Treadway Tire Company: Job Dissatisfaction and High Turnover at the Lima Plant Custom Case Solution & Analysis

Evidence Brief: Treadway Tire Company Lima Plant

1. Financial Metrics

• Turnover Rate: Line foreman turnover at the Lima plant reached 46 percent in 2007.
• Training Costs: Estimated cost to recruit and train a new foreman is approximately 2000 dollars in direct costs, excluding lost productivity and internal management time.
• Plant Scale: Lima is one of the largest facilities in the Treadway network, employing 1100 hourly workers and 120 salaried staff.
• Production Volume: The plant operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, producing passenger and light truck tires.

2. Operational Facts

• Shift Structure: Foremen work 12-hour shifts. The schedule follows a rotating pattern: 3 days on, 2 days off, 2 days on, 3 days off.
• Supervisory Span: Each line foreman manages a crew of 20 to 30 unionized hourly workers.
• Promotion Pipeline: Traditionally, 80 percent of foremen were promoted from the hourly ranks; however, recent hiring shifted toward college graduates with little manufacturing experience.
• Training Deficit: New foremen receive minimal formal training, often limited to a few days of shadowing before taking full responsibility for a shift.
• Disciplinary Constraints: Foremen lack the authority to issue formal discipline without approval from Labor Relations, undermining their status with union workers.

3. Stakeholder Positions

• Ashley Wall (Director of HR): Views the turnover as a systemic issue related to role definition and lack of support.
• Brandon Cook (Plant Manager): Focused on meeting production quotas and cost targets; views high turnover as an unfortunate byproduct of a high-pressure environment.
• Line Foremen: Report feeling squeezed between aggressive production targets and a unionized workforce that does not respect their authority.
• General Foremen: Middle management layer that often bypasses line foremen to communicate directly with hourly workers, further eroding foreman status.
• United Steelworkers (Union): Maintains a rigid contract that limits foreman flexibility in managing labor and assignments.

4. Information Gaps

• Specific data on the correlation between foreman turnover and tire defect rates or safety incidents.
• Detailed breakdown of the 2000 dollar training cost, which appears significantly understated for a professional role.
• Comparative turnover data from other Treadway plants to determine if the Lima issue is localized or corporate-wide.

Strategic Analysis

1. Core Strategic Question

• How can Treadway Lima redesign the line foreman role to transform it from a high-attrition bottleneck into a stable leadership pipeline?
• What structural changes are required to align foreman authority with their production responsibilities?

2. Structural Analysis

The Lima plant suffers from a fundamental misalignment between responsibility and authority. Using the Job Characteristics Model, the foreman role fails on three counts:

• Autonomy: Foremen have zero discretion over disciplinary actions or schedule adjustments, yet are held 100 percent accountable for shift output.
• Feedback: Communication is primarily top-down and corrective. Foremen receive criticism for production lags but lack a mechanism to voice operational hurdles to senior leadership.
• Task Identity: The constant rotation and interference from General Foremen prevent line supervisors from owning the results of their specific units.

3. Strategic Options

Option A: Role Empowerment and Structural Redesign

• Rationale: Restore authority to the foreman level by decentralizing minor disciplinary decisions and clarifying the reporting chain.
• Trade-offs: Requires renegotiating certain informal norms with the union and potentially upsetting the General Foreman layer.
• Resource Requirements: Intensive management training for current foremen and a revised Labor Relations protocol.

Option B: The 8-Hour Shift Stabilization

• Rationale: Move from 12-hour rotating shifts to 8-hour fixed shifts to reduce burnout and physical fatigue.
• Trade-offs: Increases total headcount requirements and complicates shift handovers.
• Resource Requirements: Significant increase in salary budget and recruitment effort in the short term.

4. Preliminary Recommendation

Treadway must pursue Option A. The turnover is not driven by the 12-hour shift alone, but by the powerlessness felt during those hours. Redefining the role to include actual supervisory authority and a mandatory two-week onboarding program will stabilize the current cohort. Increasing headcount (Option B) without fixing the role's fundamental flaws will simply result in more people quitting faster.

Implementation Roadmap

1. Critical Path

• Days 1-15: Audit the General Foreman layer. Issue a directive clarifying that General Foremen must not bypass line foremen when communicating with hourly staff.
• Days 16-45: Formalize a Foreman Empowerment Protocol. Grant line foremen the ability to issue first-step verbal warnings without prior Labor Relations clearance.
• Days 46-75: Launch the Lima Leadership Academy. A mandatory 10-day training program for all new hires covering union contract navigation, conflict resolution, and technical tire assembly.
• Days 76-90: Establish a formal mentorship program pairing college-hire foremen with veteran hourly workers or high-performing senior foremen.

2. Key Constraints

• Union Resistance: The United Steelworkers may view increased foreman authority as a threat to established grievance patterns.
• Management Culture: Senior plant leadership, including Brandon Cook, must shift from a purely transactional view of labor to a developmental one.

3. Risk-Adjusted Implementation Strategy

The plan assumes that current foremen stay long enough to see changes. To mitigate immediate flight risk, Treadway should implement a stay-bonus for foremen who complete the first 90 days of the new protocol. If turnover does not drop by 15 percent within six months, the plant must move to a fixed-shift model to address physical exhaustion as a secondary lever.

Executive Review and BLUF

1. BLUF

The Lima plant is in a self-inflicted turnover spiral. The line foreman role is currently designed for failure: it carries total accountability for production with zero authority over labor. The 46 percent turnover rate is a rational response to an impossible job. To stop the bleed, Treadway must immediately restore disciplinary authority to the front line, enforce a strict chain of command that prevents middle management interference, and professionalize the onboarding process. Failure to act will lead to a collapse in plant productivity as the institutional knowledge of the hourly workforce completely outpaces that of their transient supervisors.

2. Dangerous Assumption

The analysis assumes that the 2000 dollar turnover cost cited by the plant is accurate. This figure likely ignores the massive hidden costs of scrap, safety incidents, and union grievances caused by inexperienced supervision. The true cost of turnover is likely 10 times higher, meaning the current management is drastically under-investing in the solution.

3. Unaddressed Risks

4. Unconsidered Alternative

Treadway could move to a self-managed team model, eliminating the line foreman role entirely. By shifting supervisory duties to senior union members in exchange for higher pay, the plant could bypass the recruitment struggle. This was overlooked due to the rigid nature of the current union contract, but it remains a viable long-term structural exit from the foreman crisis.

5. Verdict

APPROVED FOR LEADERSHIP REVIEW