Ahmed Talaat 900060641

Company introduction Union for Coatings and chemical industries is a company that seeks a high position in the market since its foundation in 2000. This is the main target of the company that inspired everyone. Thus, the company has a good industrial infrastructure that provides a high tendency for adapting the cutting edge technologies.

The factory has a lab of R&D which is equipped with the modern instrumentations that helps the lab to produce its work efficiently. Also, there is a lab of Q.C., and a lab of Q.A in order to e nsure the reliability of the products that is produced by our factory. Furthermore, The production lines are from the top producers among the world Germany, and Switzerland. Also, they were installed by specialists from the producers company. Moreover, the development is extended to the company by applying the system of ISO, and acquiring the ISO Certificates 9001, 18001, 14001. Furthermore, the company decided to be equipped with the cutting edge techniques on both the industrial and managerial level by c o-operating with "Symbios Consulting" in order to apply the six sigma, and the lean system through various projects all over the company. Seeking a high position in market is the motivation for us to keep in pace with the developing world. Thus, we took license from" BASF" from 2000 2004, and "Protech- Oxyplast" from 2004 till now in the powder coating line of business. Still, we are developing the managerial and financial logistics to achieve our goal. Thus, we have attained a strong position in the powder coating market guiding us to another step of development which is efficiently using our capabilities in producing liquid coatings to reach a strong position in the local and regional market.

Manager introduction The manager chosen to speak about the company is Dr. Yehia Talaat who is the founder, and the chairman of the company. He founded Union in 1988 as a small offi

ce for trading, and then throughout the years the office developed to be a factory. The transition from trading to industry has caused a huge shock because the circle of responsibility became wider. The machines, workers, engineers, raw materials, sales, manufacturing, chemical formulas are needed to be organized, conrolled by him. Before, he needed to get some goods, and sell them. Now, things are different in getting more complex. Therefore in this project, we will be exposed to his journey in establishing a factory.

Manager activities :

Entering the chemical industry, obliges you to behave based on two words which are: efficiency, and innovation. Therefore, the CEO main target in his management is to spread the culture of innovation, and efficiency. These are main goals that the CEO has set to the company, where the way he performs his job is addressing these two words. The CEO has to set the yearly plan for the company beginning by setting the main goal represented in the volume of sales, and the marginal profit. Then, the plan has to go into further details, the place of the suppliers, the number of suppliers, the numbe r of distributors, the volume of recycled products, the sub projects that will be done in the year. For example, This year the plan was to increase the sales by 15%, while remaining the same marginal profit because of the harsh competition, and the raise o f raw material prices. The detailed plan was to change the raw material supplier from Europe to China due to the rise in prices in Europe. The next step was to have a study to reduce the number of workers as a possible in order to use the non needed worker s in the new factory. The next step is to have a study to reduce the recycle time. Moreover, Performing a market study to identify the market share, and fill the gaps. This plan is issued with delegation for the mangers, and dead line. In order to assure that the plan can be implemented the CEO has to organize the management structures of the company. Also, for this year

the manager has performed some changes in the managerial structure, and cancelled some departments, and some departments, and joined other departments together. The planning buying department has been spitted into two departments, the external buying, and the internal buying. It was a way of organizing the job to have focus. The Customer service department has been added as a separate department to deal with the after selling problems with the customers. Before, the Quality control was responsible for the customer service. These actions of organization was very important for the company to reach the goal as it facilitates the job in for mangers, and create a competitive environment which is in favor for the company. The next step is to lead your employees to achieve the targets set. Leading is the most crucial thing for suc cess. The problem of leading is that it isn't a couple of steps that by following them, anyone can be a leader. The CEO is the first person to enter the factor every day at 6:45 am while the rest of employees come at the official time at 8:00 am. This action spreads the spirit of commitment to work, and give an indication for the people how the CEO is dedicated to his job. Also, if there is a challenging problem, the CEO go and work with his employees until the problem is finished. For example, When a new machine was bought, the CEO has to study with the managers the installation process, and stay with them while installing the machine. Moreover, The CEO has to spread the self confidence to his team to trust in themselves, and their work. this appeared when the sales manager was going to one of the largest customers, and he feared the competition from the multinational; competitor. Thus, the CEO had to remind the sales manager with previous situations where the company has led success, and the achievements he did before. Leading the people in such a way has created a helpful atmosphere for achieving the goals. The last function was to control the process, and take the corrective actions in order to achieve the goal. This has taken place after the revolution, when comparing the volume produced to the target, and then a corrective action was needed through increasing the number of shifts to recap with the target. These are the functions of the manger that he perform, and shape his daily work. In order to do his daily work the manger needed to have a good technical skills to be able to help his team to achieve goals from technical point of view. Also, interpersonal skills is needed to be able with the Large customers for selling the company's products , and to be capable of

