Two Bosses on the Dispatch Floor
Sunrise Components, a 180-worker auto-parts unit near Howrah, has two bosses for one team. On 3 March, the production manager asked the dispatch clerk to hold back batch DC-114 because 40 pieces had failed the hardness test. Twenty minutes later, the marketing manager telephoned the same clerk, demanding immediate dispatch of DC-114 to meet a dealer's deadline. The clerk obeyed the marketing manager. The dealer returned 38 pieces, and Sunrise paid ₹2.4 lakh in replacement and freight. In a separate incident, the general manager walked past the plating supervisor and directly told four workers to change a chemical bath setting; the supervisor, publicly bypassed, stopped checking bath readings altogether. A suggestion box installed in January has collected 31 slips, none acknowledged. Attrition in the plating shop has risen from 4% to 11% in six months, and two supervisors have resigned saying 'we are answerable for everything and in charge of nothing.' The general manager believes firm, fast instructions from the top are needed.
1. Using Henri Fayol's principles, identify what has gone wrong at Sunrise Components and trace how each violation produced the outcome described in the case.
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The problem is structural, not personal. Three principles are breached:
- Unity of command (one subordinate, one superior). The dispatch clerk took orders from two managers on the same decision. With no rule for breaking the tie, he obeyed the louder voice and the defective batch left the plant. Fayol's point is not that dual orders are rude but that they make accountability impossible: after the return, no single person could be held responsible for DC-114, and ₹2.4 lakh was simply absorbed as a cost.
- Scalar chain and the gang plank. The general manager needed a fast change; the correct route was the gang plank - a direct link across the chain with superiors informed - or an instruction through the plating supervisor. Instead he spoke to workers in front of their supervisor. The supervisor's authority was destroyed publicly, and he withdrew from checking bath readings, creating an uncontrolled quality risk.
- Initiative and esprit de corps. Thirty-one unacknowledged suggestions kill the habit of proposing improvements. Supervisors who are 'answerable for everything and in charge of nothing' resent the inequity and leave - attrition moving from 4% to 11% is the measurable symptom.
The general manager's belief that fast top-down instruction equals efficiency is precisely what is producing rework, exits and cost.
2. The general manager argues that in an emergency unity of command must be set aside. Evaluate this argument and suggest how Sunrise could handle urgent cross-departmental decisions without breaking the chain.
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The argument confuses two different things: who has the right to decide and how fast information travels. Unity of command settles the first; the gang plank settles the second. Fayol accepted that in an urgent matter two managers at the same level may communicate directly and act, provided their superiors are informed. That is a shortcut across the chain, not a second boss for the worker.
Applied here: the production and marketing managers should have spoken to each other and to a named duty manager, settled the priority in, say, thirty minutes, and the dispatch clerk should then have received one instruction from his own superior. What actually happened was two parallel orders to a clerk with no tie-break rule, so the decision defaulted to whoever shouted last - and the ₹2.4 lakh cost landed on a person with no authority to prevent it.
Practical fixes: (i) a written reporting line for the dispatch team; (ii) an escalation rule - any cross-departmental conflict goes to the duty manager within thirty minutes; (iii) no verbal order to a worker unless confirmed by his supervisor; (iv) an after-action review of DC-114 so that accountability sits with the decision-maker.
3. Suggest three measures that would rebuild supervisory authority and worker initiative at Sunrise, and state what each measure is expected to change.
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- Restore the supervisor's line authority publicly. The general manager should announce, in the plating shop, that process settings are instructed through the supervisor and that any bypass will be treated as an exception requiring his countersignature. Expected change: bath readings logged again at every shift, and the supervisor's exit interview complaint disappears as a category in the next attrition report.
- Convert the suggestion box into a scheme with a deadline. Every slip acknowledged within ten days, a named owner for each accepted idea, a small cash award for implemented suggestions, and a monthly noticeboard list of what was accepted and what was not. Expected change: 31 unread slips become a measurable flow, and the habit of proposing improvements returns; initiative is a source of strength, not a favour.
- Hold exit interviews and act on them. Two resignations in six months with an identical complaint is a signal, not a coincidence. Expected change: attrition in the plating shop back below 6% within two quarters, which also protects the ₹2.4 lakh type of loss, since fewer experienced eyes on hardness testing means more returned batches.