PRINCIPLES OF MANAGEMENT

CASE STUDY

SUBMITTED BY: SANTO ANTONY

WILL-BURT: EDUCATION EVERY STEP OF THE WAY

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Will-Burt was a small family-owned manufacturing firm based in
Orville, Ohio. It was facing several problems and was on the verge of
liquidation. Harry Featherstone CEO of Will-Burt took the responsibility to
save the company from liquidation and he brought the company back on
track.

CASE ANALYSIS

Will-Burt was a family owned manufacturing firm based in OrvilleOhio. It was on the verge of liquidation. Firms insurance coverage has
been cancelled and lost $ 6 million. Featherstone was given a deadline to
find a new buyer. Featherstone was not willing to let the company
liquidate. So he tried to bring the company back into track. The problems
identified by Featherstone is as follows
PROBLEMS

It was having low sales and its profit was below 5 percent
Its product quality was so poor that it almost spent 25000 hours
a year for faulty product
Employee morale was also too low
Employee turnover rate also increased

SOLUTIONS

Featherstone first introduced leveraged buyout of its company

along with institution of an employee stock ownership plan
(ESOP).This was a part of negative strategy, that made the
employees stay in the company .It also created a thought in the
minds of employees that, its their company and it is the
responsibility of the whole employees to bring back the
company to its track. By this way the employees were
motivated and became more committed towards their company.
Increasing the quality was a major breakthrough. Featherstone
found out that company spent $700000 a year to rework the
defective parts. So he insisted on quality, making the parts
properly can save money and time.
To improve quality he gave education to the workers. Workers
were trained for improving the basic needs to complete a job.
He took assistance from University of Akron for giving training.
He invested in teachers and materials and paid employees the
normal salary for the time spent for training class.
Featherstone handed over profit and loss statements to all
employees so that he could bring transparency to the
companys account. He further simplified these profit and loss
statements, so that everyone could understand.

All these solutions worked out well and yielded better results. Giving
education to employees turned out to be a great success as almost 80
percent of the employees wanted to have more education. Will-Burts
annual rework has dropped almost 75 percent to $180000 and also time
spent for reworking dropped from 2000 hours in a month to 400 hours.

Absenteeism fell to 2 percent and workers compensation cost dropped

from $160000 in 1985 to meagre $662 in 1992.
Featherstone further added more courses, advanced blueprint
reading and statistical process control. He also initiated mini MBA to
help employees in knowing how to run and own business.
CONCLUSION
The case displays negative reinforcement being adopted by
Featherstone to motivate the employees. It showed the need to improve
quality and importance of providing training to employees. Featherstones
plan worked out to success as the firm came back on track to success.