Organizational Structure

Introduction

Organizational structure forms the hierarchy of people who help run a company.  Organizational structure aids business performance. Existing studies have shown that it is nearly impossible for an organization to exist without a defined organizational structure. Studies also revealed that the main purpose of organizational structure is the division of work among members of the organization, and the co-ordination of their activities so they are directed towards the goals and objectives of the organization. (MUSIBAU AKINTUNDE AJAGBE, 2016)

Zoetis Managerial Structure

Zoetis has several structures of business and each represent the various departments within the company.  BPM (Biological Product Manufacturing) is the area of focus for this topic.  Recently we had a company re-structure.   The purpose of the re-structure was to narrow the groups within a department, meaning fewer team leaders.  Currently we have one team leader for the 3 sections of the BPM group, this has close to 40 people that the team leader is responsible for overseeing.  This area team leader reports to the BPM manger who oversees the entire BPM department which comprises of 6 departments within the BPM department.  See Figure 1

Figure 1. Biological Product Manufacturing (assembly/formulation)

 

BPM Assembly/Formulations

This department is responsible for the formulation and assembly of hundreds of variations of animal vaccines.  This group establishes the right formula needed to meet potency specs and volume size to meet demand.  This department works hand in hand with other departments that provide the tools, tanks, virus, and media needed to produce the final products that assembly makes.  This area of assembly technicians and formulators work closely every day, relying on each other to finish each product with no errors.

The critical thinking project that I purpose with help develop people and offer them the opportunity to think of ways to improve and improve self performance.  It is my opinion that if you know better, you do better.  Lack of clarity and information sharing keeps the group of people in a complacent state.  I feel it will be up to the team leader to back this suggestion and up to the technicians of all levels to see it through.

Below is a suggested communication board that represents 3 major areas that technicians can be involved in.  EMR (Environmental monitoring report) represents the amount of times a technician has findings that are out of specifications of samples taken during a lab process.  The rules are that if there are more than 4 findings in a month the technician is not allowed in to lab until a gowning re-qualification is done. HR (Human Error Reports) Any time a technician makes a deviation to the process that could affect quality of the product. And QAR (Quality Assurance Report) A report written by the manger to justify and prove that any deviations did not have any impact on quality.

Technician	EMR	HR	QAR	OPEN	CLOSED
Bob	1			1
Jim		2		1	1
Fred	1		1	2
George	3			2	1
Larry	1				1
Jeff
Sarah	2				2
Christine		1	1	2
Tom			1		1

        Figure 2. Communication Board

Currently these items are not being communicated to the team, until the report must be filed.  I believe that with better visuals of where we are and how we are doing, we can adjust accordingly prior to a mistake.  It is also my opinion that if we can visually see that there are findings from others, this will be a reminder to others to self reflect.  Posting these findings will be up to the team leader unless delegated to a technician.  The team leader receives the information from quality assurance representatives, environmental monitoring representatives, or the technician knowingly made a mistake and had to make a report.

By establishing a clear form of communication, this will help technicians discover areas that need improvement and may initiate an idea or suggestion that can help prevent future occurrences from happening.  Management needs to offer the information to begin the process, the technicians need to show initiative by staying involved and decreasing their findings.

Conclusion

Communications boards are an attractive approach for organizations wanting to engage their teams and first-line managers in participative discussions and problem-solving. (Bateman, 2016)  Our team in assembly lacks communication, currently our team leader lacks greatly in communicating issues until weeks or even months after the situation occurred.  Getting our team engaged daily will help keep a constant figure displayed of performance and accountability.

As of October 26th 2018 the current team leader was promoted to BPM manager and one of the formulators has accepted the Team leader position.  This will begin a shift in how things are done, I am hopeful that this board will be implemented as the new team leader sees the lack of structure and communication as well.

Works Cited

Bateman, N. P. (2016). Visual management and shop floor teams – development, implementation and use. International Journal of Production Research, , 7345–7358.

MUSIBAU AKINTUNDE AJAGBE, C. N. (2016). How Organizational Structure Aids Business Performance. CLEAR International Journal of Research in Commerce , 64-68.

Please read the attached paper on my Code of Ethics

CODE OF ETHICS mgmt420