Course Project Proposal Perez 1

Running head:

COURSE PROJECT PROPOSAL PEREZ

Proposal of Course Project for GM591 class Pablo F. Perez

Keller Graduate School of Management GM591 May/09 Session Professor R. Stone Due Date: Week 2 (May 9, 2009)

Course Project Proposal Perez 2 PART A: INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW

The focus for the discussion that I plan to use for the course project is the department that I belong to within my organization. The organization that I work for is a major player in the aerospace industry. The department that I am with basically works with the companys production system, specifically, the Value Stream of the product we produce. In a few words, Value Stream is the linkage of process, material and information flows for our product. It starts with the customer request, then through acquisition, design, procurement, building, certification, delivery and in-service support for a specific commodity of the product. The Value Streams are optimized by focusing on ways to eliminate waste and/or nonvalue added activities, increase velocity and provide the best value to the customer while utilizing the Value Stream Teams concept. A Value Stream Team (VST) is a cross-functional / cross-organizational team that links the value stream system described above. Our department consists of a group of Lean Coaches and Project Managers. The Lean Coaches help the VSTs by facilitating several different Lean activities in order to help the teams to map their current state process, identify opportunities for improvements and map the future state process based on the

Course Project Proposal Perez 3 improvements. In the project manager position, my role is to aid the Lean Coach in mentoring the teams during the improvement activities as well as overall management of the more complex improvement activities that become value stream or company projects.

PART B: OPPORTUNITY STATEMENT

I have discussed several of the suggested topic items with my second level manager. We have found one that we both agreed can be helpful for our department. I would like to use utilize the High Performance Organization (HPO) and Organization Behavior concepts discussed during the GM591 class in addition to independent research as an opportunity to assess current stage of our department, compare the HPO principles and propose suggested steps and actions towards achieving a high performance organization status for our department and serve as a benchmark for other departments and organizations of our company.