plemented.
Senior management at Sigtek was not brought into the process to help guide the operation until the mandate was already in place, and then managers were given the same instruction as employees would eventually receive. There was no real instruction in how to implement the change, or how to overcome resistance, but instead, only the mandate from above that change should be implemented.
Smithers encountered some of the frustration that this implementation led to as he tried to encourage employees to take initiatives and fix small problems in their areas. But where Smithers assumed that his ideas and instructions were being followed throughout the organization, there was no real followup which occurred. Department meetings, which should have been a cornerstone on which employees could build a quality forum, were neither budgeted for nor considered important, which left Smithers and Murphy in a questionable position from a credibility standpoint. They were presenting ideas and theories which might have worked well in other environments, but which were not applicable to Sigtek.
This lack of communication is at the heart of why the total quality program fell apart at Sigtek. The parent company did not adequately inform the instructors on what could, and could not, be accomplished, nor did they communicate effectively to senior management that the quality program should receive all necessary resources in order to succeed. The changes that the quality program brought with it were not insignificant, and affected the way in which nearly every employee completed their assigned tasks and responsibilities. Yet the parent company did not effectively communicate this to Sigtek and did not make clear that internal changes would have to accompany the implementation.
In addition, there was no clear implementation plan which was put into place and which specifically addressed the environment at Sigtek. Instead, employees wer...