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Int. J. Production Economics 122 (2009) 419–428

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Int. J. Production Economics

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijpe

Reconfigurable organisation to cope with unpredictable goals

Mario Sergio Salerno 
Production Engineering Department, Polytechnic School, University of São Paulo, Av. Prof. Almeida Prado, travessa 2, n.128, 05508-900 São Paulo—SP, Brazil

a r t i c l e in fo abstract

Available online 21 June 2009 The paper proposes a methodology and design rules for organisational structures facing
Keywords: higher necessity of rapidly reconfigure themselves to cope with unpredictable
Reconfigurable organisation situations—new markets, new products, changing mix of production, problems in
Open groups production process or flows etc. It implies changing and often conflictive criteria for
Organisational design production goals and for the allocation of work. The methodology was developed based
Flexibility on a large field action research and consulting. Their basis is the design of auto-
Efficiency reconfigurable working groups—or groups with variable geometry, depending on the
events to face.
& 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction moreover an ability to face to unpredictable situations.

Contemporary operations efficiency must be closed
linked to companies’ strategy. Many businesses are run in
unpredictable and turbulent environments—new compe-
titors, new technologies, new products, changing financial
conditions etc. Frequently it means that a production
system must be designed and implemented without a
clear vision of the range or mix of products it will be asked
to deliver. Rigid organisational schemes do not fit well to
this situation. In a caricatural picture, the reduction of
time standards of single operations does not lead to
increases in profits as it happens in a growing and
predictable market, a ‘‘buying’’ market. Decision rules
for production scheduling can change according to the
situation—not only cost, sometimes product performance,
sometimes time to market, sometimes a combination of
them. Automation, low inventories and outsourcing
complicate the scene: integrated production systems are
more suitable to export varieties or problems to other
workplaces, sections, departments, plants or companies.
Automated processes, with remote control and guidance
by direct workers, require an abstract ability to be run,
 Tel.: +55 11 30915363x484; fax: +55 11 30915399.
E-mail address: msalerno@usp.br
The need to have a high degree of equipment utilisation to
make the system economically viable means to identify,
act and solve problems very fast, and to act accordingly to
the strategy pursue at that moment; moreover, means to
act to avoid the emerging of dysfunctions, disruptions,
quality problems, flow problems etc.
Clearly, production structure must be designed to cope
with contemporary needs of flexibility. Organisational
literature is rich in discussing flexible schemes compared
to the traditional tayloristic/fordist ones. The main
approach in that sense, the so-called socio-technical
systems (Emery and Trist, 1969; Davis and Taylor, 1972),
is a real advance but it has some conceptual problems
(Sitter et al., 1997; Eijnatten and Zwaan, 1998) and mainly
it lacks a tooling kit to orient organisational design—the
design rules.
This paper proposes a methodological approach and
design rules for organisational design for companies that
face competitive and technological environments like the
one discussed before. To do so, a brief critical review of the
literature is required. Modern socio-technology (Sitter
et al., 1997) is the basic framework for our development,
as well as some key concepts: events, in order to replace
the tayloristic task as the criteria for work division, and
communication (in Habermas sense, reworked by Zarifian,
1996) for the coordination of work. The aim is the design

0925-5273/$ - see front matter & 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.ijpe.2009.06.015
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
420 M.S. Salerno / Int. J. Production Economics 122 (2009) 419–428

of work groups, not predefined—their configuration, their Table 1

geometry, their boundaries depends on the events to face. Profile of the companies in the field research.
So, they are reconfigurable groups, open, with variable
Company Product/process Research tools/activities
geometry—variable composition, variable part of the
process attended, variable goals to be achieved etc. Brazil
Contrary to many work group or team usual implementa- Pack1 Filling/packaging 1,2,3,4,5,7,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17
tion, groups have to be thought as part of the organisa- process
Pack2 Filling/packaging 1,2,3,4,5,10,13,14,15
tion: they must be linked to the whole firm or company. It process
is insufficient to think of the design only at the direct Pack3 Filling/packaging 1,2,3,4,5,7,9,10,13,16
production level. A more integral design should be process
comprehensive, thinking of the whole system—engineer- Food1 Food 1,2,3,4,5,7,9,10,13,14,15,16,17
Food2 Food 1,2,3,4,5,10,13,14,15,16
ing, management, indirect work in general. Processes
Food3 Food 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,10,13,14,16
design and direct production groups integration with staff Food4 Food 1,2,3,4,5,9,10,13,14,16
and white collar activities is of upmost importance for an Food5 Food (ice cream, 2 1,2,3,4,5,7,9,12,13,15
integral design. plants)
The methodology proposes the following design rules: Auto1 Commercial vehicles 1,3,4,5,6,8,9,11,12,13,14,15,16,17
Auto2 Passenger vehicles (2 1,3,5,6,9,11,12,13,14,15,17
plants)
1. Discussion, formalisation and divulgation of design Auto3 Passenger vehicles (3 1,2,3,4,5,6,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17
principles/declaration of values of the project plants)
Auto4 Passenger vehicles 1,3,4,6,8,11,12,13,14,15,16,17
2. Definition of operational processes
Auto5 Passenger vehicles (3 1,2,3,4,5,6,8,10,11,12,13,14,15
3. Parallelisation (flow design) plants, headquarters)
4. Segmentation (basic division of work among groups) Auto6 Commercial vehicles 1,2,3,4,5,6,8,11,12,13,14,15
5. Criteria for choosing process technology (equipments, (plant, headquarters)
software etc.) OfficeStuff1 Office materials 3,4,9,13,14,17
Machin1 Machinery & 4,6,8,9,11,12,13,14,15
6. Information systems, production of information, precision mechanics
spaces for communication PersonalCare1 Personal care 1,2,3,4,5,7,9,10,12,13,14,15,16
7. Control system to face to events (chemical)
8. Support social systems: wage system, careers, training, PersonalCare Personal care 1,3,4,13,14
2 (chemical)
and symbolism.
