Strategic Excellence in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction Industries

9Objectives

9.1 INTRODUCTION

Several years ago, Dr. Gerhard Plenert was involved in a project for the Texas Office of the Attorney General. This required working with 80 branch offices throughout the state and analyzing their performance. The environment was somewhat unique in that each office had two bosses, an office manager, and a lead attorney. Dr. Plenert would go to the offices one at a time and spend time there, analyzing flow, efficiencies, line balancing, employee satisfaction and participation, etc. Afterwards, he would sit down with the two “bosses” and give them a report on the performance of their branch along with recommendations. He discovered things like backlog of mail in someone’s drawer that would exceed 1 year, work overlaps ...