Southeastern Mills: The Eighth Element?

Abstract

Appropriate for courses in operations management and leadership. Owners and employees of this company spent considerable time and effort developing a unique, extremely successful high-performance work-place culture based on trust and a decentralized structure. Individuals and teams managed their areas with little direct supervision from middle and upper management. Some managers, based on sales opportunities with new, large, and demanding customers, felt that it was essential to consider how a Lean or Six Sigma program could be blended into their work-place culture. But other managers were concerned about altering what was already successful. A teaching note (OM-1393TN) is available. Excerpt UVA-OM-1393 Rev. June 9, 2010 SOUTHEASTERN MILLS: THE EIGHTH ELEMENT? Continuing the Evolution Southeastern Mills (SEM), a group of flour-milling, mix-manufacturing, and product-development facilities owned and operated by the Grizzard family, was headquartered in Rome, Georgia, one hour north of Atlanta. Its plants ground fresh wheat and corn and mixed it with other dry ingredients such as baking powder, baking soda, and spices to produce flours, corn meal, mixes for baked goods, gravy, soups, and food coatings such as fried chicken batter. SEM also sold individually packaged consumer products and produced custom biscuit and pancake mixes and chicken coatings in bulk for national food-processor, retail, and food-service accounts (Figures 1 and 2). Figure 1. Southeastern Mills products. . . .