PersonalCare Personal care 1,2,3,4,5,13,14,16
3 (chemical)
Chemical1 Chemical 1,2,3,4,5,7,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16
2. Methodological issues Chemical2 Chemical 1,2,3,4,5,12,13,14,16
Chemical3 Chemical (2 plants) 1,3,4,5,11,12,13,14
The proposal was developed based on a large field Chemical4 Chemical 1,2,3,4,5,9,10,13,14,16
Chemical5 Chemical (oil 1,3,5,6,8,10,11,12,13,14,
research and some consulting during late 90s’ and refinery, 3 plants)
beginning of the 2000s. It mixes aspects of survey, case Aero1 Aeronautical 1,2,3,5,6,10,11,12,13
studies and in-depth action research. It was conducted
France
mainly in Brazil but also in France (automotive, paper, FRAuto1 Vehicles (3 plants; 1,3,4,5,6,13,14,16,17
food industries) and Italy (chemicals, automotive, ma- headquarters/R&D
chinery). It was discussed and applied in organisations centre)
like Unilever (food and consumer goods), Rhône-Poulenc FRAuto2 Vehicles 1,3,4,5
FRFood/96 Food 1,2,3,4,5,13,14
(chemical), Danone (food), Rockwell (auto parts/mechan- FRCardboard Corrugated 1,2,3,4,5,9,10,13,14
ical), Petrobras (oil refinery and engineering), Embraer cardboard & boxes
(aircrafts), R&D sectors of some companies as well as
Italy
some attempt in public sector, and others. Some visits in ITComp Auto components 1,2,3,4,5,6,9,10,12,13,14
plants in other countries served to think of the proposals, ITAuto Vehicles 1,3,6,9,11,12,13,14
but were not formally conducted with methodological ITMachin Machine tools 1,4,6,9,11,12,13,14
care; these visits happened in Germany, South Korea, ITElect Electrical stuff 1,2,3,5,12,13,14

Uruguay, Belarus, Russia, where, apart from Uruguay and Germany

some companies in Germany, there were a language
barrier and time shortage to perform the methodology.
Some companies in Brazil, France and Italy also fit in this
latter category.
In all companies there were an in-depth discussion
with managers, plant visits, the following of events and
the analysis of how workers faced it, focusing on the ease
or the barriers the organisational structure put to the
perception, diagnosis and action to face events. These
interviews with managers and technicians have two
characteristics: (a) apart from a general overview of the
company, the production and its challenges, they were
DEAuto1 Vehicles (3 plants) 1,3,4,5,6,8,10,11,12,13,14,16
(1) Direct observation; (2) interviews with main company manager; (3)
interviews with plant managers; (4) interviews with human resources
manager; (5) interviews with other managers and technical staff; (6)
interviews with trade union leaders; (7) group dynamics with direct
workers performed in the company; (8) group dynamics with direct
workers performed in the Union; (9) discussions with direct and indirect
workers; (10) interviews with bosses (supervisors etc.); (11) discussions
with plant committees/union representatives in the company; (12)
discussions with trade union technical staff; (13) analysis of company’s
materials; (14) analysis of secondary materials (paper, statistical data
etc.); (15) supervision of PHd, MSc, or graduation theses; (16) interviews
with managers in the headquarters; (17) interviews in plants in the
home country (and vice-versa, in Brazil).
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
M.S. Salerno / Int. J. Production Economics 122 (2009) 419–428
based on an open guideline focused on the way the
organisation uses to perceive, judge and act on problems/
events; (b) they were performed at first in a formal way
(in the office), but also during plant visits, lunch time,
management meetings etc.
In most companies there were discussions with work-
ers on the same focus discussed above; in few but very
relevant cases there were group dynamics with workers,
dynamics with managers, long periods of production
observation and discussions and the following of work
activities in the workplaces. Table 1 shows the profile of
the companies researched and the activities performed in
each one.
These dynamics are not an easy tool, they depend on
the accordance of the companies; it means that some
workers will be absent of the production for some hours
or will be in extra-hours. But they are a very powerful tool
to comprehend the real functioning of the work, of the
organisation, its problems and potentials. One dynamic
was only performed after some plant visits and detailed
observation of the production, and after interviews with
managers and technicians to get the strategy, production
goals regarding the strategy and the market, organisa-
tional practices, changes that happened, resistances,
future vision. We performed separate dynamics with
direct workers and indirect production ones (mainte-
nance, quality staff etc.). After an introduction explaining
our research activity, we made a deal on time period of the
activity, confidentiality etc. Then, the following exercise
was proposed: the workers received a large sheet of paper,
some magazines, scissor, and glue. The aim was to made
two panels, each one representing one situation of work
(before and after a change, a production problem, an
special event—it depended on each case, on the previous
data collected). A discussion was conducted based on the
panel ‘‘readings’’, guided by a roadmap previously pre-
pared, in order to focus on the events, on the problems, on
the way the production deals with the events. Each
dynamic took around 4 h.
