Functional Area Interrelationships

Functional Area Interrelationships October 29, 2012 BUS/475 University of Phoenix Abstract Huffman Trucking is a trucking company that was established in 1936. Throughout this paper, we will discuss the company’s mission and vision statement. It will also identify the type of organizational structure and how each of those roles supports the company’s goals. The collaboration process among the functional areas must also be established to support the goals.
Finally, the stakeholders will be reviewed and how the company plans to protect them and how their communication is vital to the success of Huffman Trucking. “Huffman Trucking started in 1936 in Cleveland, OH. By 1945, the company had increased in size to 16 tractors and 36 trailers. ” (Virtual Organization) Today Huffman trucking is one of the largest trucking companies in the United States. The company has four locations across the U. S. ; Cleveland, OH, Los Angeles, CA, St. Louis, MO, and Bayonne, NJ.
The company has created a core foundation to continue to grow the company and sustain financial stability. Since the inception of the organization in 1936, Huffman trucking has grown their fleet of tractor-trailers from one to over 800 tractors, 2,100 45 foot trailers, and 260 roll on/ roll off units. Huffman trucking also employees 925 drivers and 425 technical support staff members, which is based from the increase in business that they have seen over the years from their acquisitions of five other freight companies.

The mission of Huffman trucking is “to be a profitable, growing, adaptive company in an intensively competitive logistical services business environment”. Huffman Trucking according to the mission statement wants to be a competitive company within the logistics industry, and they also want to maintain the growth and profitability that they have experienced over the years. The vision statement of Huffman Trucking is “to be a model company to our stockholders, employees, customers, and all stakeholders”.
Through the vision statement that Huffman Trucking has put into place at their organization they want to be a company that does right by all the people that are investors in the company, as well as, the employees and customers that are also valued by the organization. In analyzing the mission and vision statements of the company, Huffman Trucking existence is to maintain their market share in the logistics industry by treating the customer, employees, stock, and stakeholders with the upmost respect and consideration.
The reason that Huffman Trucking uses the business structure that they have is to maintain the solid structure of the employment, and maintain the growth of the business in the industry of logistics. Huffman Trucking is a company that prides themselves on the idea that taking care of the employees will help the employees will take care of the customers, and the revenues from the customers will help the business and the stock and stakeholders maintain their edge. Huffman Trucking is a leader in the industry of logistics, and is one of the larger corporations that are in operation.
The contracts that Huffman Trucking has are strong stable contracts that will help the vision and mission of the company to be successful in the completion and achievement of the goals that they set for the organization. Huffman Trucking has a strong foundation and the future of the organization is solid with the contracts that are in place from years to come. The services that Huffman Trucking offers to its customers are services that can help the growth of the business, and to maintain the competitive edge that Huffman Trucking has over its competition.
Huffman Trucking is a privately held United States based company. Huffman Trucking’s Mission Statement is “to be a profitable, growing, adaptive company in an intensively competitive logistical services business environment”(Huffman Trucking, 2012). Huffman’s Trucking Vision Statement is “to be a model company to our stockholders, employees, customers and all stakeholders” (Huffman Trucking, 2012). Huffman trucking has implemented the following steps of the collaboration process that must be employed to achieve organizational goals.
The action plan to implement the collaboration process is to create an important objective, build, sustain, or enhance a core competence or competitive advantage, important new market opportunities as well as mitigate significant risk to the trucking business. Facilitating the close cross-company by merger and acquisition strategies play a part in Huffman trucking. Expanding the company’s geographic coverage and independently developing whatever resources and know-how were needed to be successful was imperative. Huffman Trucking has facilities in four major cities in the United States, Cleveland, OH, Los Angeles, CA, St.
Louis, MO, and Bayonne, NJ. In order for Huffman Trucking to be a successful business there had to be several things put into place. The mission of the company is to be a profitable, growing, adaptive company in an intensively competitive logistical services business environment. The vision of Huffman Trucking is to be a model company to our stockholders, employees, customers and all stakeholders. In order for Huffman Trucking to be able to achieve the mission and reach the vision for the company there had to be the use of collaborations within. Such collaborations would include lateral and vertical collaborations.
Lateral collaboration is where a group of people with the same ranking work together to accomplish a task. An example of lateral collaboration would be if two or more of the floor employees work together to try and come up with a way to increase production. A vertical collaboration would occur when a person of higher rank works with a person of lower rank to accomplish a goal. The CEO of the company working with a floor shift manager to try to increase production would be an example of vertical collaboration. Looking on the service request page, there has been many requests for service made by different people.
One request that was made was made by the CIO for a Windows server upgrade for all the network locations. The expected goal of this server upgrade is to provide a migration path from the current network to one running Windows Server 2008. An action plan will be put together in order to accomplish this goal. Vertical collaboration will be used as the CIO works together with the IT department in order to accomplish the task of upgrading the server. They will work together to make sure that the server upgrade allows Huffman Trucking to do everything that it needs to be successful such as the right domain model and network dministration for all sites. An action plan will then be put into effect for lateral collaboration. This will allow the front line staff to develop ways that the upgraded server can help them. Examples of that would be that Administrative control of domain controllers can be decentralized if needed and allows the drivers to have access to at least one computer at each site. Huffman Trucking takes great pride in their company not only for their employees and customers but also for their stakeholders.
They have developed a mission statement for their stakeholders; “We will maintain continuous awareness of our stakeholders and apply the test of reasonableness to assure our business practices are commensurate with stakeholder expectations. ” (Virtual Organization) By identify awareness to the stakeholders, they will want to continue to invest in Huffman Trucking. Some of the stakeholders include; President/CEO, VP of Transportation, VP of Equipment, VP of Real Estate, VP of Terminal Operations, VP of Sales, Shareholders and all employees.
The collaborative interaction between the Huffman Trucking Executive Management is critical to the success of the business. They are the making the deciding factors for each category that they are over. At the end of the day, each VP relies on another VP in order to proceed with their decisions. The management team must work together in order to ensure that Huffman Trucking and the Stakeholders are happy and successful. At the end of the day, if the stakeholders do no collaborate together all of them will lose out. Huffman Trucking has created a company that continues to grow and build upon their success year after year.
By staying true to their mission and vision statement the company will be able to open up more locations in the United States. Huffman trucking has a clear strategic plan that allows them to have a strong internal and vertical collaboration. By keeping their focus and foundation alive to their shareholders, stakeholders, employees, and customers Huffman Trucking will continue to be a leading trucking company. References Virtual Organization Portal. (2012) Huffman Trucking. Retrieved on October 29, 2012 from http://ecampus. phoenix. edu