The Story

McNeill Fabrications Limited was a family owned business specializing in the fabrication of pollution control equipment, such as smoke scrubbers, etc. On one early July day, McNeill employees were greeted at the factory door by news that the firm was near bankruptcy. 

Nobody could understand it. John McNeill had started the Company in on a wing  and a prayer. Working from his one-car garage on his own, he grew a company with an  atmosphere of pulling together, with employees coming to the firm as a result of referrals from others. John ran a lean machine: by 2005, the Company had 147 people of which 32 (22%) were sales and support. John had to be dragged kicking and screaming into hiring marketing people: he felt that the line worker, the producer, was more important. Finally, in 2015, the ratio got up to about 30% sales and support, and the Company was prosperous, with a profit sharing scheme that kept everyone loyal and committed to McNeill’s and especially to John.

One day, John was helping three of his people load a burner onto a flatbed and the crane hook failed. John was crushed to death. His people employees were in complete shock, mourned him for weeks; but then, the Company moved on, in the hands of John, Jr., (known as “JJ”), an Honours MBA graduate and right hand man to his father.

John felt that the Company was reaching only a fraction of its potential markets and that the plant was not sufficiently organized. Within six months, the entire operation had been described by procedure, the structure of the organization expanded and all of the records and procedures computerized for quality assurance. The staff to line ratio moved up to 40%, and then 50%. Such was the affection of the employees for the McNeill family (and John Junior had some of his Dad’s charisma) and despite grumblings, most people went along with the changes. And now, some seven years later, financial disaster was at hand.