In some companies (Pack1, Food1, PersonalCare1,
Chemical1) we performed dynamics also with managers.
In all companies that we performed in-depth research
(action research), with dynamics, we made several meet-
ings with management to discuss our findings and
proposals.
In the cases where the dynamics took place at the
Union, the techniques utilized were: (a) verbalization (the
workers were asked to describe their activities in some
key events); (b) drawings of the production process and
workplace, with flows, to anchor the discussion.
3. Literature review on organisational design to
flexibility
The traditional tayloristic model of work organisation
has received many criticisms due to its rigidity and
inadequacy to current competitiveness linked to product
innovation, time to market in not commoditised products
etc. And, as pointed out by Veen-Dorks (2005), traditional
management control is not aligned with such environ-
421
ment. Socio-technical systems design, born at Tavistock
Institute, London, and well spread into the US and North
Europe, was one of the first post-II World War criticisms
to taylorism, as well as an attempt to create a formal
approach towards flexibility and better work conditions. A
production system would be composed of two subsys-
tems, the social and the technical, that must be joint
optimized. Cherns (1979), and Gerwin and Kolodny (1992)
have systematized the approach in principles, highlight-
ing: variance control—as closest as possible to its source;
multiskilling of the workforce; low specification on how
the work should be done but high specification on what is
expected from the work group; work participation and
good work conditions. The latter authors, based on Davis
and Taylor (1972), proposed an organisational design
based on the analysis of production variances that would
guide the establishment of technical borders among
organisational unities, and work (job) design. In the
approach, flexibility is treated as the ability of a given
group to cope with variances. Although not explicit, the
approach lead to groups with fixed composition and fixed
part of the process to work on. Many psychologists of
work developed the idea of individual self-belonging into
a group-a given one (Tjosvold, 1991; Katzenbach and
Smith, 1993), supporting the idea of a fixed group.
But the approach lacks in considering practical design
rules—some of the original authors from Tavistock
Institute were even against such rules. It delivers few
tools for design, it is not well formatted for practitioners;
this lead to a the trend for practitioners to adopt classical
(tayloristic) rules, that are simple, logic, written—even if
they could be not recommendable to the type of company
here in focus. The so-called lean approach (Womack et al.,
1990) also lacks design rules for the kind of flexibility we
are considering here. Although many ideas of the lean
approach can be useful in any kind of company, actually it
is much more focused on the rationalisation of mass
production operations (reduction of waste etc.) than on
the creation of value by product innovation in a turbulent
environment. ‘‘Toyota-like’’ teams are closed groups, with
fixed composition, working on a given area of the process,
strictly guided by a supervisor.
Mintzberg’s configurations are quite powerful to analyse
organisations (Mintzberg, 1993), but does not make easier the
design of an organisational structure. Adhocracy is the closer
configuration to our goals; the idea of self adjustment among
people as a way of coordination is perhaps the most
important contribution of the author. Rarely an organisational
paper puts emphasis on coordination, like Mintzberg did;
normally the central issue is division of work whether for
prescription or its criticism. But self adjustment must be built,
designed and implemented—that is the challenge of a
practitioner that could be simplified by a formal theoretical
and methodological approach with appropriate design rules.
Literature on virtual enterprise focuses mainly in task
allocation and managing the system; Martinez et al (2001)
discuss the concept of VE and cite the question of non-
hierarchic and distributed control but do not develop it.
Hülsmann et al. (2008), concerning supply chain manage-
ment, proposes the adoption of autonomous cooperation
and control, characterised by autonomy, decentralized
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
422 M.S. Salerno / Int. J. Production Economics 122 (2009) 419–428
decision-making, interaction, heterarchy, and non-deter-
minism, to achieve flexibility in global supply chain
operations, but they also do not discuss design rules.
Sitter et al. (1997) have gone further in design methods
improving socio-technical tradition. They introduced the
so-called modern socio-technology, by stating there are
no singles social and technological subsystems; instead,
subsystems would be functions like production, product
design, etc., each one joining both social and technical
aspects—actually, it is not possible to isolate the
‘‘technical’’ from the ‘‘social’’ and vice-versa. The aim of
organisational design would be to grant the maximum of
control of the system, in the sense of the capability to
drive it to desirable states. This is an important goal to
cope with unpredictable situations. The spirit of the
approach is: the simpler the organisational structure,
the more complex the work, the easier the control of the
system to cope with variability, the more flexible the
organisation.
4. Depicting classical design rules strength to build
options
In order to build coherent and pertinent alternatives to
the classical functional (or tayloristic) approach to
organisation, there is a need to build new concepts to
replace the existent ones, as well as systematic design
rules to make possible for practitioners and academics to
employ them, improve them, and further on replace them.
Briefly, the strength of the classic approach is simpli-
city and adequacy between the physical process of
production and the financial process of producing profits.
Taylor’s task concept means a given work method—ratio-
nalised human motion, in a given workplace, both
designed to minimize the (standard) time. By reducing
standard time of the operations management reduces
cost; in an environment that buys all the products
produced, it means that low production costs leads to
higher profits. So, the reduction of time standards is
directly linked to profitability in a stable business—pre-
dictable market, no challenged from competitors, no
substitutive products, no alternative technologies etc.
For most of the businesses, this time has gone.
Task (In Taylor’s sense, 1911) is the unity of classical
work organisation. It is the criteria for work division.
Coordination is embedded in technical stuff (like assem-
bly lines) or performed by hierarchy (supervision/man-
agement) or technocracy (methods or planning office). To
build an alternative means to substitute task concept as
the criteria for division of labour and coordination by
technical means or hierarchy/technocracy.
