| Course | BU 506 Leading Change and Operational Excellence |
|---|---|
| Unit | Unit 1 |
| Paper type | Process selection and baseline |
| Length | About 1,000 words, 6 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Herzing University |
| Program | MBA |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for BU 506 Unit 1
Four Candidates, One Process and 70.9 Percent Install-Ready on Time: Process Selection and Baseline for Special Orders at a Composite Columbus Flooring Retailer
Student Name
Business, Herzing University
BU 506: Leading Change and Operational Excellence
Instructor Name
January 12, 2026
Four Candidates, One Process and 70.9 Percent Install-Ready on Time: Process Selection and Baseline for Special Orders at a Composite Columbus Flooring Retailer
Purpose and Setting
This paper selects one process for improvement and records how it currently performs. The setting is a composite flooring retailer with four showrooms around Columbus, Ohio, and a central warehouse in Grove City that receives, stores and stages material for the company's installation crews. I work at the warehouse as operations coordinator, reporting to the operations manager. About a third of the company's jobs are special orders, flooring the company does not stock and orders from a manufacturer for one customer. The company, its figures and its people are a composite built for this sample.
Womack and Jones (2003) start improvement work by defining value from the customer's side and following the stream of steps that delivers it; for a special-order customer, value is simply the right floor arriving in time for the install. The paper keeps its two jobs apart. The first half chooses a process from four candidates using criteria fixed before any candidate was scored. The second half sets the chosen process's boundaries and records a baseline with its definition, collection method, period and limits.
The Candidates and the Criteria
Four processes came up repeatedly in complaints from showrooms, installers and customers during my first year in the role. Before scoring them, I set four criteria. Frequency asks how often the process runs, because a weekly process gives more chances to learn than a quarterly one. Pain asks how much a failure costs in rework, delay or customer complaints. Influence asks whether someone in my position can change the process without authority I do not have. Measurability asks whether its performance can be counted from records I can legitimately keep. Each criterion was scored from 1 (low) to 3 (high), and the scores were added without weighting.
| Candidate process | Frequency | Pain | Influence | Measurability | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Special-order fulfillment, deposit to material staged | 3 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 11 |
| Installer scheduling | 3 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 8 |
| Returns of unused non-stock material | 1 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 7 |
| Showroom sample checkout and return | 3 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 7 |
Why Special Orders
Special-order fulfillment scored highest on three criteria. It runs every business day, about 35 orders a week across the four showrooms. Its failures are expensive: when material is not ready, an install date is moved, a crew day is lost or reshuffled, and the customer, who has often cleared a room and taken a day off work, is the person who absorbs the delay. It can also be measured, because the warehouse records when each order's material is staged. Its weakest score is influence. The process starts in the showrooms and passes through purchasing, neither of which I manage, so improvement will require agreement from the showroom managers and the purchasing lead. I chose it anyway because the warehouse sees every order at the end of the process and is the first place a failure becomes visible.
Installer scheduling was the strongest alternative, but schedules are set by the installation manager using criteria I cannot see, and much of the pain in scheduling is caused by special orders that arrive late. Improving scheduling first would mean treating the symptom.
Boundaries of the Chosen Process
The process starts when a customer's deposit for a special order is recorded at a showroom. It ends when the complete material for that order, the right product in the right quantity from a single dye lot where the product requires one, is staged at the warehouse and released to the installation team. Work is handed in by the showroom sales consultants who write the order and the showroom administrators who enter it. It passes through the purchasing team, which places orders with manufacturers, and through warehouse receiving and staging. The receivers of the output are the installation scheduler and the crews.
One unit of output is one customer order, however many products it contains, because an install cannot start with part of an order. Measuring at the order level means a single missing carton makes the whole order late, which matches what the customer experiences.
The Baseline
Definition
The primary measure is install-ready on time: the share of special orders whose complete material was staged by the end of the business day before the scheduled install date. A secondary measure is lead time, the number of business days from deposit to staging, reported as a median because a few orders delayed by manufacturer backorders would distort an average.
Collection method
Since November I have kept a tracking sheet for special orders as part of my job, recording the order number, showroom, deposit date, install date and staging date from the warehouse management screen. No customer names or prices are recorded. For this baseline I used every special order with an install date between November 3 and December 12, 2025, six weeks.
Result
| Measure | Value | Orders |
|---|---|---|
| Special orders with an install date in the period | 212 | |
| Excluded: staging date missing from the warehouse record | 9 | |
| Install-ready on time | 70.9% | 144 of 203 |
| Median lead time, deposit to staged | 17 business days | 203 |
| Late orders, by showroom (Westerville, Dublin, Hilliard, Canal Winchester) | 19, 15, 14, 11 | 59 |
Confidence in the Baseline
I have reasonable confidence in the on-time figure. It is a complete count of the period rather than a sample, and the staging time comes from a system record rather than memory. Three limits apply. Nine orders had no staging time recorded. Counted as late, they would put the rate at 67.9 percent; counted as on time, at 72.2 percent, so the true value lies somewhere in that band. The period includes the weeks before the holidays, when manufacturers ship more slowly, so the baseline may be somewhat worse than a spring period would be. And install dates are sometimes moved before the material is due, which can make an order appear on time because its target moved. I noted 6 such orders but kept them, since the moved date is the one the customer was given.
