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In early 1995, Karen Jimenez began implementing a project to boost morale and productivity at Acme Minerals Extraction Co.'s plant in Wichita, Kansas. The team-based productivity project, as it is known, was designed to induce similar results at all of Acme's plants. But now, in the fall of 1996, Jimenez seems to have run into a brick wall at the second site targeted for improvement--the plant in Lubbock, Texas. The tactics that worked so well in Wichita are failing. And, as a meeting with Acme's senior managers looms in this fictional case study, Jimenez must rethink the issues and explain how the project can be put back on track. What can be done? The company has earmarked big bucks for the project, and the CEO's ego and reputation are wrapped up in it. In 96602 and 96602Z, commentators Ravi Venkatesan, Lloyd Baird, Martha Maznevski, and Gary Banks offer advice on this fictional case study.

In early 1995, Karen Jimenez began implementing a project to boost morale and productivity at Acme Minerals Extraction Co.'s plant in Wichita, Kansas. The team-based productivity project, as it is known, was designed to induce similar results at all of Acme's plants. But now, in the fall of 1996, Jimenez seems to have run into a brick wall at the second site targeted for improvement--the plant in Lubbock, Texas. The tactics that worked so well in Wichita are failing. And, as a meeting with Acme's senior managers looms in this fictional case study, Jimenez must rethink the issues and explain how the project can be put back on track. What can be done? The company has earmarked big bucks for the project, and the CEO's ego and reputation are wrapped up in it. In 96602 and 96602Z, commentators Ravi Venkatesan, Lloyd Baird, Martha Maznevski, and Gary Banks offer advice on this fictional case study.

Out of a sense of corporate responsibility, many of today's manufacturers are making commodity-like components to preserve jobs. This single-minded focus on preserving jobs can become a self-defeating objective. It often results in insourcing parts that are easy to manufacture, largely to make work, while outsourcing those that are hard to make. Over time, fixed costs rise, product differentiation declines, and manufacturing performance remains stagnant as employees become complacent. The very survival of the company is threatened. Companies must learn how to not make things: how to not make the parts that divert a company from cultivating its repertoire of skills--parts its suppliers could make more efficiently. Managers must gain the confidence to make strategic discriminations among the thousands of parts they know mostly in terms of cost, not function or importance to the product.