5. Events and communication as the criteria for work
nucleation and coordination
5.1. Event replaces task as the main concept for work
division/auto-organisation
Veltz and Zarifian (1993) have introduced the concept
of event in the organisational discussion. Event is an
unpredictable, unusual, random but important situation
that must be faced by a given production system in a given
moment. It is not a physical phenomenon, it is a social and
economical phenomenon—for instance, the fall of a dry
branch of a tree is an event for the gardener but not for
those who watch it by the window. An event is not
physical in the sense that it can never ‘‘happens’’—for
instance, an event is the procedure taken by a work team
in a packing process of a food industry (Food1) in order to
keep the line running by adjusting the guides of the
machine that would be un-calibrated without the inter-
vention. The action prevented the physical happening of
packing problems; it can be classified as an event in the
sense that was judged important by the team and have
mobilised competences to face it. It was random and
unpredictable because nobody could know when and how
to calibrate the system; it was unusual in the sense that it
does not fit in the predetermined routine.
An event is singular, not foreseen in norms or rules that
describe or evaluate situations. It is unpredictable, making
irrelevant the imposition of time and motion to workers
because, due to the event, prevails a time logics different
from the ‘‘regular’’ course of production. It cannot be
reduced to a fact of the objective world since are the
members of the social world that make an event from an
occasion—if currently computers breakdown are more
important than in the 60s, this does not mean that there
are more breakdowns with existing computers than with
the valve ones; however, current economic conditions for
profitability and strategies of time to market put light on
breakdowns; and an event is inherent to a given situation.
In that sense, event conceptually replaces the classical
notion of task as the key concept for work division, or, in
better words, as the key concept to organise people in a
group, to set a group, an open, variable group. Around
events competences are mobilised to face them; workers
are mobilised—better, mobilise themselves—to cope with
them. A given breakdown can require a group of workers
able to deal with mechanics, electronics, pneumatics;
another one, only a mechanical. Competences required in
a given moment depend on the particular event, being
unpredictable. So, a rigid division of labour like in
traditional or closed socio-technical group (or self man-
aged groups, semi-autonomous groups, self-directed
teams—there are many names for roughly the same
scheme), with the same workers with the same compe-
tences every shift, every day, every week, is not the most
efficient choice.
Traditional and modern socio-technical and design
approaches conceptualise variability or variances analysis
(Gerwin and Kolodny, 1992; Cherns, 1979; Sitter et al.,
1997). We consider the concept of event superior of the
variability one. Variability means a deviation from a
standard, from an average; it is not well adapted for
systems with variable goals, where multiple standards
often change, requiring a trade off among them. And with
the concept of event it is possible to analyse and to set
design rules also for situations where a variation was not
produced, but the goals of the moment, the configuration
of the production system, of its indicators, mean the need
for an action.
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5.2. Zarifian’s concept of communication replaces the
classical way of work coordination
The question is how to set a mobile group config-
uration—in other words, groups with variable geometry,
open. In order to workers mobilise required competences
to face an event it lacks a crucial point: how to coordinate
in between workers? How would workers deal with
tactical questions regarding the decision criteria in a
given moment? For instance, there are alternatives in a
breakdown, like: (a) to fix up the equipment as soon as
possible because the client has urgency to receive the
goods; (b) to promote an in-depth diagnosis of the
equipment in order to prevent further problems, in order
to elevate production system reliability, since in two days
a new order will be produced and the pace will be
increased, without much time for machinery adjustment.
Both alternatives are acceptable depending on the given
situation. The crucial question is coordination—classically,
the supervisor defines the priority but it uses to take a
long time between the breakdown and the information of
the priority to the workers. This idle time would be
reduced if workers could discuss tactical issues and
validate priorities of the production system linked to the
specific business ‘‘game’’ being played.
Veltz and Zarifian (1993), and Zarifian (1996), inspired
by Habermas (1987), proposed the concept of commu-
nication as the central one to replace the classical notion
of coordination. Communication is a polysemic word; in
management it is quite common to use it as information,
flows, orders (in hierarchical meaning), companies’ letters
or news, information systems (computer networks, e-
mails) etc., as Koufteros et al. (2007) have pointed out. But
information in the sense of saying to others what to do is
not a useful notion for the paper’s purposes. Communica-
tion must be understood as mutual inter-comprehension
among people, as proposed by Zarifian. It is different from
information, orders etc. And communication in that sense
has three dimensions, as can be depicted from the
examples in this section: (a) the cognitive one—which
competences to mobilise? (b) the normative one—which
rules, which priorities to guide the intervention?; (c) the
expressive one, concerning instigation and rewards
(wages, careers etc.).
The cognitive dimension is linked to a mutual
comprehension and understanding on which competen-
ces—and which professionals—are required to face up a
given event. For instance, one technician in electronics
must consider important the mobilisation of pneumatic
competences in order to keep the system running. More-
over, the technician must recognize in his colleague the
competence and the aptitude to perform that job:
cognitive dimension is not only technical but also social.
