BMAL 501
CASE S P TUDY APER
RST METAL ROOFING AND CARPORTS
BY: A J NDRES ORDAN
BMAL 501
Introduction
Founded in 1980, RST Carports is a small business that includes a 600,0000 square foot building
that includes office space for management. Located in the city of Albany, Indiana this small pri-
vate business company has gradually grown from 4 to 48 types of installed carports. 20 years
later, in the year 2000, a new business venture began with 18 varieties of metal roofing.
For 35 years the company has turned a profit, having only lost money in its initial year. During
its tenure from 1981 to 2017, RST Carports used a pull system to control inventory and used the
well-known Seven Quality and Seven Management tools to solve everything but 10% of their
problems. All executive managers were Six-Sigma Blackbelts and ASQ certified, where complex
problems were solved with the Six-Sigma and Shainin Red-X solving skillset.
Jerry Jones, the owner, and president sold RST Carports to a large competitor WXY Corporation
in July 2017 for $60.8M. While Jones retired a week after the sale, WXY Corporation brought in
Art Anderson as the new President to replace him. Anderson brought in a SWOT team to make a
month-long assessment of RST management and employees as well as to review operation
methods.
Once the assessment was complete, Art Anderson elected to change the management structure of
RST. He reduced the executive management positions by half and 40% of middle and lower
management positions. He fired 30% of manufacturing and installation employees. Anderson
also forced all managers to take a 20% reduction in pay and non-management employees to take
a 10% reduction. While many of the original RST executive management team elected to retire
immediately, a few elected to move to a competitor, while a select few quit altogether.
Apart from reductions in pay, and reductions in personnel, Anderson also consolidated separately
functioning roles into one position, for example, the CFO and HR Manager position or the Mate-
rials Manager and Purchasing Manager. Anderson eliminated the IT Manager position, transfer-
ring those responsibilities to corporate.
Experience Level of Employees
Although 50% of executive management positions and 40% of middle and lower management
positions were eliminated, W2 Consulting company was able to interview most of them in 2020
when hired by the CEO of WXY.
In a transparent interview, former President Jerry Jones advised he learned early on to encourage
