What is Kodak's core goal?

Kodak: employees create company culture

Kodak Company was founded in 1880, with more than 96,000 employees. The company's business covers the whole world, and its products involve imaging, medical care, data storage and other fields. In addition to the world-famous Kodak film, the company also produces photographic paper, professional photographic equipment, printing equipment, developing equipment, photocopiers, prepress plate-making products, document processing systems, aerospace high-tech products and imaging products and equipment.

Kodak: employees create company culture

(a) workers' proposals

As early as 1989 years ago, george eastman, the founder of Kodak, received a proposal from 1 person. The proposal requires the production department to clean the glass windows. Although this is a small matter, Heismann saw its significance. He thinks this is a sign of employees' enthusiasm, and immediately publicly praises them and gives them bonuses. Since then, the Kodak proposal system has been established.

Perhaps Hysmans didn't realize that the suggestion system introduced by this accidental glass window incident will persist until now, and it has been constantly improving. Hysmans may not realize that his "Kodak suggestion system" will be followed by other big companies. In the corridor of Kodak Company, every employee can get the suggestion form at hand, and any embarrassing email can be sent to the full-time "suggestion secretary". The full-time secretary is responsible for sending the suggestions to the relevant departments for deliberation and evaluation in time, and the proposer can call directly at any time to ask about the whereabouts of the suggestions; The company has a special committee to examine, approve and award prizes.

For the proposal that has not been adopted, the reasons shall be explained orally or in writing. If the sponsor requests a test, the factory can assist in the test to determine whether the proposal is valuable. So far, employees of the company have put forward 6.5438+0.8 million suggestions, of which more than 600,000 suggestions have been adopted by the company. At present, the employees of the company get more than $654.38+$5,000 bonus every year for making suggestions. In the two years of 1983 and 1984, the company saved18.5 million dollars by adopting reasonable suggestions, and the company gave out 3.7 million dollars to reward the proponents. For the company, this suggestion system has played a great role in reducing product cost accounting, improving product quality, improving manufacturing methods and ensuring production safety. Kodak believes that this system plays a role in communicating the relationship between superiors and subordinates, because when each employee makes a suggestion, even if his suggestion is not adopted, it will achieve two purposes:

The manager knows what the workers are thinking. Consultants will be satisfied when they know that their suggestions are taken seriously. ,

Kodak paid attention to the following aspects when implementing the employee suggestion system:

1. All managers, especially foremen, must pay attention to this system. If the front-line foreman is indifferent to the suggestions made by his subordinates, then this suggestion system cannot be supported by employees.

2. Special institutions must be established to implement this system. Kodak's office and full-time secretary must deal with employees' suggestions in time, settle the bonus amount fairly, patiently explain the reasons why the suggestions can't be adopted and announce the implementation of the system regularly.

3. Simplify the procedure of suggestion system. Whenever employees of the company make a suggestion, they can get the suggestion form at hand and fill in their own suggestions. Employees can put the suggestion form into the mailbox of the factory or put it into the special suggestion collection box of the factory. If employees do not want to be named, they can also make suggestions anonymously, and then contact the factory with the number on the suggestion form. You can check whether the suggestion of this number has been adopted by telephone. The suggestion office lists all the adopted suggestions in a table, publishes them in the newspaper published by the company regularly, or posts them on the bulletin board of the company.

Every suggestion should be taken seriously. The secretary in charge of suggestions should submit the suggestions to all relevant managers and departments in time and put them into practice when necessary. After the relevant management personnel and departments make a decision on whether to adopt or not to adopt the proposal, they must send the decided materials to the proposal office, and the secretary in charge of the proposal work shall submit them to the proposal Committee of the department for examination and approval.

For the proposal that has not been adopted, detailed materials must be sent to the sponsor, explaining the reasons why the proposal has not been adopted. If the recommender still thinks his suggestion is valuable, he can provide more evidence to the suggestion office. In this case, some suggestions that have not been adopted may eventually be adopted.

5. Pay attention to the publicity of employee suggestion system and reward recommenders. At Kodak, every new employee will receive a booklet about the employee suggestion system and its reward methods, which can make employees quickly familiar with the content of the suggestion system. There is a column in Staff Weekly reporting the adoption of the proposal.

Based on long-term experience, the company has developed a set of standard methods to determine the value of adopted suggestions and the amount of bonuses that referees should receive. The way to issue bonuses is that the secretary suggested by the supervisor will issue bonus checks to the heads of all units, and the heads of all units will issue bonus checks to the winners.

(2) Kodak's experience summary

Kodak's suggestion system is widely used by enterprises in the United States and other countries, and it has also become the research object of enterprise management and organizational behavior. Enterprises in developed capitalist countries such as Japan and the United States attach great importance to the scientific management of enterprises. They believe that the management of enterprises can be roughly divided into the management of people, money and things, among which the management of people is the most important. They summed up Kodak's experience and divided the scientific management of enterprises into the following seven elements:

1. Personnel (deleted): including employee recruitment, training, assessment, rewards and punishments, promotion, appointment and dismissal, etc.

2. Fund (H()mcY): bonus source, budget preparation, cost accounting and financial analysis.

3. Methods (delete U()D): production planning, quality management and process research.

4. Machines: machine configuration, factory layout, equipment maintenance, disassembly and accounting.

5. Materials (MA9 is distributed to RIA workers): material acquisition, transportation, storage and acceptance.

6. Market (MARKlCr): market demand, production direction, product price and sales strategy.

7. Morale: employees' interests, hobbies, ambitions and emotions.

These seven elements all begin with M in English, so they are called "seven M's of modern enterprise management". Entrepreneurs believe that these seven M's are very important and indispensable. But we can easily find that the personnel ranking is 1.