dealing with the employees who are from different background, and culture. Moreover, CEO has to adopt a conceptual skills to put the strategy of the company.

Management approach :

Regardless of the scientific name of the managemen t approaches, different approaches were being considered until the optimum approach has been achieved through mixing of the different approaches in the company. At the beginning there was no management approach since the CEO was involved in everything, and anyone who could help in the solution was welcomed. The first approach adopted by the CEO was the scientific approach, where each person was needed to be put in the right place, and have some sort of standardization for his work. It was a very importan t step in the business to have a job description for each position in the company, and certain process that everyone must abide by. Thus, was like applying the scientific management by Taylor. Yet, when it was applied, they didn't know there was a theory called such. When this a method was applied it began to relief a lot from the CEO. After, short time of implementing this approach. It was found that the people are stuck with some situations which isn't in the procedures. Therefore, there was a need to have some modifications on the scientific approach to enhance the performance of the company which was found in Weber's bureaucracy. Therefore, the Authority hierarchy was introduced were some people in the middle management have some authority to interact with the changes that are in the environment, and not expected by the procedures. This takes place when he made departments for example, having a financial department, production, Research, and development where the employers in each department, asks the manager of the departments if they face a mysterious situation. Yet, it was important to prepare these mangers well to be capable to a adapt to their new positions. This was discussed thoroughly in the previous paragraph. Now, there was like a stable management systems that can deal with the daily dynamic world, and interact well to benefit the company. Although, the employees were paid well, yet they left the company. After investigating for the reasons of the high turnover of employees, it was found that the people that the company is stable and

they aren't having a good career. Therefore, career orientation was thoroughly promoted in the company, but first, the business needs to develop exponentially to occupy such approach. Really, expansions in products, and geographically were introduced to make a challenge environment. The people who succeeds ,now, are promised with outstanding career. the best thing that about this point that it meets the interest of owner of high growth rate. As seen some points of Weber's bureaucracy has been taken to establish a well based management system. All of these were like sorts of stabilizing the company on effectiveness which isn't sufficient to compete in the market. Moreover, the efficiency was enhanced by the application of the quantitative approach. The six sigma, and the lean six sigma were like magicians who were responsible for reducing the costs by 30 %. these was achieved by forming team of manager who were asked to acquire the green belt in six sigma by implementing their projects in the factory. for example, the production manager was responsible for reducing the setup time, and the intermediate storage through applying the DMAIC approach. The quality control was able to reduce the time needed for inspection by having some inspections on the production line. The key word here is reengineering the process through the quantitative approach. Therefore, putting the efficiency as an objective wasn't dream. these managers were asked to transfer their knowledg e about six sigma to their employees, So instead of 5 projects, there will be 50 projects. There isn't a need to implement all of them, but if the best 10 were implemented, They will make a huge difference which was the case. Moreover, it turned to have an extra benefit which wasn't considered while the startup of such project. the people seem to be more interested in work, they are working hard. Searching for the reason, it was found that the people were very excited since they were involved with developm ent of the company. Furthermore, the organizational behavior is applied naturally by the CEO, yet not on a scientific basics. The CEO has to dealt with his employees on human level at certain time. This takes place where special condition for people is considered. for example, the handicapped, the youth who wants to marry, someone who needs to cure his son. These seems to be simple things. nevertheless, they mean a lot for the Egyptian people. Thus, Union approach in management can be considered as a mixture of quantitative, general administrative , Scientific approach.

