Following questions need to be answered while analyzing the case 'The Treadway Tire

Company':
1. What is the relationship between line foremen at the Treadway's Lima Plant and other
groups within the plant: general supervisors and area managers, top management, the
union, hourly workers, each other?
2. How do line foremen feel about their jobs and why?
3. What are the consequences of those feelings?
4. What are the elements of the work system that contribute to the problem?
5. What action plan should Ashley Wall recommend?
This is a group assignment. The deadline for submission of this analysis is August 21, 2022
(EoD).
 

The Treadway Tire Company: Job Dissatisfaction and High Turnover at the Lima Tire Plant

Treadways Lima, ohio – tire plant. One out of 8

Ashle wall : director of HR greenwille south Carolina closed in 2006
10 years work ex at treadway
Revising the turnover was her priority should be done by jan 2008
Analysis of prob and plan of action

50 foreman 23 positions turned over in 2007 nov 28

Treadway tire North America - 9000 hrly and salaried staff

major supplier of tires to the original equipment manufacturer¹ and replacement tire
markets, selling Treadway Primo, Treadway Performance, and private tire brand

Challenges
skyrocketing raw material costs (55% of cost and petroleum derivates )
oil price<25 $ in 2003 to 92$ oct 2007
intense global competition.
Turnover over can be increased by increasing productivity

Serious morale issues had brewing for time with the line-foreman segment, their dissatisfaction was
beginning infect the entire plant. Wall's thoughts swirled around myriad factors causing the
problems

Treadway's Lima Tire Plant

In 2007 -25000 passenger and light truck /year .

Location : lima ohio 1.5 million sq feet ,128 acres.

970 hourly employee and 150 salaried.

Union USw and later merged with United ruuber workers in1995.- dictates wages payrates schedule
of increase benefits health/ safety.
Expansion for $100million $in 2000. For increase cap and new manufacturing tech.due to which top
in productivity and quality. If turnover prob solved it will be number one and low cost prod in NA

2006, Treadway shut down the Greenville- plagued outdated week so volume to lima

Continuous operations four rotating shifts

Most employees Lima worked 12-hour shift-either from am 7:00 or 7.00 to 7:00 am-with two breaks
per shift a half-hour for meals.

Continuous operations allowed Treadway to amortize the substantial fixed costs of running plant.

By running two 12-hour shifts instead of three 8-hour shifts, company was also able reduce
headcount, capturing significant cost savings.

The hourly line-production employees at supervised by salaried, non union, floor-level managers-
line foremen(50)

Above 5 area managers responsible (hourly production team,general supervisors& foreman)

Plant manager :Brandon Bellingham

foremen Duties :

supervise all phases of production

quality assurance work, the plant

phases of production : In rubber component prep, tire assembly & curing

Areas : : Production, Maintenance, Material Control, and Quality Assurance

factors influencing the performance of line foremen:

educational background
skill set
sources: question to change foreman composition?
were internal promotions(80%)
young graduates(16%)
foremen transfers(4%)

Goal: 60% internal bins, 30% new college graduates, and 10% company transfers"

Thought to be considered
According to Wall "Our most successful general supervisors and area managers have risen from the
foreman ranks. However, currently there do not seem to be enough people in the foremas position
with the potential to move up to the next level of management In addition, none of the hourly
employees that have shown an interest in the foreman position have a college degree Although I
agree with Treadway headquarters that we need to increase the percentage of college graduates
and inter-company transfers.
Since Wall had been inred, she had made an effort to increase the percentage of external
candidates with college degrees 8/23 are college

The Line Foreman Experience

The job of line weman at Lama was a daily challenge, requiring foremen to juggle and resolve a
variety of personnel, resource, and administrative issues in a 12-hour shift
conflicting b/w: management, the workers, and the union

plant manager Bellingham: Meeting, performance goals is the most important duty of the line
foreman.
Daily report on line area of the previous day's actual performance VS forecasted performance was
circulated to all line foremen, GS,AM and the plant operating committee
Metrics: labour hours per unit, units completed and units rejected owing to quality issues
the line foreman was subject to a severe tongue lashing, and usually threatened with a poor
performance review

A foreman's top priority was to start the are production line each work day and ensure that no
1.technical issues would stop production
quickly fix unresolved equipment and quality issues from this previous shift

2. Staffing the production20 m

Due to the strenuous nature of long shifts, come late or fall sick result in last min scramble with
appropriate task.
3.strict safety and health standards and investigation violations

union and administrative procedures:

Foremen documented employee disciplinary actions and negotiated work standards.(employee
grievance process)
. The foremen were typically not involved in the grievance committee's ruling, and disciplinary
decisions such as demotion and Costa termination were out of their control.
administrative dutie:
including scheduling hourly workers, approving vacation requests, checking time sheets, and solving
payroll issues

Morale

tension between hourly workers and foremen.

