Organizational Development and Process of Change in Bruck Textiles, Australia - Case Study Example

Organizational Development and Process of Change in Bruck Textiles, Australia Introduction The present study is targeted towards the generation of a change proposal to improve the overall productivity performance of Bruck Textiles in Australia and bring in organizational development (Cummings & Worley, 2014, p.231). The company is the leading manufacturer of textiles used for all technical applications such as military uniforms, firefighting equipment and so on. Company history: Established in 1945, their main fabric mill is located in Wangaratta and was initially used to create fashion apparel and garments, mainly catering to the fashion and lifestyle industry. Today, Bruck Textiles has head office and sales office in Sydney and Melbourne respectively and dishes out tons of technical fabric each day. Their supplies include coated blind fabrics used in home décor, defense industry garments, firefighting equipment and apparel, ballistics, steel manufacturing and aluminum smelters uniforms, insect repellant and automotive worker uniforms, anti-microbial clothing and special and theater seating. The brand is Australia’s leading producer of dedicated garments, provides finished goods after appropriate dyeing, warping, and weaving, and has been a leader in this industry ever since its entry into the field of technical fabric production. Company performance: The team managing the company includes its CEO, the sales and marketing team, the product development team and the customer service team. The company limits its operations to Australia alone. The products manufactured by the company include the prestigious PROBAN, NOMEX and PBI licenses. The plethora of products that the company churns out using these technologically produced textiles include every form of textile fibre and clothing and therefore, cater to almost every industry in the country that needs technical fabric in its uniforms. The steady demand of Bruck products is a statement to its adherence to the quality assurance program that it makes to the clients. The company has experienced steady growth over the past decades but with change in market environment and availability of other technical textile providers, the sales of the company has gone down markedly (About Bruck, 2014). The author’s association with the company was as an intern during college projects, wherein he worked closely with the quality assurance team of the company. The company uses an ISO 9001 Accredited Quality System and assures high product quality to clients, and end users of their products. From supply of raw materials to the transport of finished products, the brand takes extra care in the use of quality management systems. Their latest products include the Bruck burnover bag to be used in minimizing harm to the driver in case of car crashes where there are fire explosions. It is also every important to note here that the company has been able to come up with such high quality product lines due to the dedication of the R & D teams in the company which identify and procure production protocols and licenses to provide the necessary technical fiber to the Australian market. The brand is also dedicated to creating supplies for the Australian market and thereby makes a significant contribution to the Australian economy (About Bruck, 2014). It is in this context of high productivity and quality assurance protocols that the present study proposes to make changes. The main aim of the study is to solve a few missing links which have been found missing to combat the tough situation of the present Australian market. According to the WTO, textiles are back as one of the mainstream businesses in world economy and Bruck Textiles holds a good chance of growing swiftly from its existing size and making a global impact. Need for Change: The fall in sales in recent years has been triggered by a market saturation in the main sectors of the market where Bruck Textiles enjoys steady clientele. These include automobiles and defense industry textiles. With only select automobile brands enjoying good sales in Australia, the demand for Bruck Textiles products has become limited to these successful brands. Also, the defense systems in the Australian economy have built their stock of defense textiles and the need to produce new garments with technical fiber is slowly reducing. In the absence of wars in recent times, the steady business of Bruck Textiles is witnessing a decline in orders, although at no point in time is there a zero order situation. Therefore, with the brand recognition of Bruck Textiles in its niche market, now is the right time for the brand to start making secondary plans of business revival by not just launching new products, but by adopting an all new business plan wherein the focus is on internal and external expansion. Having been a part of the quality assurance team, the author has noticed that policies in quality assessment of raw materials, production mechanisms and finished products are of a world class level. The use of the policy in quality control helps Bruck Textiles enjoy a steady market presence. There is ample scope for optimizing existing protocols and cashing in on this existing set of quality assurance policies, which will empower internationalization of the brand to the hilt. Awareness of the brand’s high quality is available in few countries in the Asian continent and therefore, would involve a better market penetration approach in the few countries (Bushe et al, 2009, p.355). An aspect of organizational development and change that needs to be addressed within the company to help it grow its market base is the issue of training and certification courses. For this, a key role would be played by the HR department of the company. The growth of a brand always starts with its popularity amongst the youth of the society and economy that it targets. Therefore, the HR department must start extending a massive training and certification drive in the company and in the colleges and professional schools from where it hopes to attract employees of the company. The process is research intensive and has not been adopted by the company as of yet. The use of training in Bruck Textiles has always been limited to the orientation phases of new recruits in the company. With a dedicated human resource team and high quality training programs, Bruck Textiles ensures that it has the best quality employees of the field in its offices. From textile manufacturing units which have highly trained personnel, a team of trainers can be created who can train interested students in colleges and technical engineering schools with the protocols used in Bruck Textiles. For this to be accomplished there needs to be three types of data collected. The first kind of data would be an estimate of the educational institutions that have served as sources of present employee base of Bruck Textiles. The other data required would be all the technology schools and colleges present in the Australian countries which can be included in the training and certification drive. Thirdly, market research data of which geographical areas are performing well and where the technology based industries are able to realize more sales and hence, present Bruck with new orders. Market geographies are often the best indicators of where to begin the training and certification drives that are external to the company (Beckhard, 2006, p.2). Internal to the company, the HR department needs to find data that indicates flexibility, performance and integrity levels of its different employees. To be able to create different trainer teams, the proper assessment of employees within the company is important. Qualitative analysis of trainers (Symon& Cassell, 1998, p.42), other employees