The AB Steel Plant

The Vice President for Production at the AB Steel Plant was giving the Production

Department Manager, Mr$.$ Singh, a hard time for not doing anything about his work

group which was perpetually coming late to work and was behind schedule in the

performance quotas for several months now. The vice President's contention was that if

the production' crew was consistently tardy, the production process was delayed by

about $15$ minutes on an average per member per day, and this was no way for the

department to meet the assigned quotas. "They are losing about $6$ to $8$ hours of

production time per member per month, and you don't seem one bit concerned about it$,"$

he yelled at the manager. He added that he was pretty upset about the 'lax management

style' of the manager and very clearly stated that unless the manager did something

about the tardiness problem, another manager who can manage the crew effectively' will

have to be found.

Mr$.$ Singh knows that he has an able and good group of workers but he also realizes that

they are bored with their work and do not have enough incentives to meet the

production quotas. Hence, they seem to respond to the situation by taking it easy and

coming late to work by a few minutes every day. Mr$.$ Singh has also noticed that they

were taking turns leaving the workplace a few minutes early in the evenings. Even

though Singh was aware of this, entire he pretended not to notice the irregularities and

was satisfied that once the workers started their work, they were pretty good at their

jobs and often helped to meet rush orders whenever they knew that Mr$.$ Singh was in a

bind.

Questions:

$($a$)$ What do you think is the real, problem in this case?