decisions through the president. This will decrease the time of information flow Reduce decision making time & improve collaboration and communication. In the following structure the decision making for pilot runs is routed 3 times to President which can be reduced through this structure. Participative decision making will reduce the burden on President and lead to better results due to comprehensive thoughts. Employees like John Flynn with creative abilities and good experience will feel empowered. Clear designation of tasks will not lead to role conflicts(Problems like that between order clerk and Freeman could be solved ) In long run IT infrastructure will enable the company integrate and automate processes. It will improve coordination and reduce the friction among departments further enabling faster and informed decision making. Further predictive analysis and BI tools can give scope for better forecast of orders and better planning due to better understanding of customers and lead to profits in future Implications People might resist to new organizational structure which will change the organization culture. Introducing IT requires a lot of initial investment and overhead costs to work and as their profits margins are not good at present they might face losses initially.

Shoe Corporation of Illinois

Group 8, Section A

The existing employees might feel threatened by observing a change in the operations due to introduction of IT systems which will lead to resistance from their end.