Read the case study “Acme Manufacturing Company” at the end of Chapter 2 and answer the questions at the end of the reading.

Acme Manufacturing CompanySteve Arnold is a production manager at Acme Manufacturing Company in NewJersey. When drove into the parking lot at the plant on Tuesday morning at 8:35, he wasalready 35 minutes late for work. Steve had overslept that morning because the night before hehad stayed up late to finish the monthly production report for his department. He parked his carand entered the rear of the plant building. Passing through the shipping area, Steve spotted hisfriend George Summers and stopped to ask how work was progressing on the new addition toGeorge’s house.Entering the office at 8:55, Steve greeted his secretary, Ruth Sweeney, and asked whetheranything urgent needed his immediate attention. Ruth reminded him of the staff meeting at9:30 with Steve’s boss—Frank Jones, the vice president for Production—and the other produc-tion managers. Steve thanked Ruth for reminding him (he had forgotten about the meeting) andcontinued on to his adjoining inner office to look for the memo announcing the meeting. Hevaguely remembered getting the memo in an email one or two weeks earlier, but did not take thetime to read it or look at the attached materials.His phone rang, and it was Sue Bradley, the sales vice president, who was inquiring aboutthe status of a rush order for one of the company’s important clients. Steve promised to lookinto the matter and get back to her later in the day with an answer. Steve had delegated therush order last week to Lucy Adams, one of his production supervisors, and he had not thoughtabout it since then. Stepping back into the outer office, Steve asked Ruth if she had seen Lucytoday. Ruth reminded him that Lucy was at a training workshop in California. She would bedifficult to reach until the session ended late in the afternoon, because the workshop facilitatorsregard cell phone calls and text messages as an unnecessary distraction.Going back into his office, Steve emailed a message to Lucy asking her to call him assoon as possible. Then, he resumed his search for the memo about the meeting with his bossand the other production managers. He finally found it in his large collection of unprocessedemails. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss a proposed change in quality control proce-dures. By now it was 9:25, and there was no time to read the proposal. He hurried out to get tothe meeting on time. During the meeting, the other production managers participated in thediscussion and made helpful comments or suggestions. Steve was not prepared for the meet-ing and did not contribute much except to say that he did not anticipate any problems with theproposed changes.The meeting ended at 10:30, and Steve returned to his office, where he found Paul Chen,one of his production supervisors, waiting for him. Paul wanted to discuss a problem causedin the production schedules by a major equipment breakdown. Steve called Glenda Brown,his assistant manager, and asked her to join them to help rearrange the production schedulesfor the next few days. Glenda came in shortly and the three of them worked on the pro-duction schedules. At 11:25, Ruth came in to announce that Mr. Ferris was waiting and heclaimed to have an appointment with Steve at 11:30. Steve looked at his calendar but couldnot find any entry for the appointment. Steve asked Ruth to tell Mr. Ferris that he would beready shortly.The schedules were completed around 11:40. Since it was nearly noon, Steve invitedMr. Ferris to join him for lunch at a nearby restaurant. During lunch Steve learned that Mr. Ferriswas from one of the firms that provided materials used in the production process at Acme, andthe purpose of the meeting was to inquire about some changes in material specifications the com-pany had requested. As Mr. Ferris talked, Steve realized that he would not be able to answer someof the technical questions. When they returned to the plant at 1:15, Steve introduced Mr. Ferristo an engineer who could answer his questions.Soon after Steve walked back to his office, his boss (Frank Jones) stopped in to askabout the quality report for last week. Steve explained that he had given top priority to finish-ing the monthly production report and would do the quality report next. Frank was irritated,because he needed the quality data to finalize his proposal for new procedures, and he thoughtSteve understood this task was more urgent than the production report. He told Steve to get thequality data to him as soon as possible and left. Steve immediately called Glenda Brown andasked her to bring the quality data to his office. The task of reviewing the data and preparing ashort summary was not difficult, but it took longer than he anticipated. It was 2:40 by the timeSteve completed the report and attached it to an e-mail to his boss.Looking at his calendar, Steve noticed that he was already late for a 2:30 meeting of the plantsafety committee. The committee meets weekly to review safety problems, and each departmentsends a representative. Steve rushed out to the meeting, which was held in another part of theplant. The meeting was dull this week, without any important issues or problems to discuss.The meeting ended at 3:30, and as Steve walked back through his section of the plant, hestopped to talk to his assistant manager. Glenda wanted some advice on how to resolve a prob-lem in the production assignments for the next day. They discussed the problem for about a half-hour. When Steve returned to his office at 4:05, his secretary was just leaving. She reported thatLucy had called before leaving to fly home from the conferenceSteve was feeling tired and decided it was time for him to go home also. As he drove out ofthe parking lot, Steve reflected that he was getting further behind in his work. He wondered whathe could do to get better control over his job.Questions1.  What specific things did Steve do wrong, and what should have been done in each instance?2.  What should Steve do to become more effective as a manager?

 

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