Andrew Ryan did a great job at VC Brakes in motivating people at the bottom level to take part in

the TQM program. Ryan established a clear vision and provided guidance to the frontline workers on how

they can contribute to improve total quality. However, his overall approach is ineffectual. He failed to

convince the middle managers to embrace the value of the TQM program and have their support, but only

set up the workers expectation without being able to grant their requests. Thus, their contributions and

involvement were not appreciated and recognized. Ryan did not improve VC Brakes hence lost his faith

in people and credibility in the TQM program.

There are many things that could be done differently to avoid the current state. First, Ryan should

have communicated well with the TQM Steering Committee members and Baynard to get a common

understanding of TQM objectives to outline the long-term vision, transform the objectives to arithmetical

goals, and establish proper strategy and evaluation. Ryan thought that Baynard would not need to make

considerable changes at VC Brakes and was new to the TQMs models. Thus, Ryan did not put much

effort into improving shared understanding with Baynard. This was not right. Ryan might have personal

prejudice against Baynard due to continuing conflicts between operation and engineering departments.

Secondly, after having the support and shared understanding of Baynard and other senior managers,

he should have rallied them to launch a system approach to management, which was to establish a

measure and strategy that fit into their overall goals and objectives, and then have the lower level

managers to develop their strategy, goals, objectives, and measure that tailored to the measure and

strategy set by the higher level managers. The results of measure should then be included in the managers

personal evaluation so that managers would align their own interest with the overall improvement of the

company.

Thirdly, Ryan should have included direct managers to the training program for workers rather than

grouping people individually according to their department and level so as to increase managers

responsiveness and understanding of their significant roles in TQM practices. The training program could

even be modified to match the managers needs. Such changes would provide managers with a strong

sense of responsibilities and efficiently reduce the divergence of the programs vision between managers
and workers

Andrew Ryan at VC Brakes

case study

Frank V. Cespedes
Sunru Yong