Company's culture:

The CEO is trying to be a symbolic. yet, in the real situations it seems to be pure omnipotent. Believing in the importance of having an institution that isn't depending on the CEO , the CEO is trying to be symbolic. This appeared a lot while his travel outsides leaving the company for duration more than 20 days. To enhance such a concept, people has to trust themselves, and the floor left for them to take the decisions to interact with the environment. Yet, at a certain point the mangers get stuck, and need the advice of the CEO. Therefore, in it's real face it is considered as an omnipotent system.

in the powder coatings industry each department should have a unique culture which is the hardest thing to achieve, and that consumed a tremendous effort. The Research and development culture should be innovation, and risk taking since the chemical formulas all over the world are being changed in order to increase the competitive edge. This is enhanced by asking the team for new formulas that are more effic ient, and have a good price regardless of the number of both trials, and failures. Also, it is enhanced by having guests from the top companies in the field to share experience with the company's researchers. On the other hand, the production culture sho uld be stability, The customer is always interested in submitting the same product with the same specifications each time. Thus, a lot of studies were performed to figure out the different parameters affecting the final outcome. Thus, the final outcome can be controllable to a great extents through the identified factors to achieve stability in the production. The financial department is mainly concern with attention to details because simple mistakes in numbers can make a huge difference. Moreover, the financial department supervises the ware house which make this culture more critical. However, it is very hard to bare the losses while trying to adopt such a culture, So people who really have high attention for detail are recruited for such department to progress quickly in spreading the attention to details culture. Each department should have a certain culture to excel in doing the required tasks as stated.

Furthermore, there should be a more general culture prevailing on the company which was decided by the chairman to be stability since the factory has been only in 10 years for the market, and need to keep its position . therefore, the stability culture is very important in the next 5 years in order to keep up what has been achieved. This is spread b y asking all to maintain the same performance if not better, and by having a common vision for every single person in the factory, and through tough auditing. However, to have for each department its own nature there was one common challenge represented by the Egyptian culture not by the size of the organization nor the age of the organization since both are relatively small. The Egyptian culture have a high trend of aggressiveness, and laziness which was fought by extensive training , and incentives, and penalties. Especially in this task , the interpersonal skills is crucial. There is a great need to know how everyone can be directed either by motivation, or by penalty.

The most important thing in business is the customer. Therefore, customer service department was established to be the link between the different departments in the factory, and the customers. This department is composed of team form the production, sales, Q.C, R&D. It was shown afterwards that the customer service department has contributed to several successes with the customers. This is considered in the science of management as a customer responsiveness culture. Moreover, it has an indirect effect where each employee in his work c an know how can he affect the customer which understood through the customer service. This took place in the R&D lab where a Chemist used to be careless, always says I forgot, and there was penalties on him that reached warning to fire. Then, by giving him some help, and the change between the tone of penalty, and incentives, he was improved a lot.

Now, Union has its own culture that can work in the daily business without having any problems. Also, the CEO is performing his duties, and he is targeting stability. Therefore, while planning , the CEO is risk adverse, and trying to stabilize, and standardize the job while organizing. Nevertheless, Union's culture cannot be considered as a strong culture since the company has been only in the market for 10 years, with high turnover of employees at the beginning. Moreover, the mission statement has been set only in the past 5 years so there isn't a lot of stories

to be said to strengthen the culture. Still, the CEO is trying to spread the culture of stability, and enhance it as the time passes by the different means available. By having a more general view , Union is a manufacturing company who buy raw materials from its suppliers where 90% are international suppliers, and sell its products to mainly to local customers. Thus, enhancing the culture , and change environment is very important.
. Managing in a global envirnoment:

Union is a part of world which globalization is considered one of its main characteristics. In other terms, competitors from other countries are entering the market, and the company can enter new markets. The competition is more severe since a larger competitors are entering the market. Therefore, to survive in the market, the company need to interact with the global world.

