Customers that have regularly visited the Quantum Components manufacturing facilities in Fredericksburg Texas have seen first hand the transition the company has made from a traditional organization into a Self-Managed Work Team (SMWT). In fact the transition process never ceases. This is because correctly implemented SMWTs are based around Continuous Process Improvement.
Business community competition (and those of us involved in ISO quality management systems) have forced managers to seek better ways of getting work done. One of the most successful innovations has been reorganizing the workers into groups, or teams. The purpose of teams is to engage employees in company management decision making process. The more the work group can be legitimantly called a ”team” the more synergistic they become and it follows the more productive they become.
Such teams become ”self-managed (or self-directed) work teams” (SMWTs), when workers are successfully trained to do all or most jobs within the unit. These teams typically have no immediate supervisor and make many of the management decisions previously made by first-line supervisors. Typical team decisions would include the decision on how much overtime is necessary to meet production goals, the decision on when extra or specialized training is required, or decisions priortizing job starts made by balancing customer need versus keeping the machinery running as frequently as possible.
At Quantum we do not have supervisors as expected at SMWT shops but we do have Team Leads. The main purpose of the Team Lead is to provide a central point of communication to the team for customers, suppliers, or other teams. Team leads may be changed frequently by team decision or management make a change to facilitate an employee’s leadership growth.
["Machines running... Making good parts" is the Team mantra at Quantum Components].
Posted by quantumcomponents 
Posted by quantumcomponents 