The normative dimension is crucial. It guides the way
to approach a problem, to face an event. Taking the
example of machinery breakdown cited in the beginning
of this section, there are some alternatives to face the
event: (a) to minimize downtime in the short time (fix it
in the minimum gap of time); (b) to minimize downtown
in the medium time (performing a more comprehensive
423
diagnosis of the failure, changing components etc.); (c) to
use the breakdown as an opportunity to learn, to train
people, to discuss with engineering improvements to get
better productivity or quality etc. Each possibility has its
own logic, is acceptable depending on the situation,
depending on the needs of the whole production system,
of the tactics of the company in that moment. If there is a
crucial order to be delivered in the same day, maybe the
best would be to fix the machinery as soon as possible; if
the machinery is producing a part of an order that will be
delivered in some days, the need for the machinery to
keep running well in the near future could lead to the
second possibility; and if there is no such pressure of time,
it would be misleading not to take advantage of the
moment for improvements, learning, training, preparing a
future best performance.
In order for an open group to decide which possibility
would be the best, they have to know and, moreover, to
validate, the norms and the tactic issues of production
plan and sales being played at the moment. We will see a
case on it below. A key question for the company and for
the organisational design is how to promote communica-
tion in the normative dimension, making possible for
people that have gathered themselves to face an event
(according to the cognitive dimension) to decide which
alternative to follow in their action. To have access to
information on production scheduling and planning, sales
priorities, inventories etc. is crucial for the decision. To
participate in the decision of monthly/weekly/daily plan-
ning could be of uppermost importance for workers to
develop normative mutual inter-comprehension, but only
a real participation, with voice, not only with ears, will
lead to it: if a worker says that the machine will not
support the charge, and the management charges it
anyway, there is no development of communication, and
workers tend to abandon the meetings or to be there in a
bureaucratic sense (obliged by the bosses).
And, of sure, nobody would involve themselves in a
scheme like the one being proposed here without a formal
retribution, since responsibility grows, productivity
grows, managers are free to deal with more strategic
issues—this is an important question regarding workers
autonomy, often misleading.
Based on the original framework of Sitter et al. (1997)
and the concepts of event and communication, we will
propose design rules for an organisation dealing with
unpredictable goals.
6. Design rules for organisations dealing with
unpredictable goals
6.1. Discussion, formalisation and divulgation of design
principles/declaration of values of the project
To make explicit values and design principles is of
uppermost importance to disseminate decision criteria
among design team—many designers tend to participate
in specific parts of the project; written values help to keep
team homogeneous, limiting time-consuming discussions
on what is the basis of the project. Moreover, it makes
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424 M.S. Salerno / Int. J. Production Economics 122 (2009) 419–428
clear the compromises assumed by management towards
employees, what is quite important in redesign of existing
organisations.
6.2. Definition of operational processes
Definition of main processes linked to strategic axles.
Operational processes are transversal to the company, not
functional/departmental. They can be defined as a
cooperation of activities for the concretisation of a global
objective, directed to a final client that is the same for all
activities. Each process should have: (a) a global perfor-
mance indicator that formalises its main goal (e.g., a time
to market, a cost); (b) an organisation that links their
activities; (c) a co-responsibility of the actors towards the
global objective, and regarding single activities they are
involved. The global performance objective should be
deployed to the activities, but remains the main reference
for the evaluation of the process. Locally, in key activities,
there are indicators of means, not of objectives. Activities
can be the basis for an ABC/M—activity based costing/
management.
Four rules are proposed for operational processes
design: (a) definition of firm’s strategic axles; (b) discus-
sion of the processes linked to each axle associated with a
joint discussion of all processes; (c) analysis of each
process focusing on its characteristics and criteria of
performance; (d) identification of the activities of each
process, and discussion with social actors (workers,
supervision etc.) on the sequence of activities, weakness,
strengths and improvement opportunities, as well as
indicators for each activity to guide quotidian action.
The better way is to involve employees in the discussion
to set and to rethink processes; it is a way of learning and
of professional and organisational development (Galbraith
and Lawler III, 1995).
6.3. Parallelisation (flow design)
Puts light on the analysis of production flows aiming at
make the system more flexible and reliable to cope with
external uncertainties (mainly linked to market and
regulation) and internal ones (linked to failures in
equipments, the need to test new products in line, lack
of inventories, lack of delivery from suppliers etc). The
general approach is to prefer modular production systems,
small lines in parallel instead of a long line, cells instead of
functional sector, concurrent engineering etc. To some
extent, the discussion on modular design and supply (as
modularisation in auto industry) has a similar logic of
parallelisation—economies of investment, parallelisation
of assemblies etc. (Salerno, 2001).
Parallelisation means that there are options for the
flow: if a machine is out of order, production can be
redirected to other line, cell etc. If a new product or
packing must be tested and production calibrated to it,
one single part of the production process is occupied, the
other ones keeping the normal production running. This
rule tries to isolate and to circumscribe the effect of
variations, perturbations, events. It is crucial for the need
to cope with unpredictable goals.
Sure, an investment analysis must be made in each
case. But it must be considered as the effective perfor-
mance of the whole production system in medium-long
term instead of the usual static analysis, which uses to
consider nominal performance of the equipment in a
stand-alone situation. One of the main benefits of
parallelisation concerning investment analysis is the
possibility to modularise investment, postponing part of
it. For instance, the company invests in one line, is able to
deliver product to the market, and, according to sales
growth, it can invest in other parallel lines—this strategy
is being used by Petrobras in a new oil refinery being
designed, showing that even in continuous flow, where
process technology usually puts important constraints
to organisational design, there is some room to paralle-
lisation.
