Grain, hops, glass, aluminum and cardboard came in. Beer in cans or bottles on palletized cases and kegs went out in a constant parade of 40 foot semi-trailers. That was the essence of my first professional management job.
The top leadership was shared between the plant GM and the Brewmaster. There were department managers, (bottling, packaging, shipping, engineering, maintenance, QC, HR, Accounting). Each department had General foremen, foreman, and workers.
There was a health and safety department with a nurse staffed infirmary which got a lot of business. There was a symbiotic relationship between this facility and the fact that free beer was available to all employees in refrigerated coolers 24/7.
By today’s standards this was a traditional heavy management structure for a 1000 employee production operation. On the other hand a lot of work got done. Production and profits were solid.
Middle-managers implemented change and improvement. They were in-touch with their employees and able to manage the tension between status-quo, change and the reality of a unionized workforce.
Re-engineering, down-sizing, re-organization became the game of the day in the mid to late 80′s and early 90′s. Middle-manager became a pejorative term and bloat in the middle of the organization was where a lot of the slicing and dicing took place across industry in the US. Over 70% of companies that participated did not get sustainable business improvement.
The term middle-manager isn’t used as much any more yet there are still good people in the middle (sometimes called team leaders) doing the day-to-day work that drives success.
Being in the middle is a tough gig. It is an impossible gig for the one person in the middle who is now trying to keep from dropping balls that were previously juggled by three people.
Lean is healthy. Super extra lean tastes bad and is not sustainable beyond survival. I’m the Outsider and that’s what I think.