This was a great motivation to jump outside the boundaries of Egypt. The beginning step was to export products in the region. looking to the region and identifying the several countries close to Egypt, Saudi Arabia was seen as a huge market that keeps growing, Syria was also, a growing market, yet at the time being was a small market. Libya was a relatively good market that has been stabilized. On the other hand the Sudan was a huge market that has no interest in quality. Union began by exporting to these countries, yet there was a problem in the price of product due to the customs, and the tariffs applied on the imported product to their countries. This was a like a turning point on the strategy of the company. In other words, this was the ignition for expanding the company globally through opening factories outside Egypt. The CEO has to perform a careful study about the political, and economic factors in the countries to decide on a couple of countries open new factories in them. Syria was having an industrial revolution, and building new industrial zones to attract foreign direct investments, yet the political situation was very complicated where the people were suffering from a dictatorship, and poor economic condition.

Saudi Arabia is a wealthy country that has very good economic condition , facilitates the mission of investor, in specific if it is in the field of industry. On the other side, Libya has suffered from a dictator, while the economic condition of the people were good. yet the market was stable and wasn't expected to grow. The Sudan has customs of 70 % on any product that is imported, but if a factory import it will have 0 %. After having the following situation a strategy for dealing with the global environment has to be put. Saudi Arabia was the best place to invest according to the study performed. Als o, the CEO decided to have a joint venture with a Sudanese factory. Furthermore, in Syria there was an agreement between the Egyptian, and Syrian government to enhance the trade through eliminating the customs, so the company plan was to has a distributor in Syria. the same happened in Libya.

The next important task is to decide about the management of the factories outside Egypt. The CEO believes that the management has to be centralized in Egypt. The factories outside Egypt has to report to a team in Egypt. Therefore, the company is considered as a Global company.

Further more, after studying the African culture, it was found that paints has an important role in their culture since when someone is born they paint, someone is dead they paint, and someone is married they paint. It is their culture. thus, there is a plan to enter the African market with liquid paints.

This the strategy of union is designed by the CEO to deal with the global environment.

Decision making:

In every day job many problems are faced and different types of decisions are needed to be taken. In other words, the job from the point of view of the CEO is solving the long list of problem that you must face every day. By sorting the problems, it will be found that is a repetitive problems that has been dealt with hundreds of times, so the solution is present, and always implemented by the employees. There are a higher level problems that hasn't been faced before, but it isn't risky to take a decision in it. Therefore ,the middle management can deal with such a topic. When the problem wasn't faced before , and is crucial the CEO is the responsible for solving the problem. The CEO when face such a problem has first the problem, in other words he tries to be specific, and focus as much as possible. For example, there was a joint venture proposal form a multinational company , and there was some misunderstanding about the equipment needed. The MNC needed a certain supplier for the equipments, while the CEO see that they are more expensive. The First step was to know why they insist on this supplier epically, and then it appeared that the MNC need a company that provide a complete system where all you need to do is to press the button. Therefore, the problem was clears, and focused and can be represented by saying that it is needed to have a supplier that could provide an integrated criteria. Therefore , the criteria developed was based on reliability first, then cost. These were considered the main contributors to the decision. The next step by the CEO was to develop alternatives for the problem. The first alternative was to import the whole system from the company recommended by the MNC. the second alternative was to have the engineers in the factory to be supervisors for designing the whole system integrated, and to outsource the equipment needed from each supplier based on reliability, and cost. To choose the second alternative, the reliability of that choice was need to be emphasized. The production lines in the factor y were integrated by the engineers, and they are working according to the specifications. thus, both solutions have same aspect was have same reliability. The cost is the key issue that will decide. The cost of the second choice is less cheaper, it is like 50% less. therefore, it was chosen. The action plan was prepared by the engineer to begin implementation on first of august. The control process or evaluation will be after installing the system.

. This summarizes how a decision is taken on the level of top management in the company were it is based on rational , and critical thinking that is supported by the data gathered. Always, the data gathered can't give the strength to face the uncertainty of the situation , yet dealing with such a problem makes intuition the keyword. As, seen in the previous example the experience of building a complete system was one of the alternatives that were obtained. The CEO takes decision based on rational, but sometimes intuition is needed.