Drucker, an American management scientist and founder of management by objectives theory, believes that it is important to mobilize the enthusiasm of employees, let them discover the fun and value of work, and enjoy satisfaction from the completion of work. In this way, the personal goals and wishes of employees are realized, and the unity of homework and humanity is realized.

Every step of Kodak's career development involves decision-making, management and business matters between employees and the company. In many enterprises at home and abroad, strengthening employees' participation and putting forward reasonable suggestions are just a formality, but they can't really be implemented.

Enterprises should give full play to the strengths and potential of each employee, realize the democratization of management, and truly implement good suggestions. In this way, it can not only reduce the mistakes in enterprise management, but also enhance the sense of ownership and mobilize the enthusiasm of employees.

(3) enterprising and innovative.

Intentionally enterprising and constantly innovating is the motto of Kodak Company, and Huysmans, the founder of Kodak, is an enterprising and constantly innovating person. He had an unhappy childhood. After his father/Kloc-died at the age of 0/4, he had to drop out of school to work as a handyman in an insurance company, and then worked as a clerk in Rochester Savings Bank. The work experience and life efforts during this period laid the foundation for future financial management. Because of his hobby and fascination with photography, he quit his job in the bank and engaged in film development. After repeated experiments, he finally invented a new film, and this success took a key step for his entrepreneurship. Kodak Company was established in 188 1 and spared no effort to develop overseas business. Hysmans invented the first dry film, which caused a revolution in photography. It was he who made the first Kodak box camera and realized everyone's wish to "press the shutter"; It is also the first transparent film made by Hysmans in the history of human photography. Hysmans also invented Kodak's first pocket camera and 19mm film, thus realizing his prediction that "shooting color film is as easy as black and white film". Hysmans's successor has inherited the fine tradition of the forerunner and continuously enriched Kodak and its series of products with innovation.

1942, color Kodak film once again came to this world, making the dream of truly shooting a colorful world come true. In the following half century, Kodak Company introduced the "lens film camera series" which is affordable and easy to use for photographers to choose from. Today, Kodak Company has broken through the old technology of photographic film for more than 50 years, and grandly launched a brand-new Kodak 00, 200 and 400 film with more glitter and bright colors than similar products on the market, and cooperated with the launch of an innovative and small Kodak camera series-Kodak ameo. Its upward flashing system can avoid "red eye" when people take pictures, which is very popular in the market. In addition, Kodak's advanced photo laser disc system, through advanced development technology, can transfer all the images in the 35 cm negative to a laser disc, and then instantly present them on the TV screen through Kodak photo laser disc player, making people have both sound and picture, and unforgettable moments can be presented at any time.

Constantly updating products is one of the secrets of Kodak's success. Because Kodak started by developing new products and continuously developing new crystals, Kodak attaches great importance to the development of new varieties. Kodak now spends nearly 600 million dollars on scientific research every year, and a new invention comes out every three days on average.

In today's photography kingdom, Kodak's color films, such as "Kodak Chrome" and "Hundred Chrome" for slides, that is, "Kodak Color" ready for printing, are all high-quality films, especially "Kodak Chrome", whose quality is universally recognized.

Scientists of Kodak Company use film sensitizer thinner than human hair as the upper layer, which makes the film thinner 1/3 and more sensitive. This improvement forced DuPont, the ambitious world chemical kingdom at that time, to suspend its production and marketing plans and temporarily give up its challenge to Kodak.

Kodak's successful practice of accelerating new product development can be summarized as follows:

1. Define product functions according to market demand. It is difficult to summarize the functions that products can have from intangible market information, but it is also the key to increase the competitiveness of enterprises. But the collection method must be correct, otherwise the developed products will not only be ignored, but also waste valuable resources of the company. In order to ensure the accuracy of market information, Kodak has specially formulated a set of operating procedures, including collecting market information and consumption information for developing products.

2. Make the product development process clear. The project team established the product development operating system, which not only listed the development steps in detail, but also listed the inspection steps in detail, ensuring the smooth development. This new product development operating system is suitable for every business line and department of Kodak. This system is named "Manufacturing Capability Assurance System".

3. Set up a project team in the form of project management to engage in the development of new products. Kodak believes that any product development must first set up an ad hoc group, whose members include relevant personnel from R&D, production, marketing and other departments. But the members and leaders of the team will change with the development of the product.

4. Encourage personnel to move between departments. Kodak has set up a special committee to encourage job-hopping within the company by means of salary increase and reward, so as to ensure the vitality of all departments and make full use of human resources.

5. Make full use of time. When Kodak first set up business lines, it authorized each business line to purchase the required equipment by itself. As a result, the situation of repeated equipment is endless. Now Kodak requires each business line to use some equipment. In order to ensure that the time of using equipment does not conflict with other business lines, business lines must plan the whole workflow in advance and make use of the free time waiting for equipment training or new product testing.

6. Establish a small production line. At the end of Kodak's development work, a small amount of production will be carried out first to test the market reaction and serve as the basis for improvement. Although building a small production line requires a lot of investment, it can avoid the waste of stopping production of general production lines.