Question 3: As Juergen Geissinger, how would you go about implementing your

recommendations? How would you overcome resistance from the plants? As Dickerson, the plant
manager at Asheville, North Carolina, what line of reasoning would you use to convince senior
management that full automation is the less desirable alternative?

Answer

Implementing the recommendations:

 There should be phase-wise implantation of the entire standardization process

 For every plant transformation, there should be proper execution plan which has to be
prepared before hand
 Morganton plant to be standardized first since MK4-Gi employs high level of automation and
all workers are fine with the standardization
 Showing the results due to automation at Morganton because of the full automation to
Ashville
 Working with suppliers so as to provide materials similar to that of Europe
 There should be proper knowledge transfer regarding the successful transformation

Why full automation isn’t desirable:

 Even though cost will be reduced but it will also cause lower customer allegiance as
customization will be offset
 Since the product life is very small, automation equipment might soon become obsolete
 Kaizen can’t go with automation as it leads to standardization and it also offsets the
flexibility
 For automation, employees need to be trained which will result in additional cost
 Relatively labour is cheap at Ashville and hence, no requirement for automation
 It will result in higher set up costs and lower flexibility for changes to product specification