Planning for the company :

Planning is a keyword for the success of any company . the CEO is involved in the planning for the company . The CEO base the main strategy for the company that should be implemented for the next five years. This is considered as a long term goal which states to be the biggest manufacturer of powder coatings in the middle east. This is the directional goal that the company has to take in the next five years. Therefore a detailed plan should be availed to step this goal as a small goal for each year. Therefore a short term goal has to be pit for each year, and as stated before the main goal for this year was to i ncrease the volume of sales by certain number, and the goal for the next year will be preparing a team that can mange several factories outside Egypt. This is a sort of planning for the long-term goal.

By having such strategy for the company, everyone has believed in what he/ she is doing since the uncertainty was reduced, and all of them have the same vision. The yearly plan everyone shares in setting the goal through iterative process of discussions. For example, the producti on manager prepares a study to increase the volume of production, and this study is based on the experience of the workers on the machine, and the improvements that can be done. Then, the study is discussed between the production manger, and the technical manger to estimate it's feasibility, and if new entrants to the discussion are needed like the financial manger, or the R&D manager , they are welcomed. Afterwards, the

technical manger presents the study to the CEO, and the approval of the plan is studied. Thus, the plan for the year is the effort of each employee in the company, so everyone believe in it. This opens the door to Management by objectives since the goal is set by the people.
Organizational structure:

In order to achieve the plan the company should have an organizational structure. The first step in the organization structure is to have work specialization which lead to several departments based on functionality. therefore, the factory has the CEO in the top management, and the technical, Financial manager, PR manager in the middle management. Then, the production manager, Q.C. manager, R& D manger, Accountant manager, planning department manager.

Having such hierarchy in the organization, an authority should be given the managers, as they bear responsibilities. The authority was given to take decisions in the repeated problems, an d also the authority was given in the nontraditional problems, but the outcomes weren't good . Therefore, there is a tendency for the centralization to assure tha t the outcomes are good. The CEO is trying to decentralize the decision step by step since the middle managers need to have some experience, and training for taking the right decision. An organization of 130 employees is considered to be a small organization according to the number of employees in the company. Therefore the span of control of middle managers can be in the range of 20 - 35, and the span of control of frontline managers can range from 15 25. All of these employees based on main frame work which is minimizing the cost , while increasing the productivity To achieve the following frame work There are group project that are initiated to reduce the cost . These produces the culture of the team work as the organization is to be considered as a modular organization. This organizational structure was very important to be capable of achieving the goals that are set.

Human Resources:

The employees are the main driving force for the company since they are the people who perform the process, and ar e distributed on the organizational structure. Therefore, the presence of human resources department is crucial issue to get the maximum efficiency of the employees in the company.

In Union the human resource department role can appear a lot in the following situation. After collecting the reports of the previous year, they realized that there is a vacancy in the organizational structure between the CEO, and the technical, PR, financial manager. In other words, there should be a Vice president to supervise the execution of the plans , and follow up with the managers to give the CEO the space for strategic missions. The CEO agreed, and asked the HR to take the responsibility for such duty. The job description was to supervise the execution of the plans , and follow up with the managers , while the job specification was to have a manger that has an experience at least 10 years, and has accomplished achievements in the field of execution. Then Recruitment began by trying to fill this vacancy fro m inside the company, yet there was no one able to take such role since they lake the executive part. Therefore, Employee referrals was the chosen method due to the sensitivity of the position, and to select the right person. This method was very successful where the vice president for the competitor which was a multinational company was leaving the company, and accepted to fulfill the position. The orientation was done by the CEO to describe the nature of the job, and how they could cooperate to have the execution for the plans of the company. The vice president is doing his work, and has released a lot of stress from the CEO. The evaluation of the manager will be at the end of the year, hopefully it will be good . The Vice president has taken some compensations for such a job by having an inc entive which is the salary of 3 month if he achieved the target.