These limits are acceptable for a baseline whose purpose is to show whether a change helps. Montgomery (2019) stresses that comparisons over time are only meaningful when the measure is defined and collected the same way in every period, so the same definition and collection method will be used for every later measurement in this project. Bateman (2005) found that gains from process improvement often fade once a project ends, which is a further reason to fix a measure now that can still be repeated months from now.
References
Bateman, N. (2005). Sustainability: The elusive element of process improvement. International Journal of Operations & Production Management, 25(3), 261-276. https://doi.org/10.1108/01443570510581862
Montgomery, D. C. (2019). Introduction to statistical quality control (8th ed.). Wiley.
Womack, J. P., & Jones, D. T. (2003). Lean thinking: Banish waste and create wealth in your corporation (Rev. ed.). Free Press.
What the BU 506 Unit 1 instructions ask for
Unit 1 of BU 506 asks MBA students to choose a process to improve and to measure how it performs today. Expect to describe several candidates briefly, score them against criteria you state before scoring, defend the choice, and then fix the chosen process: where it starts and ends, who hands work in, who receives it and what counts as one unit of output. The second half sets a baseline with a definition, a collection method, a period and an honest statement of confidence. Instructors accept a careful manual count when no system data exist. Real throughput reports from an employer are company records, so build the baseline from your own tallies or a composite case instead.
Inside the BU 506 Unit 1 example
Opening on the setting and the writer's role at the warehouse, the paper explains why selection and baseline are kept as separate halves. A scoring table rates four candidate processes on four criteria from 1 to 3. The selection section defends special orders on frequency, cost of failure and measurability, admits that influence is its weak point, and explains why installer scheduling would treat a symptom. Boundaries follow, with the start event, the end event and the reason the whole order is the unit. The baseline section gives definition, collection method and a results table with exclusions and late orders by showroom, then a confidence section brackets the true value and names three limits.
Reading the BU 506 Unit 1 rubric
Herzing's rubric for this first unit usually awards points for candidate screening, a defended choice, process boundaries, a defined baseline and a statement of confidence, plus graduate writing. Screening earns full credit when criteria are stated before scoring and applied the same way to every candidate. The choice is judged on reasoning, including what the chosen process does badly on. Boundaries score when start, end, inputs, receivers and the unit of output are all explicit. The baseline criterion carries heavy weight and rewards a measure that someone else could repeat from the definition alone. Confidence is where stronger papers separate themselves, by bounding the uncertainty and naming what could bias the figure.
Common BU 506 Unit 1 mistakes, and how to avoid them
Process selection papers lose marks when the choice is announced first and the criteria are reverse-engineered to fit it. Vague boundaries cause trouble later, because a baseline cannot be repeated if nobody knows where the process starts. Some writers report a figure with no definition or period, or drop records with missing data without saying so. Others pick a process they cannot influence at all. Averages that hide a few extreme cases are another weak spot, which is why the sample reports a median lead time. If you need help turning your own process into a measurable baseline, our writers can draft one around your case and your section's rubric.
Get a BU 506 Unit 1 example written to your instructions
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- BU 506 Unit 8: Results and sustainment report
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BU 506 Unit 1 questions, answered
How is this different from an operations management course?
Operations courses ask how a process should be run: capacity, scheduling, inventory, layout. This one takes an existing process and improves it through a measured cycle, so the deliverable is a starting point for change rather than a description of how the work is organized. If your draft explains how the operation functions and stops there, it has answered the earlier course.
What if I cannot get a real measurement?
Then build the baseline inside the composite case and label it as constructed, which is what most sections expect anyway. State the definition, the collection method you would use, the period and the sample, then use the figures consistently for the rest of the term. A clearly constructed baseline is honest work; a figure implied to be real is not.
Can I use my department's actual throughput data?
No, and this catches people out because the numbers feel harmless. Volumes, cycle times, error counts and system reports belong to the employer whose systems generated them, and a graded paper is not an internal document. Choose a process you understand well, describe how it runs in your own words, and construct the measures for the assignment so nothing proprietary travels with it.
Where can I find a free BU 506 Unit 1 sample paper?
Read the whole BU 506 Unit 1 process selection and baseline here without paying anything: the scoring table, the boundaries, the baseline results and margin notes. Choosing a different process? Send the prompt and a matching paper is written at no charge, typically in about two days.
What makes a good baseline measure for BU 506 Unit 1?
One that matches what the customer experiences and can be repeated later. The sample counts a special order as on time only when the whole order is staged the day before install, because a partial order still stops the job.