By the other hand, it is quite common that a decision to
buy two machines instead of one with nominal double
capacity pays off. In Food5 we have seen the opposi-
te—the introduction of a complex packing machine
replaced two existing one, but scrap has increased (due
to higher speed and higher complexity to adjust) and
flexibility to test new products has decreased, what is
critical in that business. In DEAuto1, automation in a
1.5 km synchronous assembly line had contributed to
inefficiency; if a single screw was not in the position in a
station, the whole line was down, and workers have to
walk long distances to access the special gates to go into
the line. The effect is a loss of up to 20% of working time,
an extra area for rework, and 5.500 workers instead of the
3.400 initially planned (including shifts, coordinators,
rework etc.). This is an extreme case of the problems of
a non-parallel flow design; DEAuto1 has modified this
conception in subsequent lines.
In the auto industry there used to be an idealisation of
the Toyota scheme of stopping the assembly line—the
hidden issue was the ease to run overtime in Japan; in
new Toyota plants, long lines have been broken down in
parts, separated by a buffer designed to cope with small
stops in each segment, without stopping the whole line.
6.4. Segmentation: division of work among groups or
allocation of group boundaries
Refers to criteria for the division of work, what socio-
technical traditional approach names as borders alloca-
tion of a group. As far as it is impossible for a single group
to take care of a whole complex production system, the
proposal is to design macro-groups that can divide
themselves depending on each single situation, each
single event, like in Chemical1, Food1, Pack1 and others.
Moreover, this macro group can even ask for extra-
workers from another macro-group as it happens in the
case discussed below.
As proposed initially, event took the place of task as the
criteria for work mobilisation and work division. More-
over, according to a whole set of authors and to our own
research, the main problems of efficiency in a more
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integrated production system are due to boundaries in-
between organisational unities, not inside them. It is
useless to optimise a time standard on a workplace if
subsequent work in process waits hours to be transferred,
or that product will not be sold anymore—there are lots of
other examples concerning relations between production
sectors, production with maintenance, scheduling or
product design, quality problems etc.
The following criteria for the basic initial allocation of
macro-groups are proposed:
(a) to internalise organisational borders in the group;
(b) the cycle of analysis, treatment and action due to an
event must be preferably allocated to a single group;
(c) one activity defined during the discussion/design of
operational processes must be under the responsi-
bility of a single group.
(d) Secondary criteria, according to the case: 3T—tech-
nology homogeneity, territory (space), time (shifts
etc.), and numbers of people in a macro-group.
Fig. 1 shows a real case, the discussion of segmentation
in Pack1, a plant that produces liquid detergents for
manual dishwashing. There are several filling/packaging
lines; each one receives plastic bottles produced in-house
and plastic caps and labels from suppliers. The lines must
be calibrated for filling the bottles, closing with caps,
pasting labels; at the end, the bottles are arranged in
corrugated cardboard boxes and arranged to go to ware-
house. The plant faced several quality problems—bottles
with less volume that it should have causing problems
with final consumers, supermarkets and governmental
agencies; wrong labels; bottles discarded due to imperfect
closing, and so on. As consequence, machine occupation
was low, leading to inefficiency and higher costs.
The work was divided traditionally: one fixed machine
operator for each line, the only person that regulated the
line; 5–7 auxiliary workers in the beginning and at the
end of the line to guarantee the right position of the
plastic bottles and to move filled bottles into the boxes.
The company started analysing the introduction of
groups; the inspiration was the case of PersonalCare1,
which was successful in improving quality and productiv-
ity years before. A dynamic conducted with workers
showed they had a very clear notion on where the
problems came from, mostly from plastic bottles; the
problem of weight was due to foam formation during
filling; etc. But they had no time to discuss with the
machine operator due to the fixed position—if one gets
out of the line the bottles could fall down on the
ground—and the distance; they only notice someone
when the operator or the supervisor went to the final part
of the line.
The company studied three design options, as showed
in Fig. 1 and decider to introduce the open group
approach. The same group is responsible for plastic blow
(production of the bottles), for filling, packing and delivery
to the warehouse, internalising previous borders. The idea
is to keep under control of a single group the main events
to face and action to perform—regulation of plastic blow,
425
of filling system etc. In order to permit auxiliary workers
to participate, formal training was provided; the end of
the lines was adapted to allow a small buffer of finished
products before packaging in the boxes, to make possible
for workers to move along the lines to regulate the filling,
talk to people at the plastic blow in the moment etc. As
result, machine occupation increased and quality pro-
blems were reduced to 10% of the previous level.
6.5. Criteria for choosing process technology (equipments,
software etc.)
Process technology—machinery and software—uses to
have imbedded organisational and work division logics,
setting up restrictions for the design of the organisational
structure and dynamics. For instance, an automated
system to control a continuous flow process offered to
Chemical1 had terminals for a quality control department
with special passwords inaccessible to production work-
ers. As the company has firstly define their organisational
principles and concepts (like in Section 6.1), and decide do
not segment apart production and quality control tests, do
not have a QC department, not to have direct supervisors,
the supplier was asked to change the parameters of the
system. Without the formal procedures on organisational
design, Chemical1 would have bought a supervisor level, a
quality control sector etc.
So, the company must firstly decide the firm’s strategy
and the organisational logic, macro-design and structure,
and only after elects detailed process technology. Tech-
nology must be compatible with strategy and structure
considered in a horizon of time. Of course, there are some
business strictly linked to a process technology, like oil
refinery, petrochemical and others; it limits the degrees of
freedom for organisational design (like in parallelisation)
but the example of Petrobras shows that there are room
for parallelisation and, at least, it is always possible to
discuss how to configure production control software,
passwords, terminals allocation etc., like in Chemical2,
Chemical3, PersonalCare3. This point leads us to discuss
information systems.
