FMC Aberdeen and Green River

¶ … FMC Corporation's Aberdeen facility and how their Green River facility can model it for improvement. It gives an overview of FMC history, a detailing of Aberdeen's organizational design and why it is effective, and why Green River's is not. In the end, alternatives are presented for Green River's consideration, with an implementation and contingency plan for the recommended strategy.

FMC Corporation

Overview of FMC Corporation:

FMC Corporation was originally founded in 1883 ("FMC Corp. Eradicates," 2004). Although the company has been involved in areas as diverse as oil field equipment and food machinery, FMC has narrowed its focus to include: industrial, specialty and agricultural chemicals. They are one of the world's larges producers of soda ash, and also produce industrial chemicals such as hydrogen peroxide and phosphorous chemicals. In addition, FMC is partnered with Solutia to form a joint venture called Astaris, to produce phosphorous chemicals as well. The remainder of FMC's revenues come from agricultural products, including insecticides and herbicides, and specialty chemicals, including food and pharmaceutical additives (Partheymuller, 2005c).

Inventor, John Bean, founded the company after developing a pump to deliver a continuous spray of insecticide, in the late 1800s. The company's first name was the Bean Spray Pump Company and went public in 1928. With the purchase of Anderson-Barngrover, a food-growing and processing equipment manufacturer, the company changed its name to Food Machinery Corporation. In 1943, the organization entered the agricultural chemical industry with the purchas of Niagra Sprayer & Chemical, and five years later, with the purchase of Westvaco Chemical, changed its name again to Food Machinery & Chemical. Further diversification into wellhead equipment, fertilizers and insecticides and even into automotive brake equipment led the company to change its name one final time to FMC Corporation, in 1961 (Partheymuller, 2005b).

The next four decades saw rampant growth by acquisition for the organization. However, by 2001, the company decided to split its separate chemical and machinery companies. FMC Technologies was spun off to handle the machinery industry, leaving FMC Corporation to focus solely on chemicals (Partheymuller, 2005b). Today, FMC Corporation's mission is to provide "innovative and cost-effective solutions to food and agriculture, pharmaceutical, pulp and paper, textiles, glass and ceramics, rubber and plastics, lubricants, structural pest control, turf and ornamental markets, (and) specialty and related industries" ("Corporate Overview," 2004).

FMC Aberdeen Organizational Analysis:

FMC Corporation maintains a multitude of facilities. Their manufacturing facility, in Aberdeen, Scotland, had proven to be a valuable asset to the organization.

The Aberdeen facility has been able to customer tailor its organizational culture to achieve efficiency and efficacy.

FMC Aberdeen has implemented a more organic organizational design. This design traditionally performs better in dynamic environments, such as the chemical industry, where competition is intense and the industry is in a constant state of flux. Each team member's roles are not concretely delineated, at Aberdeen, which gives the division flexibility and allows managers to manage the abilities of their employees, directing them where they are most beneficial at any given time.

For this reason, tasks are continually refined at FMC Aberdeen, giving flexibility in job design, while allowing goal setting to change with the fluctuating organizational needs. Pay is dependent on an individual's skills and performance, as opposed to simply a job title. This has positively affected job satisfaction.

With FMC Aberdeen's organic design, team members also have unique career development opportunities. Individuals are encouraged to learn and develop skills in areas other than what would traditionally be supported in their position. They are encouraged to pursue whatever area of the company that interests them. Cross-functional teams have allowed the facility to come up with the most creative, efficient and effective solutions to challenges that have emerged, allowing insight from several different perspectives. This too has increased Aberdeen's employees' commitment to the organization, as well as increased productivity, causing the division to run at a high level of efficiency.

In addition, FMC Aberdeen's decentralized control has several advantages. Effective lateral communication is one of the most significant. With the organic nature of the company, silos of information are rare; instead information is dispersed to all team members who need it, no matter which department they are in.

In addition, the decentralized control and enhanced communication leads naturally to fast decision making. This has allowed the Aberdeen facility to respond quickly to the changes of the hyper-competitive industry they operate in. This responsiveness has not only enhanced productivity but also increased competitiveness.

FMC Green River Situational Analysis:

It is not surprising that FMC Green River's, Kenneth Dailey, has decided to analyze FMC Aberdeen's strategies for success. The Aberdeen facility has consistently outperformed other FMC facilities, and has helped the organization stay afloat in turbulent economic times. FMC Green River has not had the success of Aberdeen, and therefore hopes to mimic some of that division's organizational design, to improve productivity and efficiency.

FMC Green River is currently employing a fairly mechanistic organizational design, including a hierarchal structure. This type of design is typically only effective in a fairly stable business environment. Given the ever-changing, hyper-competitive nature of the chemical industry, it is not surprising that this type of organizational design is not working well for Green River.

Job duties at FMC Green River are clearly specified. Tasks are clearly delineated by job title, allowing for little flexibility. Each team member has a precise definition of what his or her responsibilities and obligations are. This, again, is fine in an industry where tasks can be managed in such a controlled fashion, however, in the chemical industry, this rigidity leads to the inability to flex with the changing needs of the organization. Employees formulate a "not my job" type mentality when faced with tasks outside their normal scope.

In addition, FMC Green River's hierarchal structure is hindering their efficacy and efficiency. Communication travels primarily vertically at the Green River facility, which has lead to departments and individuals not having the information they need, in a timely manner. This formal system of communication has led to information silos within departments compounding this challenge.

The centralized control structure of FMC Green River has not been conducive to decision making either. Again, due to the organizational structure, little inter-departmental interaction occurs, therefore, when decisions need to be made that will affect the entire facility, department heads are not in tune with the needs of their fellows. This leads to an inability to truly decide which decision will be best for the facility as a whole. Instead, departmental managers are mostly concerned with how decisions will affect their personal departments, with little care for the others.

A secondary problem is the speed in which decisions can be made. Decision makers at FMC Green River must compile all the individual opinions from the different departments and then use this fragmented information to formulate their decision. This is in direct contrast to a more organic organization where information is shared across departments, laterally, allowing each department head to have a feeling for the needs of everyone, and therefore the true needs of the organization as a whole.

Alternatives and Recommendations:

Dailey has several alternatives to consider for the Green River facility. His first alternative would be to simply leave things as they are. Dailey may hope that the chemical industry will stabilize, especially with the continued dominance of the three major competitors: Dow, Dupont, and Imperial Chemical ("Competitive," 2005a). However, this is not the most prudent course of action, as it is more likely that the industry will remain in a state of flux, even with the continued dominance of just a handful of industry leaders. Changing technology, ever-advancing product lines and globalization will continue to change the industry.

His other course of action would be to emulate the Aberdeen facility's organic organizational design. This would help enhance communication, increase employee job satisfaction, increase productivity, and allow the facility to make better and faster decisions. The difficulty in this alternative will be in getting senior management to buy into the idea, without their wholehearted support, the alternative will not be as effective. However, the potential gains for Green River are well worth the risk, and therefore recommended.