Case Questions

Case Questions

Chapter 5: Case Question 1

Summary

Domtar was facing problems to compete against the big names in the industry and it was placed in some trouble areas. He knew that in order to sustain in a competitive industry it will need to invest in the employees by providing them training and making them learn new skills that will enable the firm to provide better customer services. He identified three pillars of an organization that is customers, shareholders and the management or employees. Thus he emphasized that all groups of employees need to take Kaizen training so that they are able to make better decisions for enhancing the progress of their organization.

Kaizen is a philosophy that is used by organizations to not bring improvement in their working environment but also improving the social environment of the organization. It is a philosophy that can be implemented from a lower subordinate to the highest ranked individual in an organization. Kaizen provides continuous change in the organization and thus enables the organization to improve productivity of their employees, able to provide better quality, achieve lower costs and increase the level of safety of an organization. Thus in order to ensure that the organization is able to control its cost it requires training of the employees to understand the changes occurring in the world, learn new skills and upgrade their techniques and style of work so that targeted goals are achieved effectively and efficiently. Many organizations chose different group of employees in order to provide them kaizen training. Kaizen training is a program that was first implemented by organizations in Japan that wanted to bring in their working styles and techniques so that they work according to the changes occurring in the business environment. Similarly Domtar decided to increase motivation among their employees and end monotonous in their work thus it decided to provide Kaizen training to their employees. The decision of Kaizen training was taken by Royer who felt that anybody that can bring change to the company is we thus he hired professional kaizen trainers who trained executives and middle class employees like managers, subordinates and etc. He ensured that Kaizen training will motivate the workers and decision makers to think new things, motivate the employees to adapt to the change and enables them to learn new skills, change their attitude towards their work.

In order to organize the trainees the Kaizen experts divided employees into different groups like all the managers in one group, workers that needed the training of different skills came under one group and all the executives in one group as they needed strategic training. This helped the organization in achieving the targeted goals of the organization.

In order to ensure that the training envisioned it is important that learning objectives are designed. Thus the learning objectives were:

Bringing improvement in the performance of the employees;

Training will be able to communicate Domtar values from top hierarchy to lower rank employees;

Clarification of goals assigned to each individual;

Development of a better communication between ...