6.6. Information systems, production of information, spaces
for communication
Information systems must be developed after paralle-
lisation and segmentation, never before. They must be
coherent to organisation logics and goals. Some spaces to
promote communication (in the sense of mutual under-
standing among people) shall be designed. Formal meet-
ings to discuss the future are essential to promote the
normative communication dimension, like the ones to
discuss production scheduling involving production work-
ers, maintenance, sales, general management, and the
participation of direct workers in teams responsible to
design expansions, new lines, technological changes etc.
At Food1, the dynamics we realised with workers
showed that they participate in a weekly meeting for the
planning of the next week but their opinion were often
disregarded. As a result, their participation became
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
426 M.S. Salerno / Int. J. Production Economics 122 (2009) 419–428
P
Process overview
sl s machine operators
B
a o
o l Plastic blow lines to supply
s p
o
r filling/packaging lines
pt w operators along the different lines. The option was discarded:
i o
cr
Packing lines: some with manual
feeding and packaging
filling / packaging line
filling / packaging line
filling / packaging line
Option 2: a fixed group by each line
Each group is homogeneous (same jobs) and decides members’
allocation along the line. The option seeks to increase efficiency
due to mutual cooperation. Problem: the need to intensive training
for ex-non operators (unskilled).
filling / packaging line
filling / packaging line
Fig. 1. Segmentation options at Pack1.
formal, an obligation, and they stopped to point out
problems in machines, raw materials etc.; the efficiency
declined (measured by machine occupation), delivery
problems arose due to the difficulty to achieve scheduling
goals. During a meeting with management we presented
the diagnosis; the general manager decided to accept any
suggestions by the workers in order to regain trust; in the
next meeting, he asked several times on the problems
with equipment and others. The workers told about a PLC
(programmable controller) with a problem not yet fixed
although in the maintenance schedule; this problem
would lead to a lower level of production. The manager
accepted to change the planning, negotiated with sales;
sales contacted the main client (the major Brazilian
supermarket network) to redefine delivery; it was not a
problem for the client. The company used the gap of time
gained with the changing in production scheduling to fix
the PLC—a simple but decisive action to regain efficiency
and, moreover, to regain trust in order to rebuild the
conditions for normative communication.
Meetings to discuss the past are essential both to
improve professional skills and the cognitive dimension of
communication, like those to analyse the actions per-
formed to cope with events in the past. We followed some
Option1: fixed group only with the former
Aims at lowering work costs by flexible allocation of machine
Pack1 has realised that manual packing workers were most
sensitive to quality problems since they manipulate the bottles. And
it creates new borders, tending to elevate the period of time to treat
events that requires the intervention of more than one unity
operation
area
operation
area
Option 3: one macro-group considering plastic blow
and final packaging
The same group is responsible for plastic blow, filling and
packaging. Although plastic blow and packing are hundreds of
meters far from each other, with a wall in between, the idea is to
improve efficiency through immediate action
b b when there is a problem due to plastic bottles
l l in the packing line – an analysis showed that
o o this is the main problem of line stopping and
w w product quality. The group could rapidly
identify a problem, reallocating workers to face
it. After three months of experience and
training, quality problems were reduced by
80%; productivity grew substantially.
filling / packaging lines
meetings like that in some companies; they can be really
effective if conducted in a positive way, to learn, not to
find guilty. Communication is a social construction, not a
technical affair.
6.7. Control system to face to events: controllability,
drivability
Since the generic goal of the type of production system
in focus here is the capability to reach unpredictable and
changing goals instead of a predefined bunch of goals,
system’s drivability (or controllability) is crucial. Driva-
bility derivates from the structure; depends on how
organisational structure was designed and implemented.
Drivability cycle is composed by (a) perception/represen-
tation of the state of the process by workers; (b) judgment
on what to do; (c) action. So, if the approach to design
organisational structure is top-down, from strategy to
groups, the approach to drivability/control systems is
bottom-up. The objective is to eliminate control needs by
allocating them in lower organisational levels. Informa-
tion systems discussed in the precedent item must be
designed to help the representation of the state of the
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
M.S. Salerno / Int. J. Production Economics 122 (2009) 419–428
process and to make control cycle and actions to face
events easier.
6.8. Social support systems: wage system, careers, training,
symbolism
It is crucial to design wage and career system
compatible with organisation demands. Traditional over-
divided wage schemes induce in the opposite direction
instead of incentivizing self mobilisation of workers,
independent of their background, to face an event.
Management by competence (Zarifian, 2001) is a good
starting point; social or organisational skills should be
considered as well as the technical ones. It helps a lot in
workers’ engagement, in the expressive dimension of
communication. Nobody works for nothing. Workers
evaluation is also crucial. Evaluation criteria and manage-
ment acts are the most important signalisation on what
only a discourse is, and what is real in everyday life at
work. In the same way, to have exclusive restaurants,
parking area, cash dispensers for managers do not fit well
with a company with few hierarchical levels that depends
on workers’ self mobilisation and responsibility: if a
worker can not have lunch in the same place of a manager,
why should him act as a manager?
7. A well succeed case: an open organisation, the
worker–manager
A Brazilian chemical consumer goods plant (Chemi-
cal1) shows an impressive case of reconfigurable organi-
sation. It has three mini-plants defined by different
processes: chemical batch flow to produce the main raw
material; physical transformation of raw materials—by
heat, pressure, gravity etc.; packing. There are three
macro-groups per shift, one in each process, only two
hierarchical levels (workers and management); there is a
large part of skilled workers; the company seeks for dual
skill (like mechanical and electrician, electrician and
electronics etc.) and pays for the formation.
