One of the leading fast-food restaurant chains lost 30% market share in the last 12 months. The Board of Directors fired the CEO in a meeting that was held last week. The interim CEO announced that she would be applying the Lean Six Sigma methodology to investigate what could have gone wrong.

The restaurant chain has over 1000 locations across the country; however, the menu is very standardized and serves only 5 items in each restaurant. The restaurant is known for buying organic meats and vegetables and the customer base includes people who are health conscious and yet like to eat outside and eat fast food. Unlike the competitors, they never had to place an advertisement in any media channel and despite that, the averages wait time for getting the meal is above 20 minutes. Customers seem to be okay to stand in line to order their custom-made burritos and tacos. The new CEO has hired you as Lean Six Sigma Consultant to run this project. (Hint: You can assume anything and everything you want to).

1. Prepare a Project Charter that identifies the Problem, and lists the objectives of the project and the deliverables along with KPIs. Also, indicate the team members and their responsibilities. Include the scope of the project in the charter.

2. Suggest appropriate steps for the Measure phase. For example, do you plan to collect VOC? If so, how? Do you plan to develop CTQs?

3. Conduct a Root-Cause analysis and develop a fishbone diagram for this project highlighting all the key root causes that could have led to the loss of market share.

4. With the help of LSS tools that we discussed in the class, make recommendations to the CEO that will possibly increase the market share. Use at least 3 Management & planning or Quality tools and develop a solution planning matrix with impact and effort for your solutions.

5. Recommend a control plan for sustained growth of the company.