CASE STUDY: CAESARS ENTERTAINMENT CORPORATION BACKGROUND: Caesars Entertainment Corporation is the world’s most geographically diversified casino-entertainment company. Caesars is focused on building loyalty and value with its guests through a unique combination of great service, excellent products, unsurpassed. Caesars Entertainment in Windsor Ontario; hotel, casino, eateries, concerts and shows, all non-operational for 60 days as Unifor Local 444 members and management attempt to reach a deal on their most recent collective agreement. This paper aims at discussing the case study of Caesars casinos, the outcomes of its manager’s intentions to implement Lean operations in the organizational environment (Hyer, Hirsch, and Brown 1), and the challenges that can be expected regarding the available material and working conditions.

Implementing LEAN Operations at Caesars Casinos Case Solution

Introduction

Caesars, is a well-known name in the Casino Entertainment industry, with its presence in the US, Egypt, Canada, England and South Africa.Caesars was the world’s largest geographically diversified casino entertainment provider in 2014. The organizational culture involves the best practices to provide optimal value to the customers. Caesars was the first to apply LEAN process improvement principles to get operational effectiveness and provide enhanced customer services. The company successfully took employee-centered initiatives to apply LEAN principles at three of its casinos in Tunica, Mississippi.The case is all about its facility at Metropolis namely Harrah’s Metropolis Casino and Hotel, located in Metropolis, Illinois.(Nancy Lea Hyer, 2014)

Problem Statement

Increasing competition in industry and new corporate financial goals for 2015 have lead the organization to focus more on increasing the customer experiences at its Metropolis facility. Brad Hirsch, Vice President and General Manager of Caesars is considering whether to apply the same employee-oriented approach experienced at Tunica, to implement LEAN principles or to modify the approach to get quick and better results in its new Metropolis facility.

Essential Elements and Benefits of Process Improvement Approach at Tunica

Process improvement based upon LEAN principles was initiated by arranging five days kaizen workshops to train and educate the employees about the LEAN principles, and to change the negative perceptions of employees about LEAN, that cutting waste under LEAN does not mean to cut personnel.

The core elements of the process improvement approach include the standard processes generated during the kaizen events with easy instructions to bring consistency in the performance of each task.

Another most important element of the process improvement approach is KPI (Key Performance Indicators). These KPI are developed by the employees of each area. These KPI’s are consistent with the overall objectives of the company, and are tracked on a KPI Board in each area, having key metrics about the improvements in the area, and the name of the person responsible for the improvements. The board is updated on daily basis with a red code of indicating low performance than standard, and a green code indicating excessive performance.The board was analysed by the area team members on daily basis.

Other most important elements of the approach is the daily problem solving, gemba walks and executive engagement. Area team members analyse and discuss the performance on daily basis, identify the barriers, share their improvement ideas about the problem, and take decisions about the next steps. Gemba walks is also one of the most important elements of the approach, under which representatives from the executives survey the ongoing improvement efforts in each of the area, once in a week. The executives discuss the metrics with red indicator and establish counter measures to improve the metric. The engagement of top executives in the whole process is essential to sustain the momentum. Therefore, the CEO himself used to take part in Gemba walks and personally called the employees to thank them for their improvement efforts. This is also an important aspect of the approach.

The approach provided several benefits to the organization in terms of employees’ engagement, improvement in service scores, cost saving, creating a mind-set of improvement in the whole organization, and employee’s motivation increased efficiency of employees.The approach has increased the employees’ engagement,by about 400 employees attending kaizen events, spending a total average of 14000 hours. Not only the lower level but upper level employees are also engaged in the improvement processes by participating in kaizen events. Scores in all of the areas have been improved with many areas having a targeted 3% shift from B to A scores. Along with it, waste elimination has increased about $3 million of the company in a single year.The bonuses provided to employees on basis of score shifts has created a mind-set of improving practices in all layers of the organisation. It has made the employees’ tasks easy to perform by simplifying the whole process to reduce wastes. Most of the employees are happy with the LEAN approach and feel themselves valuable.

Pros and Cons of an Expert-Driven Approach to Process Improvement as compared to Employee-Centred Approach:

If the company decides to adopt an Expert-Driven approach rather than an Employee-Centred approach to improve processes in its Metropolis facility, the company would be able to easily implement the improvements in its process in contrast to the employee centered approach, as it is time consuming to address an approach to all levels of employees as compared to addressing only key employees.Under the Expert-Driven approach, the company would have to deal with only beneficial and worthy improvement measures by its key employees only,rather than large number of improvement measures with low or no worth from all level employees. Management of process improvement is easier in an Expert-Driven approach as compared to the Employee-centred approach, as the number of employees involved in the improvement process are low.(Ordinez, 2016)

A comparison of Expert-Driven approach and Employee-Centered approach is given in the Table below:

With the deep analysis of advantages and disadvantages of both the approaches, it could be seen that although the company has a low chance of failure in Employee-Centred approach as the company has an experience in the approach, but due to the increasing industry competition and declining casino customers;the Expert-Driven approach is more favourable for the company despite of its high chances of failure to enable the company to respond quickly in the changing situations…………….

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Caesars Casino Case Study