Reference no: EM132291302
CASE STUDY 10.1: Problem Solving in Virtual Teams
Shelia works for General Electric’s (GE) energy company in the wind turbine manufacturing division as an inventory controller. Her job duties include receiving the wind turbine components into GE’s inventory when vendors provide the required documentation and then moving them out of inventory when the components reach the wind field site. She handles primarily the large components including tower segments, blades, machine heads, and hubs. The tower segments are made by firms in the United States and China and are received into inventory once the signed inspection tags are emailed to her. For the blades, they are shipped to the port of Houston, and once they are unloaded and pass inspection they are entered into inventory. The machine heads and hubs are made by GE at three different plants and go into inventory once completed and ready for shipment.
Sheila is based in the Greenville, NC, plant with two of the three-person buyer teams that handle the orders of the parts to make the machine heads and hubs. Another of the machine head teams is based in Schenectady, NY. She also works with a team based in Houston, TX, that handles the ordering of the wind turbine blades and the tower team that works in the plant in Pensacola, FL. She also works with a transportation specialist on each team to help with the shipment of these large wind turbine components to the client’s site, and with up to two dozen wind farm site teams at any given time to capture the delivery and installation of the different wind turbine components in order to move items out of inventory and trigger billing to the client.
The majority of the work Sheila does with her teams is through the phone, e-mail, and occasional web meeting. Rarely does she get to see any of the teams outside of the two located at Greenville, as there is trust and respect among teammates as well as understanding of what is her role on these teams. However, working in such spread-out teams that span the globe as well as several organizations creates a number of challenges.
Sometimes, there are issues with suppliers when they do not provide the proper documentation for completion and still are seeking payment. Sometimes, there are issues with working out replacement shipments when the blades and towers from overseas are damaged in transit. However, most of the time the job and relationship between team members goes smoothly thanks to a number of processes and procedures that have been set in place to help with those challenges.
Currently, a new team is being formed in the wind division. As can often happen when shipping goods, the hubs, machine heads, and towers frequently have components that are damaged in transit. In order to assist the wind farm sites to get the turbines up and running as fast as possible, they need all the parts fully functional. So a team is forming to help the wind farm sites quickly get the replacement parts that are needed. A ticket system has been 515 set up for the wind farm site team to put in reports of damaged parts. The system then assigns each case to a different team member, who is responsible for finding the solution to the problem and getting the needed parts to the wind farm site as quickly as possible. In addition, there is a weekly web meeting on Wednesdays where the cases are discussed and everyone on the team is updated.
Sheila was assigned to work on this new team, but it has not been going as well as the work on her other teams. First, while she knows some of the larger components based upon the receiving she does, she does not have a clue as to the list of smaller components, cables, and wires used to make the larger components. While the on-ground crews provide pictures and a description, they don’t provide the exact part number or name that is needed, and so for her first two cases she spent nearly a week hunting down schematics and talking with engineers in both Schenectady and Greenville to figure out what part is needed. She then spent 3 more days getting the purchase orders needed to order the parts (as receivers can’t cut their own purchase orders for fraud prevention reasons), and shipping took another 2 days. The team leader was upset with the amount of time Sheila took to close the cases and reprimanded her on the weekly call. Sheila felt that this was unfair, as she does not have access to the knowledge and resources to get the job done as quickly as others. However, she still tried to do her best on her next case, getting replacement ladders for the towers at a couple different sites. However, that case took 3 weeks to close as a result of the ladders arriving damaged from transit and required Sheila to find another vendor to ship and deliver the ladders.
Discussion Questions
1. How does trust and respect facilitate the virtual teams’ ability to operate?
2. What processes and procedures are important to making the teams work?
3. Why do you think Sheila is having trouble in her role on the new team?
4. What factors should you consider when putting together a virtual team?