GM502 Unit 8 Titanium Order Situational Analysis Example

Veterans on a New Metal: A Unit 8 Situational Analysis of Three Scrapped Titanium Lots

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

GM502: Leadership Theory and Practice I

Unit 8 Situational Analysis

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The machine shop, its cell, the order and every figure are composite and illustrative; the model and studies cited are real.

The Cell and Its Leader

Corwin Precision machines structural parts for aircraft interiors and small business jets. Its five-axis cell has five machinists who average just over eleven years each on aluminum aerospace parts. The cell leader, promoted from among them four years ago, leads by delegation: he hands each machinist the print and the work order, answers questions if asked and otherwise stays out of the way. The shop regarded this as a strength. The cell's on-time delivery ran above 97 percent, and its scrap rate on aluminum was among the lowest in the plant.

The Titanium Order

Last spring the shop won an order for 600 titanium seat-track brackets, the cell's first titanium work. Titanium behaves very differently from aluminum. It conducts heat poorly, so heat builds at the cutting edge; it work-hardens, so dull tools make the problem worse; and it vibrates, producing chatter that ruins surface finish. Cutting speeds must be much lower, tools wear faster and fixturing must be far more rigid.

The cell leader handled the order as he handled every order. He gave the prints to two of his most experienced machinists and asked if they had questions. They did not.

The first lot of 50 brackets was scrapped for surface finish: chatter marks on the bearing faces that exceeded the drawing tolerance. The machinists slowed the spindle and reran. The second lot failed for the same reason, with additional dimensional errors from tool wear. The third lot, run with new tooling from the shop's usual supplier, failed again. After three weeks and 150 scrapped parts, worth about $41,000 in titanium and machine time, the shop brought in an applications engineer from a cutting-tool manufacturer. Within two days she changed the tool geometry, the cutting parameters and the fixturing, and the fourth lot passed inspection.

The Situational Model

In the situational leadership model, the style a leader should use turns on the follower's development level for a specific task, defined by competence and commitment. A follower can be highly developed on one task and a beginner on another. The model matches four styles to four levels: directing for eager newcomers who want to do the work but cannot yet do it, coaching for those with some competence and low commitment, supporting for capable but cautious performers, and delegating for those with high competence and high commitment (Blanchard et al., 1985).

Development Level by Task

On aluminum work, all five machinists sit at the highest development level. They know the material, the machines and the parts, and they are committed to quality. Delegating fits.

On titanium, the picture changes. The two machinists assigned the order had high commitment and high general competence as machinists, but low competence on the specific task. They had never cut titanium, did not know the parameters and did not recognize that their usual methods would fail. That is closest to the model's first level for this task: committed, but without the task-specific competence. The model prescribes directing: clear instructions, close supervision and frequent feedback.

The machinists were veterans of the cell and beginners on the metal, and the leader read their development level from their years rather than from the task in front of them.

Would the Prescription Have Saved the Order?

This is where the case tests the model rather than illustrating it. Directing requires the leader to know what to direct. The cell leader had no more titanium experience than his machinists. If he had followed the model's prescription and given close, specific instructions, he would have been instructing from the same ignorance. His directions might well have produced the same chatter.

What actually saved the order was not a change in leadership style but an infusion of task knowledge from outside: an applications engineer who knew titanium. The model's prescription assumes the leader holds the competence the follower lacks. When neither does, the right move is not directing but recognizing the gap and bringing in expertise, which the model does not address directly.

This fits a known limitation of the model. Critics argued early that its categories were defined loosely and that its predictions had not been well tested (Graeff, 1983). When Thompson and Vecchio tested three published versions side by side, the prescriptions for matching style to follower development received only limited support, with the clearest support for providing more structure to less developed followers (Thompson & Vecchio, 2009). That partial support matches this case: more structure was what the machinists needed, but it had to come from someone who knew the task.

What the Leader Could Have Done

The model was still useful in one respect. Diagnosing development level by task, rather than by person, would have signaled that the titanium order was different. Had the leader asked the machinists not "Any questions?" but "Have you cut titanium, and what parameters will you use?", the gap would likely have surfaced before the first lot. He could then have done what eventually worked, arranging an applications engineer's visit, three weeks and $41,000 earlier.

Lessons for the Shop

The shop has since added a step to its order review: any job involving a material, process or tolerance new to the cell triggers a short readiness discussion between the cell leader, the machinists and the manufacturing engineer. The discussion asks what the cell has done before that resembles the job and where outside knowledge is needed. That is, in effect, a development-level diagnosis by task, combined with a plan for supplying competence the leader cannot. The first job to go through the review, an Inconel exhaust bracket, was flagged at once, and the cell ran a short trial with the tool supplier's engineer before cutting production parts. That lot passed inspection on the first attempt.

Conclusion

The cell leader's delegating style fit his machinists for aluminum and failed for titanium, because their development level on the new task was low even though their experience was high. The situational model diagnoses the problem correctly. But its prescription, directing, assumes the leader can supply what the follower lacks, and this leader could not. The order was saved by outside expertise, not by a change in style. The model's lasting value for the shop is its insistence that development is task-specific, which the new readiness review now puts into practice.

References

Blanchard, K., Zigarmi, P., & Zigarmi, D. (1985). Leadership and the one minute manager. William Morrow.

Graeff, C. L. (1983). The situational leadership theory: A critical view. Academy of Management Review, 8(2), 285-291. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.1983.4284738

Thompson, G., & Vecchio, R. P. (2009). Situational leadership theory: A test of three versions. The Leadership Quarterly, 20(5), 837-848. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2009.06.014