Southeastern Mills: The Improvement Journey (A)

Appropriate for courses in operations design and performance management. Owners and employees of this company spent considerable effort developing a unique, extremely successful high-performance work place culture based on trust and a decentralized structure and little direct supervision from middle and upper management. Now management wants to consider blending a Lean or Six Sigma program into their work-place culture. A Business Process Improvement Team evaluates four different system designs for launching Lean-Six Sigma. The three-part case series follows the team’s investigations, selection criteria development, assessments, and final decision. Students are asked to consider the pros and cons of the alternatives of the team, prepare a recommendation for the senior managers and then critique their choice against the team’s recommendation. There is a teaching note (OM-1393TN) available.