Begin by Reading the Case- International Steel Group, Steelton, Pennsylvania (below). After reading, formulate an answer on how you would move the scrap steel onto the rail cars within the allotted time, with the given workforce, and without any additional equipment.

As the business manager, you want to profit from selling the scrap metal, and therefore you have to evaluate what you can pay the workers as an incentive to get the work done in the allotted time.
Begin by calculating how many pieces must be moved (use the information from the last time the project was done as the basis of the calculation). Then develop an efficient work method to minimize both time and worker fatigue. Based on your method and an estimate of how many pieces can be moved per hour, determine how many hours per day would be required to meet the two-week deadline. Then calculate what it will cost based on the additional wages you will pay above the employee’s regular 40 hours per week, including  any incentives you decide to give the workers to motivate them adequately. Make sure that the amount of work to be accomplished in the time allocated is reasonable. NO ADDITIONAL EQUIPMENT CAN BE USED FOR THE PROJECT. 

Your INITIAL DISCUSSION BOARD POST should include the following: 

1. How many total pieces must be moved (scope of work)? 

2. How would you organize the work (the method used to load the rail cars)? 

3. How would you motivate the employees to complete the job on time?

5. How would you ensure the job gets done on time (monitor and control)? 

6. What would the total project cost be above the $8 per hour they are currently paid to work 40 hours per week? The $8 an hour does not come out of your profit, only the extra money you will pay as an incentive, the additional cost of any overtime hours over 40 per week, and the cost of any other things such as lunches, dinners, or snacks, or bonuses.

7. You are selling steel for a total of $3,500. What would your net profit be after paying all your additional costs?  

Once you have your Analysis and recommendations completed, post them on the WEEK 2 DISCUSSION BOARD. Include any assumptions you made, your calculations for the number of pieces to be moved, the number of working hours and days it will take, and the reasons behind your recommendations, including why you feel your plan will be successful.  

REVIEW at least three (3) other students’ posts and comment on them. Where do you agree, and where do you disagree? Explain why. 

FINAL POST: comments on what you learned and how you would change your original plan based on input from other students. 

International Steel Group

ISG STEELTON (International Steel Group, Steelton, Pennsylvania) 

As the day-shift supervisor at the ISG Steelton steel plant, you summon the six college students working for you this summer, doing whatever you need to do (sweeping up, sandblasting the inside of boilers are down for maintenance, running errands, and so forth). You walk them across the plant to a field where the company stores scrap metal. The area, about the size of a football field, is stacked with organized piles of metal. You explain that everything they see has just been sold. Metal prices, which have been depressed, have finally risen enough to earn a small profit by selling its scrap.

You point out that railroad tracks divide the field into parallel sectors, like the lines on a football field, so each metal stack is no more than 15 feet from a track. Each stack contains 390 pieces of metal. Each piece weighs 92 pounds and is about a yard long, just over 4 inches high, and 4 inches wide. You tell the students that, working as a team, they pick up each piece, walk up a ramp to a railroad car positioned next to each stack, and neatly position and stack the metal for shipment. That’s right, you repeat, 92 pounds, walk up the ramp, and carry the metal onto the rail car. Anticipating their questions, you explain that a forklift could be used only if the metal were stored on wooden pallets (it isn’t); if the pallets could withstand the weight of the metal (they would be crushed); and if you, as their supervisor, had forklifts and people trained to run them (you don’t). In other words, the only way to get the metal into the rail cars is for the students to carry it.

Based on an old report from the last time the company sold some metal, you know that workers typically loaded about 30 pieces of metal parts per hour over an 8-hour shift. At that pace, it will take your six students six weeks to load all the metal. But the purchasing manager who sold it says it must be shipped in 2 weeks. Without more workers (there’s a hiring freeze) and without forklifts or other equipment, all of the metal must be loaded by hand by these six workers in 2 weeks. But how do you do that? What would motivate the students to work much harder than they have all summer? They’ve gotten used to a leisurely pace and easy job assignments. Motivation might help, but motivation will only get so much done. After all, short of illegal steroids, nothing will work once muscle fatigue kicks in from carrying those 92-pound pieces of metal up a ramp all day long. What can you change about how the work is done to deal with the unavoidable physical fatigue?