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Chapter 9 People, jobs and organization 235
Bill Gore believed in the need ‘to divide so that you can
multiply’. So when units grow to around 200 people, they
are usually split up, with these small facilities organized
in clusters or campuses. Ideally a dozen or so sites
are close enough to permit good communication and
knowledge exchange, but can still be intimate yet
separate enough to promote a feeling of ownership.
Bill Gore also believed that people come to work to be
innovative and had a desire to invent great products.
This, he said, ‘would be the glue holding the company
together’, rather than the official procedures other
companies rely on. And at Gore’s Livingston plant in
Scotland the story of ‘the breathable bagpipes’ is used
to illustrate this type of creative innovation generated
from the company’s culture of trust that allows people
to follow their passion. The story goes that an associate
who worked in Gore’s filter bags department at
Livingstone was also a keen exponent of his national
instrument – the bagpipes. By day he’d be working on
filter systems, in the evening he’d play his bagpipes.
It occurred to him that the physical properties of the
product he was putting together during the day could
make a synthetic bag for the pipes he played in the
evening. Traditionally, bagpipes have a bag made from
sheepskin or cow leather which fills up with moisture
and becomes a smelly health hazard. He recognized
that if you added GORE-TEX® Fabrics, it would be
breathable and it would be dry. He put a prototype
together, tried it, and it worked. So he decided to
spend time developing it, created a team to develop it
further, and now almost all Scottish bagpipes have a
GORE-TEX® Pipe bag in them.
NB: GORE-TEX®, GORE® and designs are registered
trade marks of W.L. Gore & Associates.
People in operations
To say that an organization’s human resources are its greatest asset is something of a cliché.
Yet it is worth reminding ourselves of the importance of human resources, especially in the
operations function, where most ‘human resources’ are to be found. It follows that it is
operations managers who are most involved in the leadership, development and organization
of human resources. In this chapter we examine some of the issues that most directly
affect, or are affected by, operations management; these are illustrated in Figure 9.2. But the
influence of operations management on the organization’s staff is not limited to the topics
covered in this chapter. Almost everything discussed in this book has a ‘people’ dimension.
Yet, in some chapters, the human perspective is particularly important. In addition to this
chapter, Chapters 18 and 20, for example, are concerned largely with how the contribution
of the operation’s staff can be harnessed. In essence the issues covered in this chapter define
how people go about their working lives. It positions their expectations of what is required
of them, and it influences their perceptions of how they contribute to the organization. It
defines their activities in relation to their work colleagues and it channels the flows of communication
between different parts of the operation. But, of most importance, it helps to
develop the culture of the organization – its shared values, beliefs and assumptions.
Figure 9.2 People in operations