Dana Incorporated Implementing Change

Implementing Change Increased customer demand is most important pressure to address at this time in order to maintain a competitive and viable company. Dana Incorporated has been providing their customers for the past years with products of high quality and quantity that satisfies their customer’s expectation. However, due to increase in customer demands for new cars and trucks, there has been increased demand of customers to companies like Toyota, Jeep and Ford. Recently, the increased customer demands are approaching maximum capacity hence exceeding production capacity.

Increased customer demand set Dana Incorporated with competition pressure. Currently, increased customer demand for commercial vehicles, off-highway equipment and light truck program has led to an increased sales growth by 10 percent. Increased sales has led to an improvement of satisfaction of customer demand. An increase in customer demand for Dana Incorporated’s products is primarily driven by enhanced acquisition synergies, higher sales levels and ongoing efficiency benefits.

If Dana Incorporated fails to address the pressure of increased customer demand, there will rise of competition which can be a threat to the viability and health of the company. In order to stay competitive, Dana Incorporated must implement an up-lift in production. 100 percent operation is not possible in any manufacturing company including Dana Incorporated. This is because of production limitations such as raw material supply, machine down-time and labor issues. Scheduling of production up-lift, Dana Incorporated must figure out how capacity of production rates can be increased.

However, the organization has already explored up-lift options such as outsourcing, automation, increased labor and restructuring. Some dramatic changes should be made over a short period of time in order to meet the up-lift demand. Managing this change would mean having a big capital investment for automating large portions of the manufacturing process. Besides that, there will be a requirement of workforce to be trained, new processes to be developed, new machines to be acquired and engineering problems to be solved.

Doing all these will consume most of the available resources and need implementing deliberate planning. Organizational change of Dana Incorporated is important for the health of employees. Therefore, management must recognize and set a stage for its success. Vision change provides a sense of being and enduring purpose. Visions transcends day-to-day activities despite incorporating measures a day’s success. Vision empowers and encourages leader to implement change especially by proving meaning in both the future and present. Globalization is an example of vision change.

Globalization causes an increased competition rate especially for the quality of workforce (Kotter, 2012). Differences in needs, skills and attitudes of the labor force increases communication problems. Geographic dispersion causes conflict between central headquarters and regional offices. Globalization creates the common purpose and building cohesion challenge in faces organizational and cultural differences. All these becomes complex because most variables are not under the control of leaders who are to create vision change. Peace as a vision to change necessitates the need for reducing the military force’s size.

Military forces of small size increases their capabilities because the diversity and number of missions will have increased. Reduced budgets creates friction among the services. Another example of vision change is information technology (Kotter, 2012). Information technology facilitates downsizing and structural decentralization. This requires people to develop new skills because power shifts from centralized functions to operating units within the organization. Demographic changes has been creating pressure for vision change in organizations. Response to demographic diversity structurally include; programs and policies such as affirmative action and equal opportunity.

The changing labor force has a variety of needs such as language and religious which creates new training requirements. Conflict and friction are created between demographic groups. Deregulation is another vision of change for organizations. It has created structural changes in some organizations especially in the private sector such as the merging of defense contractors and proliferation of airline companies. Individuals within the labor force are able to sense that they can be cut loose at any time without provision of any warning.

Deregulation brings shifts in power such as from the government to the consumer. The first step to implementing change is creating urgency. A sense of urgency must be developed around the need for change to assist you in sparking initial motivation to get things in motion. An honest and convincing dialogue should be opened about what is happening within the marketplace and with the competitors (Mento, et al., 2002). Once people start talking about the proposed change, there can be build-up of the urgency. Opportunities for exploitation should be examined.

Support from customers, stakeholders and people in the industry can also be requested to provide strength for arguments. The second step involves forming powerful coalition. Convincing people that change is necessary is an important thing to do. This usually takes support from people and leadership within the organization. Leading change involves bringing a team of influential people together. True leaders and stakeholders should be identified from the organization that needs change from increased customer demand pressure (Mento, et al., 2002).

The leaders should have a good mix from different levels and departments within the organization. The third step involves creating a vision for change. A clear vision helps an individual understand why they are required to accomplish a task. Values centered to change should be determined and strategies that executes the vision should be created. Step four involves communicating the vision. The vision should be communicated powerfully and frequently for building of a strong competition. People’s concerns should be addressed honestly and openly.

The vision should be applied to all aspects of operations such as from training to reviews of performance. Step five involves removing barriers. Identify and hire leaders whose role is to major on delivering change. Reward the people who makes change happen and identify those who resist the change as they are assisted to seeing what is needed. Step six involves creating targets that are short-term which are achievable with little room for failure (Mento, et al., 2002). Avoid choosing early targets that might be expensive.

Analysis of potential pros and cons should be done thoroughly. People who assist with meeting the target should be rewarded. Step seven involves building on the change. After achieving a target, analyzing what is right and what needs to be improved is important. Goals should be set to assist in building the momentum achieved. An idea of always creating room for improvement should be initiated. Step eight involves anchoring the changes by making it part of the organization.

Continuous effects needs to be made so that the change can be seen in every.