marketing 2

Jo Smith

MBA-515 Management
Dr. Little
November 20, 2003

Work Teams

In the article, “The Trouble with Teams”, Brian Dumaine (1994) outlines Boeing Aircraft’s use of work teams in manufacturing its Boeing 777 passenger jet. According to Henry Shomber, a chief engineer at the firm, Boeing’s organizational structure “encourages teams to work together and seize initiative” (Dumaine, 1994, p.5).
The design and manufacture of the Boeing 777 involved approximately 10,000 employees and more than 500 suppliers. Obviously, a team-based structure would be the most efficient way to tackle such a massive project. Thus, Boeing began by creating a hierarchy of teams in order to get all its employees headed in the same direction.
The original hierarchy of teams was comprised of three distinct tiers. The top layer consisted of a management team, made up of five or six top managers from such disciplines as engineering, manufacturing, and finance. This top...