1. What are the advantages and disadvantages of adopting an expertdriven approach to process improvement, in contrast to an employeecentered approach (such as the one used at Tunica)? Briey explain. Please be as complete as possible in identifying advantages and disadvantages. Advant_ages Expert-Driven approach Compared to EmployeeCentered Approach - Cost would be signicantly less. o It would not take the employees away from their normal dub'es for an extended period of time, which would mean nding other employees to ll their spots during that time. - Time involvement would be significantly less. o Don't have to spend time training employees to analyze and improve processes. The experts would he more efcient than the employees. o Competitive pressures to do something quicker. - Employees would still he expected to contribute to improvement ideas through various means. Disadvanta es artDriven A roach Com ed to Em lo eeCentered A roach - The experts would not be as familiar with all of the processes and people in the hotelfcasino and might find it difcult to really evaluate and implement changes. - The employees may not he as excited or accepting of the changes because they had not participated with them. It may also he harder to keep the changes going and he sure that the employees are still trying to improve things since the employees had not gone through the training and learned about the LEAN processes. This might be the biggest problem since he knew from Tunica that it was hard to sustain gains after a kaiser: event and there was some resistance at the middle-management level. Brad Hirsch has to decide whether he should adopt an expertdriven LEAN approach instead of an employeecentered approach like he did in Tunica The expertdriven approach has quite a few advantages, especially for the Metropolis location. First, the costs of doing the expert-driven approach would be significantly less than the employeecentered approach. This is because he would not have to pay employees for participating in the event in addition to paying employees to be covering the shifts of iose that are participating the event. In addition, the experts would likely be a little more efcient and would not need the first day of the koizen event that is just teaching about LEAN processes, so Hirsch would not have costs for extra days. Second, the time involvement would be signicantly less. As previously mentioned, the experts would likely be more efcient and there would be no need to spend extra b'me training the Metropolis employees in LEAN analysis. Finally, the employees would still be able to participate in the improvement without having to give up so much time. They can contribute their ideas irough focus groups, suggestion systems, etc. However, iere would be disadvantages to Hirsch hiring outside experts to perform the LEI-EN analysis and improvements. First, the experts would likely be perceived as outsiders and as such it may be difcult to get honest opinions from the employees. In addition, it might be difcult to convince the employees to accept the changes that are made. Hirsch already had trouble convincing some middle-management in Tunica to accept changes, so if the changes at Metropolis are all coming from people outside of the company, it might be even harder to convince employees to accept them