Woody's Case Woody's

The background of this case is relatively straightforward, despite the complexities of the described project's ultimate failure. The younger generation of the company's leadership wanted to see Woody's, a manufacturing concern, enlarged so it could take a greater market share and respond to increases in demand. While these goals might have been laudable in a general sense, the project suffered from a great deal of lack of foresight and planning, major communication issues among the various project leaders and designers, and an overall lack of control that led to many expenditures, a significant loss in productivity, and a near-total failure that had a negative impact on morale and company loyalty. No one acted with malicious intent or even laziness in order to lead to the outcome in the attempted expansion project, but a lack of expertise...

Starting out with a better plan for the project, maintaining more centralized project leadership so that all elements remained coordinated, and ensuring that adequate communication took place between all stakeholders as each phase of the project was first planned and then put into motion would have made the outcome of the project much better. At this point, the only real solution is to attempt to restore the factory to a useable form in the shortest time possible, so that manufacturing and thus revenue streams can resume. Long-term adjustments could eventually finish the expansion project as intended, though these should be managed through the collective planning and action of all of the company's leaders.
Using a…