Southeastern Mills: The Improvement Journey (a)

Abstract

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. Excerpt UVA-OM-1419 September 9, 2010 SOUTHEASTERN MILLS: DESIGNING AN IMPROVEMENT JOURNEY (A) The Company 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. . . .