Implementing LEAN Operations at Caesars Casinos Case Solution And Analysis, HBR Case Study Solution & Analysis of Harvard Case Studies

Implementing LEAN Operations at Caesars Casinos Case Study Solution

Challenges faced by Hirsch under High-Involvement Approach:

If Hirsch decides to follow the high involvement approach then he would have to face various challenges. The first challenge would be in terms of planning and conducting various kaizen events at its Metropolis facility to analyse the wastes, create value streams and standardize process, allot various KPI’s for different areas and objectives. The other challenge would be in form of employee reluctance towards change. As the employees are often reluctant to the change, he would have to convince the employees for change by providing them various benefits in terms of bonuses. He would also have to face the criticism by its technical employees, who perceive LEAN implementation as an alternate to their designed processes, and are reluctant to adopt any approach related to the change in processes. The mid-level managers are also reluctant to any approach related to changing the core processes they are following for many years. Even after conducting kaizen events and convincing the employees for the change, Hirsch and his team would face a challenge of getting financial support to fund the process standardized under the kaizen events. Along with it, one of the biggest challenge in implementing the high-involvement process approach is the current industry scenario, which requires a more quick response. It would lead to the company’s failure in its approach,further leading to intense criticism from the employees. (Wood, 2011)

Hirsch should be prepared to face the challenges. He should gather all the critical information about the success of Tunica, after implementing the improvement processes. He should conduct a joint session of employees of the Tunica facilities and the employees of Metropolis facilities,to make them share their positive experiences of implemented change to motivate the employees at Metropolis and avoid the reluctance. He should be prepared to face the time bound challenges by conducting necessary research for implementing the improvement process as fast as possible.

KPI’s to measure Performance of Housekeeping area.

Let’s suppose the service scores for Metropolis house-keeping area, which have declined for past few years are due to the poor quality services, theft, high time duration between a service call from the customer and the arrival of the attendant,non-collaborative behaviour by the employees and poor cleaning services etc. The changes to improve the scores decided during a kaizen event could be, creating expert labours group for the particular type of service for all the customers i.e. creating a group of washer-men for washing the customer’s clothes, installing a CCTV Camera in each of the room to avoid theft, etc. All these changes made to improve the house-keeping areas can be analysed by the following KPIs:

Time taken by an attendant to reach at the room before the changes, to identify the improvement of work environment for employees after changes.
Increase in the customers’ satisfaction after implementing the changes, to measure the overall value given to customers after changes.
Time consumed to perform a task by the attendant, to identify the efficiency of processes in terms of time saving.
Quality of services before and after the implementation of changes, to measure the efficiency of process changes in services provided.
Increase in the clients’interactions with the attendant, to measure the performance regarding to the behavioural change.

Presentation of process-improvement program idea to the Metropolis leadership team:

Hirsch should get well prepared before meeting to pitch his idea effectively in-front of the Metropolis leadership team. He should first organize his words and collect certain information about the topics he would discuss. The recommended way to deliver the presentationis to first discuss the current situations of the industry, make the employees realize that the industry is getting more competitive, and there is a necessity to change the operations to sustain a competitive advantage in the long run. Hirsh should collect information about changing dynamics of the industry before the presentation. After discussing the current problems faced by overall company, he should focus on the performance of its Metropolis facility. He should compare the performance of Metropolis facility with Tunic facilities to make the leaders realize that there is a problem with the Metropolis facility. He should gather certain information about performance metrics of Tunic and Metropolis to support his views. After this he should move towards the success factors of the Tunic, that how implementation of process improvements has made Tunic facilities prosper, and how much the employees are satisfied after the implementation. Here he should share the views of employees at Tunic after change. Finally, he should propose his ideas about implementing the process improvement in Metropolis by elaborating the expected future benefits of implementing the process improvement in Metropolis. (See Exhibit B)