and trainee students is the most important aspect of the training drive, as it would lead to raising the quality benchmark and would help the brand certify truly talents and professional capable students. This will increase its recognition in the market as an adherer of high quality products and services. There are two main aims in organizational development that are immediately needed in Bruck Textiles. They are as follows: Increase number of locations and staffing diversity: With its main factory in Wangaratta, the manufacturing unit is pretty concentrated employee and transportation wise. To break the isolation of production units, Bruck Textiles needs to set up new production units in different countries and develop a management strategy that succeeds in maintaining the same level of quality assurance (Bartunek & Moch, 1987, p.489) in the products created from these new units. This will have a favorable impression on the market as students, analysts and trainees who wish to understand Bruck Textiles’ standards will be able to reach instantly. Improve training and certification within company: By conducting training of different batches, the staff already in the company must not just be trained and certified using traditional high quality (Porras & Berg, 1978, p.257) approach but also must be updated with an acceptance towards continual learning process. Therefore, latest additions, rules and techniques available in the field of expertise of the teams will become known to them. Also, they must be given additional certificates for the completion of these additional courses. The next section is about the proposed solution that the author makes. It includes all the various aspects of business development that will be geared towards improving finer aspects of the training and certification drive. Organizational Development and Change Proposal HRD commitments: Restructuring of human resource management commitments would be required to management every aspect of the new drive. The HR department must work in close collaboration with the business development and R&D segments of Bruck Textiles, so that they are able to build a better understanding of the company’s working efficiencies. Better Salaries: In order to keep the employee base more interested in the new drive across various countries, it would be very important to create scope for better salaries for those taking active part in the training and certification processes. Whether the teams are from within the firm or from external sources like educational institutions or other textile companies, the knowledge sharing process must be acknowledged by the company as it helps it receive a better brand image in the market. Hence, all the team members who are involved in this process of renewed business development should receive a hike that keeps them motivated (Sporns et al., 2004, p.421). More full time positions: Since the author has worked as an intern and has been aware of the demand for jobs from the firm, it is only natural that Bruck Textiles must create more jobs in full time positions. Expansion and creation of new manufacturing units, building of fresh teams and improving salaries in the company will only help attract more attention from clients and develop a healthy repute for the brand. Training and Recruitment: College and professional training must be provided by the company especially in technology institutions outside the campus to draw new talent in the industry (Quack et al, 1995, p.762). It is important to note that the training venue should have ample space and allocations for making arrangement of complex equipment and computerized gadgets for the training. This might cause extra expenses in hiring the right venue in areas where the educational institutions do not have ample space or arrangements. The training, certification and recruitment drive should be multi-faceted and should have the following aspects: 1. Technology students from leading schools and colleges must be encouraged to recognize and choose a career in technical textile industry. Exposing them to the high efficiency machines and structuring at the workplace would give them rare insights and help grow more interest in the industry. 2. Internal training drives controlled by software (Sihvonen & Jantti, 2011, p.4), whether it is targeted towards new employees, traditional processes, social causes or trainer team creations, would prove to be worthwhile to the overall team spirit amongst various employees (Bruzzone et al, 2007, p.41). They also lead to better team building where old and new employees have a chance to interact better with each other. 3. Certification of trained students and building of probable employee base would help in recruitment drives conducted by the company right after the trainings or at any other time of the year. 4. Adherence to technological accuracy sets a high benchmark for applicants and those with the training would apply only if they feel an interest to go for the tough job in hand. This would also help in filtering the ineligible ones right during the training sessions. 5. Preparation of crisp training modules to help save time and still offer main tenets of career in technical textile industry to prospective students. 6. Adequate analysis of performances in employees and trainees, assessment results and report comparisons (Orlikowski, 1993, p.311). Social strategy and responsibility: As we know every brand needs to do its bit in social responsibility. The presence of Bruck Textiles has been poor in the charity scenario, although their focused business has benefitted many client companies and end users (Carroll, 1999, p.273). In order to better that front, Bruck Textiles can take in a majority of its new recruit headed by older employees in charitable expeditions or missions across the country. This would lead to two things. Firstly, the teamwork between members would improve. Secondly, the method of balancing profession with social responsibilities would be inculcated by the recruits. Appropriate recognition by way of certification, performance bonuses, and hikes would help the employees’ motivation (Schein, 2010, p.127) and performance. Making a complete referral to this aspect of working with Bruck Textiles right at the start of the employment would be a great way to help the social cause of the company. Internationalization: After market saturation, Bruck Textiles has seen a steady order flow in the past couple of years, bringing about a steady fall in profit margins. Using current orders and expanding into neighboring countries and new markets in other continents would be a clever move at this point of time since, the recognition of Bruck’s quality products will have a positive effect on its business development drive and will help get new clients. Hiring of local talent and further organizational development strategies will be beneficial to the brand’s business efforts. Conclusion: In a multi-faceted approach, this study approaches the aspect of organization development in Bruck Textiles with an aim to improve its market presence using organizational development that is powered by wide spread training, certification and recruitment drives. While business development in other countries is gin g to help in attracting new clients, providing training and certification courses to students of technology in schools and colleges would improve the brand’s recognition to a great extent. Many corners of Australia which are not aware of the focused technical textile industry that Bruck Textiles has pioneered in will be able to learn not just about the industry, the market and the processes, but will also be sure of having better chances at work and career owing to certification from a highly recognized brand in textile manufacture. 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