Individual behavior:

One of the main challenges that the CEO faces is the individual behavior because of the huge differences between people. The individual behavior has a direct result on the employee productivity, absenteeism, turnover. One of the indicators to the individual behavior is job satisfaction. For example, The CEO found that the productivity of the production manager is the best among the factory which was mainly due to job satisfaction. The production manager finds his job challenging, and find every task that he completes as a great success, and always looking for the next task, also the financial incentives for the success played an important role in the job satisfaction . On the other hand, the Q.C manager absenteeism is very high since he has a negative attitude based on his beliefs about work which is a place where you can spent some time without producing, and have some talk with your colleagues. Furthermore, the turn over the employees was reduced after supporting a career for each individual in the company which gives the feeling of security, Therefore, the affective attitude of security in job is very important for reducing the turnover of employees.

Moreover, The CEO is trying to spread the belief that the company has an internal locus of control. This was an important belief that the company should have in order to give an identity for the company. This took place when the sales manager returned to the CEO and complaining about a customer, and saying that there is a great probability to lose he customer. The CEO reply was fir sure another powder supplier will supply, and all of us are in the same environment, so the company can control everything since it a powd er manufacturer.

Also, the CEO emphasized on the importance of the operating condition represented in the incentives for the employees when the targets are achieved. This give a feeling Organization citizenship because

they feel that what affects the co mpany affects them, so they are a part of the company. Moreover, certain attitudes are needed in the job, This the CEO is trying to advocate some actions while adverse others which is considered as a mold for the behavior. This takes place by punishment, and rewarding. For example, when the production manager provides a report for how to develop he factory without being asked for, a reward was given for his effort to encourage the people to follow his steps. To prevent certain action from prevailing in the job a spontaneous decisions are done.

Motivation:

Motivation is the driving force for the employees to work. Thus, the CEO needs to provide a continuous motivation to achieve the goal. The CEO based his motivation according to Maslow hierarchy. By identifying were the employee is in the hierarchy, you know how to motivate him. For example, the production manager is the self actualization level, so giving him challenging tasks where he can utilize his skills is considered as a best challenge for him. On the other hand, there is a worker who has 7 children, so all what he care about is to get enough money. Thus, giving incentives on achievements is the best motivator for this worker.

As stated before, every single person shares while preparing the plan. Thus, everyone feels that the goal belongs to him/her, and that the goal can be achieved. Also, the designing of the job affects directly the employee. If the job is repetitive or routine, or if it is cha llenging. This affects a lot the employee attitude toward the job. For example, the vice president job was prepared to be challenging with great enrichment since a manger in such a position won't work a traditional or routine job. Therefore the job design is an important aspect. Also, the job characteristic model is important to put the right person in the right place

if the job nature is challenging, so a person with special talents need to be capable of affording the job, and deal with the work. On the other hand, if it is a traditional job like the secretary of the CEO that answers the phone, so no special needs will be needed. Still, the employees need to get some sort of feedback about their performance in order to tolerate, and adjust their behavior if needed, while maintaining the same performance if they did a good job this is another way of motivation when people appraise the good performance . the last case was done with the production manager who was very happy with the feedback he got form the HR, and promised to maintain the same performance.

Control:

The motivated people needed to be evaluated. The plans of the company needed to be evaluated. The control process is mainly supervised by the CEO. The first step in control is to measure the real performance. For this task, the CEO takes information through financial data, and asking the middle management to write a monthly progress report to show the achievements, and the problems faced during the month. Then , quarter the reports are consol idated together and presented with one report including conclusion for the performance in the quarter. The technical departments supports a report that is full of numerical data, and control charts illustrating the productivity measure, and the utilization of either the labs or machines, and the workers utilization. While the PR departments represent reports that contain graphs showing the share in market , and information about the competitors, and how they behave in the market. Also, there is a weekly meeting where the CEO meet each manger lonely to discuss the results of the past month. At most of the time the reports are good so the CEO doesn't take corrective actions, if there is a problem the mangerial action can be a penalty.

At the end of the year, the main measure the volume of sales, and the profitability which indicates how much was the cost reduced, yet this is the traditional, and classical way of measurements, and the CEO need to introduce new measure for the company beginning from the next year liquidity, inventory turnover, and return on assets .

Operations management:

The management of operations in the factory is needed especially in manufacturing firm. Therefore the management of operations in Union is shown in the following figure.