Lean Six Sigma for Service

CHAPTER 14Designing World-Class Services(Design for Lean Six Sigma)

By Kimberly Watson-Hemphill (George Group)¹ and Rod Skewes (Caterpillar, Inc.)²

In the summer of 2001, an employee from Caterpillar's Malaga, Spain, facility was trying to book into a hotel in Peoria, Illinois, but his corporate credit card wasn't accepted. The employee called the Corporate Travel office in Peoria thinking they might be able to help, but no one there knew anything about his credit card. Corporate Travel called Corporate Treasury, but they didn't know anything about it either.

Eventually everything was straightened out, but this one incident set off a chain reaction once the corporate departments realized that it was the very small tip of a very large iceberg: ...