Harvard Business School Case on Operations Management: MANAZANA INSURANCE

Founded in 1902 in California, Manzana Insurance specialized in commercial insurance, with property insurance, in 1991, making up 65% of its revenues, liability insurance 20%, and investment income and miscellaneous specialty lines constituting the remainder. Manzana operated through a network of relatively autonomous branch offices in 3 states of the United States of America - California, Oregon, and Washington. Each branch was treated as a separate profit and loss center. Its sales force comprised about 2,000 independent agents who represented Manzana …

…schedules can be charted out on a weekly or fortnightly basis. Multi-skilling is limited to Distribution Clerks, Raters and Policy Writers as the jobs in the latter two departments are becoming clerical in nature. As this organization moves on the learning curve, a trend should emerge which will provide an almost stable employee situation in each division; but the divisions will always be armed with flexibility as a result of multi-skilling if there are disc