Processes 1 and 2 run 24 h/day. Process 3 utilises ten
parallel packing lines; there is a kind of reference group by
line, but these groups are open, can send and receive other
people according to the events to face—for instance, if the
packing machine adjusted for one priority product has a
problem in the final stage (which puts several packs of the
product into a larger box in order to send it to the
warehouse or directly to the distribution truck), people
from other lines can help packing manually part of the
production. Process 2 is vertical, 30 m high, with several
stages, but a single group runs it—around 30 persons/
shift. Workers talk by phone and radio; every one can ask
the help of others to face an event. In Process 2 there are a
control room where computer terminals are installed but
every member of the group can go there. Who is in charge
of the computers at the moment obviously has more
information and a broader view of what is going on. Shifts
were designed to overlap 30 min. During first 150 there is a
meeting with representatives of the groups ending
shift with all workers of the next shift for Processess 2
427
and 3; in the last 15 min there are informal conversations
on the job.
One night, the group heading Process 1 faced a
huge problem that could leave to a breakdown in the
reactor—it had broken before. The question was whether
to stop production or whether to continue at least until
daylight and office hour. They decided that the best would
be to stop the process. But this would mean stopping
deliveries for some time. It was 3 am. They called up
Process 2 to investigate their level of inventory; they
researched on external delivery schedule of their product,
called up an external client asking for their level of
inventories and if it would be possible to postpone
delivery for one day. After that, they stopped the process.
At 9 am the manager arrived, got panic because the
mini-plant was down, but relaxed after being informed
of the procedures taken in the precedent shift.
There are no quality or maintenance sectors. When a
machine axle went out of order, a worker called up a
maintenance company that had a contract with the
company, informing the problem, called up a taxi and
went to the service supplier with the axel to machine a
new one—without asking permission, without informing
the management. When a leak happened in Process 2,
they asked directly, by phone, for workers of Process 3
(packing) to help them.
Chemical1 is an extreme and very well succeed case of
reconfigurable organisation. It seems as if there is one
single group of workers that reallocate themselves
according to production needs. Managers let the
production run and have more time to concentrate on
strategic or tactical issues—how to improve efficiency,
how to improve the business, how to keep the system
running well.
The plant has broken all the performance records of the
whole company (efficiency, quality, cost and the lowest
period of time since the inauguration to achieve the
expected standards, which were surpassed in the
sequence), which has plants all over the world, becoming
benchmarking. This made visible an important problem.
The company had a global wage classification, and the
blue collars of the plant were at the top. The headquarters
did not accept a change in the system to fit this plant,
although all its success. So, other companies in the region
start offering more to the workers, and some have
changed company. When it was starting to became a
common fact, the general manager of the business at
Chemical1 ignored the headquarters and moved most of
the main skilled blue collar workers to a white collar
classification. Management also must be flexible.
8. Conclusions
The paper proposed a framework, a methodology and
rules for the design of organisations. The goal is to build
an organisation able to reconfigure itself according to the
challenges it faces in order to cope with unpredictable
goals. To do so, at first a new framework was build, based
on the concepts of event and communication as the
mutual inter-comprehension among people, respectively,
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
428 M.S. Salerno / Int. J. Production Economics 122 (2009) 419–428
to replace the classical concepts of task (time standard,
motion standard, predefined workplace) and coordination
by hierarchy, technocracy or imbedded in technical stuff.
Event is the concept for self mobilisation of workers;
communication is the coordination tool, conceived based
on three aspects: the cognitive, the normative and the
expressive. In that sense, it is possible to act according to
the challenges to face, to changing goals.
But it is not enough to conceptualise. Design rules
must be outlined to support the designers with a formal
tool. Based on modern socio-technology, modified with
the concepts of event and communication and the scheme
of open, reconfigurable groups, design rules were though
to build an organisation in a systemic (or integral) way.
The rules are comprehensive, delivering a framework that
guides a corporation throughout the process of thinking of
the relation strategy-structure and the use of internal
resources to take advantage in changing conditions of
competition, in innovation.
Implementing the proposed organisational scheme
requires clear values, management dedication, cohesion
and firmness to keep the path. Although many criticisms
and a lot of literature, companies are accustomed to
classical structures and to hierarchical coordination. It is
not so taken for granted that a plant which supposedly
should have high flexibility goes beyond ‘‘Japanese style’’
quality tools and a suggestion system. It is not usual the
discussion with process engineers and with information
technology professionals on the requirements each sys-
tem should deliver to fit organisational needs—normally,
the discussion turns around internal efficiency of the
software or the equipment, but real efficiency is the one
achieved in day-to-day operation, not in a stand alone
equipment users’ manual. An equipment very efficiency
does not mean production effectiveness/efficacy regarding
company’s goals. Real efficiency and efficacy is achieved
by a collective understanding among management and all
types of workers, their mutual comprehension of the
goals, and the way they are organised, or organise
themselves, to act with equipments, information systems,
suppliers and customers.
Acknowledgments
The author is gratefully thanked to Marcelo Aulicino
(Polytechnic School and Petrobras), Roberto Marx
(Polytechnic School), Luiz Felipe Cortoni (LCZ Consulting,
who proposed the method of the dynamics) and people
from the companies researched. Brazilian Science and
Technology Research Council (CNPq/PQ) financed partially
the research.
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