In one example, a line worker had arrived back late from his break and according to an hourly
witness, "The line foreman went ballistic and started screaming at him. The guy tried to explain
himself, but the foreman just kept shouting. These foremen assume we are all slackers and won't
even hear us out." Immediately after the confrontation, Wall assembled a group of line foremen to
discuss their jobs.
Concern:
their lack of authority and adversarial relations with the hourly workers
foremen's comments:
No matter what happens, we're expected to meet or exceed targets, which get higher every year.
Main problems which cant be solved by foreman:
what am I supposed to do if I'm missing machines? What if half a dozen workers don't show up for
work? Sure, scramble, looking for folks with the right skills to fill in. You need to have your line
going quick or you have no chance of hitting your production targets for the day
intervention of union on discipline of works:
We just don't have any authority anymore and yet still have all the responsibility No one listens to us
as foremen, no one acts on our requests. We're between a rock and a hard place.

Bellingham view on problem: lack of communication.

Requirement of foremen:
Value to their contributions are undervalued and their concerns ignored
. Open communication is essential to this: but managers are not open

Hiring

In 2007, the average base rate $30 per

overtime pay.
to reflect experience and years of service

line-foreman posted on bulletin boards and Intranet

(FLT)-a five-hour exam that 45% of applicants passed, on average..

Training:
As of November 2007, new line foremen received only informal training, at the discretion of the
general supervisor and area manager.
the tried-and-true management style from their own days as foremen

Despite the reluctance of area managers and general supervisors to change,

Wall view:enhanced training. She estimated that just over 43% of the 23 line foremen who had left
the position in 2007 had done so voluntarily Some former Lima foremen returned to hourly
positions at Lima or transferred to non-foremen jobs in other Treadway plants, but many left
Treadway altogether.
Reasons to leave:
they could not control the workers,
they did not meet forecasts,
they had persistently counterproductive interactions with general supervisors and area managers

personnel manager, Robert Henry, echoed the need for training

. Some foremen don't have a clue what industrial engineering is, or how to track their hours. They
don't know how to manage a dispute, and they know less about their legal rights than the unionized

Can be prevented if foreman could figure how to get along with hourly people

workers do. A host of problems could also be prevented if the foremen could figure out how to get
along with the hourly people.

Wall had been trying to create a new, month-long rotational training program for line foremen The
program would assign area managers as formal mentors and expose the new line foremen to the key
processes in the plant. The new foremen would spend a day with Payroll to learn about problems
with time sheets and paychecks, and a day with Human Resources to cover information on union
contracts and disciplinary issues. However, due to budget cuts in late 2007, Bellingham decided to
put this program on hold, stating, "I understand we have to do a better job of training our foremen.
They are often working with little knowledge of the correct way to handle labor situations I like the
idea of a formal training program, but it not feasible in the context of our current cost cutting
mandate"

Outlook for Line Foremen

The line foremen were evaluated annually in a performance review by their general supervisor (see
Exhibit 6 for sample performance review). According to Bellingham, there were two factors on which
the general supervisors judged the line foremen: "their ability to meet or exceed forecasts, and how
they manage and train their hourly workers." The overall performance measurement system was
very informal. In the words of Herb Adams, "As long as you meet targets without aggravating the
union or management too much, you're fine."

At Lima, the general supervisors were traditionally promoted from foremen positions, and area
managers were usually promoted from general supervisory positions. In 2007, one line foreman had
been promoted to general supervisor, and there were no openings for the area manager position
According to Tom Hamilton, another general supervisor, "My line foremen just don't see any way to
move up at Lima. I always recommend the guys with the most long-term management potential

to Human Resources, but whenever there's a general supervisor vacancy, someone else-usually

some college grad-gets hired" It was understood that no new salaried positions would be created

at Lima in 2008. Any openings would be due to retirements, promotions, and other job changes.

Reading through her personnel files, Ashley Wall knew the problem of turnover in the line foreman
position-affecting a third of the salaried work force-was a complicated issue for Lima management to
address. Morale and productivity were imperiled. The plant was not satisfactorily developing new
managers. Relations between management and the union were threatened.

Wall quickly realized she would need to work through the holiday shutdown in order to be ready to
give the plant manager her recommendations on January 2. She needed to develop a thorough
analysis of the root causes and a specific plan to address these issues. With less than five weeks to
develop a recommendation, she began to search her personnel files to gain a deeper understanding
of the problem and what actions had to be taken