Why even successful teams sometimes fail-self-directed team catalysts [manufacturing]

The competitive need to significantly reduce cycle time and product inventory while improving yields in its logic fabricator, led IBM´s semiconductor facility in Essex Junction, to adopt a continuous flow manufacturing (CFM) methodology and the team approach to implement this methodology. However, once these employee teams successfully achieved record breaking results, their effectiveness began to erode. What makes good teams hard to start and even harder to maintain? What causes leaders to move from either tyranny or apathy to vocal advocate? Why do teams seem to self-destruct despite their success? The answers to these questions lie in understanding team catalysts; that is, those conditions that foster the maturation of teams but are often eroded once success has been achieved. When team catalysts are maintained, an ongoing breakthrough occurs