Reference no: EM133375671

Frys R Us is a leading Canadian Food manufacturer specializing in French Fries, Hash Browns and other speciality chopped and formed frozen potato products. In order to stay competitive with its American and European industry competitors the company has decided to build and operate a technologically advanced new production line at its Brandon Manitoba plant. The new building and equipment involves a total capital cost of $ 110 million ($ Cdn). It will use new sophisticated processing and packaging equipment based on recent European manufacturing designs. The line is intended to produce 5000 25kg cases per hour. Fry R Us has a similar production line - with similar products - located in Portage la Prairie Manitoba but that facility operates with less sophisticated and less automated equipment. Since these production facilities are in somewhat rural areas of Manitoba, the local labour workforce is not familiar with the new equipment which will require extra training and operational support from the European equipment suppliers. The Portage Plant may be able to spare a few staff to assist but they themselves have limited specific experience with the newer technology. This operational training will include not only how the equipment operates but also how to maintain and troubleshoot the equipment should it malfunction. Safety training for energy isolation is also required (typically known as "lock out /tag out" in safety regulations). The new line will require 6 different positions to operate it, compared to the older technology at Portage which requires 21 different positions to operate. Hence this is a significant gain in productivity and long-term production cost savings. The plant runs on a 12- hour 4 shift rotation so a total of 24 position slots will need to be filled. Most of these roles will be filled by existing employees who apply for the jobs. Applicants will be individuals currently holding operating and maintenance rolls from within the Brandon plant. Any new hires will likely fill in the roles left vacant by the staff moving over to the new line. The plant start up did not go according to schedule and the supplier support to help trouble shoot the equipment malfunctions and assist in set up has been less timely than anticipated. The new staff have not yet met the expected production levels and are averaging only around 2800 cases per hour. Some issues exist during initial set up for each different product SKU's which uses different packaging and case stacking configurations. The European equipment suppliers have visited once during commissioning and said there is nothing wrong with their equipment. The Fry R Us operators have complained that the equipment does not perform in a reliable way, especially when different packaging film thicknesses are used for the various products. The Operations VP has asked the HR Training Director for assistance to determine what should be done from a human capital perspective.

Questions

1. WHAT - Discuss the performance issues at Frys R Us. Choose a valid framework for your analysis of Fry R Us.

2. WHY - Determine to the best of your ability the likely root cause(s) of Frys R Us performance issues. Use the Barrier to Effective Performance Table to determine the most relevant to this case?

3. SOLUTIONS - Diagnose the performance issues with solutions related to the root cause(s) identified above. In your prescription, make specific recommendations to the Brandon new production line supervision.

4. If a training objective is a statement of what trainees are expected to after a training program, a) what would be the training objective of a training program for employees at Frys R Us? b) What content would you include in a training program for the employees at Frys R Us?