The Exley Chemical Company

Week 5 Case Study: The Exley Chemical Company

I. Problems

A. Macro

1. Decrease in sales and profits

2. Lack of team work between departments

3. Operations are scattered throughout the company with little coordination

4. Competition has developed a new technique for the production of polymer that will

greatly reduce the cost and give this company a lead in the market

5. Lack of a clear structure for communicating across departments

6. Operational conflicts within and across department's increases the amount of time to go

through the process for launching a new product

7. Lack of willingness from departments to work with one another

8. Some processes (such as visiting with customers) are inefficiently being done twice

9. Lack of clear uniform command within this organizational structure

10. Internal conflict hindering production levels

11. The overlapping responsibilities and duties of the recently employed production

development division

B. Micro

1. Lack of aid between departments. Departments tend to be self-serving when choosing to

aid or not aid other departments in bringing new products to the market

2. Large amounts of internal conflict between departments

3. Particular internal conflict between production development division and the marketing

division based on the use of specialty salespeople and the tasks of sales analysis and

forecasting

4. Resentment between personnel, especially between marketing executives and project

mangers

5. Marketing executive voiced concern over lack of understanding by project managers

with the marketing division's goals in terms of integrating markets

6. Discrepancies in what sales executives and project managers' calculations in terms of

sales estimates

7. Lack of teamwork in all departments

8. Project managers have had ineffective results in terms of coordinating activities

9. The company was having trouble generating a team concept within the division

10. Too much unhealthy competition between departments

II. Causes

1. The creation of the product development division has been a main cause of the problems

presented above. The goal of appointing product managers was to enhance the

coordination of the product through the various stages of development in order to pursue

the company's goal of improving the sales. However, product managers' efforts were

considered to be self-serving to the product that that particular manager was handling. For

example, the product manager did some marketing strategies which were seen by the

marketing executives as acts that only benefited that particular product and did not benefit

the integration of their markets.

2. Healthy competition arose between the departments which turn into negative outcomes.

Each product group wanted the best for their product such as production process,

performance process and overall sales. This created a sense of motivation and competition

between the different product groups. This inadvertently leads to each group becoming

factions and not helping in the coordination