Southeastern Mills Eight Elements Case Solution And Analysis, HBR Case Study Solution & Analysis of Harvard Case Studies

Southeastern Mills Eight Elements Case Solution

Additionally, the HPWP systems enable the organization to identify new opportunities and expand the business accordingly, with the help of interactive session and open communication levels between the management and the employees. Even employees at lower levels can come up with great ideas, which can help the business in identifying new opportunities for expanding the business.

Finally, it provides relief to the top management of the company as the employees are made responsible for their work and the executives get more time on focusing the strategic level decisions of the company. These responsibilities also improve the team coordination levels and satisfaction among the employees, ultimately leading to employee job satisfaction, motivation organizational commitment, loyalty and satisfied customers.

Question # 3

As SEM was primarily focused on the middle tier regional customers including Cracker Barrel and Bojangles, so the company’s decentralized and HPWP system was completely in line with the requirements of the customers from different segments. To remain competitive the company focused on pricing and quality standards of the product. The presence of SEM in the more sophisticated and standard segments, i.e. the premium national foods segments including MacDonald’s and Wendy’s, required the standardization among the operating systems and raw materials used by the company, ultimately providing standard product. This situation led the management to adopt a lean or six sigma policy in order to meet the standardization requirements of such sophisticated customers.

From the two specified options it is better for the company to hire a consultancy firm to work in with the top executives, managers and employees to develop a lean/six sigma structure in improving the capabilities among the overall processes of the organization. It is because the organization HPWP is completely based on the concept of decentralization and maintain a lean or six sigma structure would require centralization and standardized systems and processes at all levels within the organization. The consultancy group would create the six sigma or lean six sigma environment as they will work with employees and management at all levels. The consultancy firm would be having more experience in change management as compared to the internal employees of the company who are completely sati9sfied with the existing organization culture.

Deploying selected employees for getting lean/ six sigma certifications and then developing capabilities internally won’t work anymore as the employees would not be able to create a centralized environment in an existing decentralized organization structure with HPWP systems. It is because the change has to be brought at different levels of the organization and training of few employees for few months won’t be much effective as compared to six month interactive session with all the senior leaders, managers and employees with a consultancy group.

Question # 4

In choosing a lean/six sigma consultant group for implementing the lean/six sigma system within the organization, the SEM Company has to consider the following guidelines for improving the whole implementation process.

·Defining Criteria

SEM needs to develop specific criteria for determining the exact qualities required in the consultancy group. It is because the alignment of the goals between the organization and the consultancy group is very important (JOHNSON, 2018).

.Culture Fit

As the employees resist change especially in organization like SEM, where the employees are satisfied with existing organizational structure and HPWP system. So, having a consultancy group which could relate themselves s to such employees by adopting different personal strategies sin implementing the lean/six sigma structure is important in removing the resistance levels among the employees and bringing a change with effective communication skills.

·Conducting Various Interviews

As the adoption of lean/six sigma requires an extensive level of efforts in bringing a change in the organizational, so the company should conduct various interviews in selecting the right consultancy group which could satisfy the objectives of the company. But the focus should be on selecting the appropriate group rather than on conducting hundreds of interviews leading to wastage of time, resources and efforts.

·Feedback from References

Before hiring a consultancy group, the management of the SEM group should take feedback form the previous clients of the consultancy firm. If their feedback comes out as reliable and honest with an outstanding performance of the group them the company should hire the firm, otherwise not.

Question # 5

The company has to develop a lean/six sigma culture in order to satisfy the demand of its more sophisticated and high profile customers such a MacDonald’s and Wendy’s. This culture requires the adoption of standardization at all levels of the organization including operations, packaging, distribution etc. Moreover, the standardization comes up with formal rules and procedures and centralize organizational hierarchies.

So, the company should add an eighth element to its HPWP systems rather it should bring a change in its overall organizational structure by adopting a lean/six sigma structure by hiring a consultancy group specialize din particular field. It is because the company has to meet the demands of it high end customers along with keeping the concerns of the employees satisfied. Bringing an eighth element would not bring standardization in different processes of the organization as the teams in SEM company build up their own tasks and work accordingly........................

This is just a sample partial case solution. Please place the order on the website to order your own originally done case solution.

Southeastern Mills Eight Elements Harvard Case Solution & Analysis