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How Kodak is using teams
The innovative use of teamwork at Eastman
Kodak has not only helped the company to
gain maximum benefit from the skills of its
employees and wisdom of its customers but
has also played a role in its winning a coveted
Academy Award.
Eastman Kodak is using teams to:
• gain customer focus
• improve broader efficiencies
• restructure and reengineer work processes
• identify the best ways of operation and
• foster a spirit of cooperation and belonging.
Several of Kodak’s team efforts began not
only with customer focus but with customers
as part of the teams. Such a product development
team, comprised of top cinematographers
and filmmakers, research and manufacturing
engineers, and market specialists,
produced the new EXR color intermediate
film which won an Academy Award and
gained the lion’s share of the market for such
film.
Teams have also been formed to meet
temporary needs for identifying and improving
efficiencies. In streamlining the company’s
annual report, a team incorporating three of
the units involved in its production, as well as
printers, graphic designers and postal workers,
were able simply to redesign the printed
report and save more than $100,000.
The key unit of organizational learning
Besides problem-solving or temporary project
teams, teams can also become the key unit of
organizational learning – they can harness the
energy and ideas of everyone in the company.
Self-directed or self-managed teams may be
useful in certain circumstances where people
can operate without traditional command and
control directives. However, for this to succeed,
team members need:
• to be properly trained
• to understand the organization’s overall
...