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White Manufacturing Project Management Changes

White Manufacturing restructured its project management organization in 2004 by forming a three-person project management staff that reported to the vice president. This structure worked well. In 2007, a matrix structure was created where manufacturing engineers acted as project managers. This benefited production. However, in 2008 a new external manufacturing manager was hired at a high salary. Upon starting in March 2008, he immediately declared that project managers must go through him and dissolved the matrix structure, centralizing integration under the department manager.

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63 views2 pages

White Manufacturing Project Management Changes

White Manufacturing restructured its project management organization in 2004 by forming a three-person project management staff that reported to the vice president. This structure worked well. In 2007, a matrix structure was created where manufacturing engineers acted as project managers. This benefited production. However, in 2008 a new external manufacturing manager was hired at a high salary. Upon starting in March 2008, he immediately declared that project managers must go through him and dissolved the matrix structure, centralizing integration under the department manager.

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satnam padda
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White Manufacturingi

In 2004, White Manufacturing realized the necessity for project management in the manufacturing group. A three-person project
management staff was formed. Although the staff was shown on the organizational chart as reporting to the manufacturing operations
manager, they actually worked for the vice president and had sufficient authority to integrate work across all departments and
divisions. As in the past, the vice president’s position was filled by the manufacturing operations manager. Manufacturing operations
was directed by the former manufacturing manager, who came from manufacturing engineering. (See Figure I.)

FIGURE I White Manufacturing organizational structure

In 2007, the manufacturing manager created a matrix in the manufacturing department with the manufacturing engineers acting as
departmental project managers. This benefited both the manufacturing manager and the group project managers since all information
could be obtained from one source. Work was flowing very smoothly.
In January 2008, the manufacturing manager resigned his position effective March, and the manufacturing engineering manager began
packing his bags to move up to the vacated position. In February, the vice president announced that the position would be filled from
outside. He said also that there would be an organizational restructuring and that the three project managers would now report to the
manufacturing manager. When the three project managers confronted the manufacturing operations manager, he said, “We’ve hired
the new man in at a very high salary. In order to justify this salary, we have to give him more responsibility.”
In March 2008, the new manager took over and immediately made two declarations:
1. The project managers will never go “upstairs” without first going through him.
2. The departmental matrix will be dissolved, and the department manager will handle all of the integration.
QUESTIONS
1. How do you account for the actions of the new department manager?
2. What would you do if you were one of the project managers?

i
Kerzner, H. (2017). Project Management Case Studies (5th ed.). Wiley.

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