What Decision Rights Were Decentralized For Srs And Aes? Which Drs Were Still Centralized? Did This Division Make Sense? Essay Example

Visionary Design Systems

Established in the year 1990, Visionary Design Systems has experienced significant growth in its first three years of operation. For this reason, the company was pronounced a Silicon Valley success story. Visionary Design Systems were fast growing reseller of Computer Aided Design hardware and software, systems Integrator. Generous remuneration for performance, quality of staff, and a company philosophy of empowerment are among some of the factors that the founders of Visionary Design Systems recognize to their success.
Describe the CAD industry. What was the product? How had it evolved in the past decade? What did the competitive landscape look like?
The Computer Aided Design (CAD) has had a tremendous growth over the years, with more improvement in their design and ease of use to clients. CAD has facilitated ease of developing complicated items and parts that could have taken a lot of time to design on the drawing boards. The development of 3-D wire modeling programs also facilitated the development of the CAD industry. The newest development in CAD technology is the solid three-dimensional designs. As the CAD systems became more advanced in promoting efficiency in product design, their application also became more diversified. For example, VDS developed CAD systems that incorporated Engineering Analysis tools and Product Data Management.

Describe VDS. What was the VDS strategy? Was it sound?

The founders of VDS wanted to start a company that is open to employee suggestions, where managers and employees freely interact and respect each other. The objective was to create a form of a partnership with all employees, through profit sharing and autonomy at all levels. Another company strategy employed by VDS was empowering a knowledge base in each employee and ensuring they work towards a common mission and goals. The knowledge could also guarantee that employees have the capability of making independent decisions at their various job positions employ sound tactics and plans to achieve personal and organizational goals. This strategy worked well for VDS since it ensured company growth and employee commitment.

In order to make sure that the right decisions are made by employees, the management of VDS aligned employee interests with company goals and objectives. By making the employee shareholders and empowering them through training, management of VDS believed that each employee will make decisions that would result in revenue. The management also ensured that for each decision made by an employee that results in income, the employee is given a bonus. Most of the decision rights that were decentralized included those that were within the scope of a particular job position. For example, Sales representative was empowered to make decisions that are within the scope of their department. The broad strategic decisions and those that are within the scope of management were, however, still centralized. The VDS decision-making strategy was productive since it ensured that the most relevant decisions are made in a specific area and ensured employee motivation.
What was PDM? According to management, what were the problems with PDM? To what extent do you agree? According to Bulatao and Braxton, what were the problems with PDM? To what extent do you agree or disagree?
Autonomy and attractive incentives had motivated other departments to perform better. It was not the case for the Program Data Management department. The PDM department experienced a slow growth in development and sales. However, the department was of great significance to VDS's Vision 2000 program. In order to ensure success of this department, VDS needed to employ more than the autonomy and incentives strategy. According to management, the PDM department was not motivated enough to work towards a common goal. Unlike other departments that had an existing market, PDM had to develop its own thus starting from scratch. It can also be observed that management did not provide the essential resources sufficient to ensure success of this department. In order to ensure success of the PDM department, VDS management needed to adopt a better incentive approach to the department and try to understand the unique nature of the PDM market.