Deloitte & Touche Consulting Group

The major problem in the Deloitte & Touche Consulting Group case was the lack of support that Maria Chen
had during the first few weeks of the engagement at SKS Manufacturing.

The cause of the problem with the engagement at SKS Manufacturing was multi-pronged. Maria Chen could
have very easily become the sole scapegoat for blame. However, upon analyzing the underlying causes, Maria
lacked 100% support from the two most senior members of the engagement team. First, David Hendry, Partner
had just accepted additional responsibilities of bringing in new business. This meant that he would have
competing demands with a less proactive focus and attention to SKS Manufacturing as a client during the
initial engagement.

Secondly, Annette Wattley-Davis, Senior Manager, assigned to the SKS Manufacturing engagement was working
on another concurrent project in Dallas. She was in Texas for 2-3 days per week overseeing a project with
another client with limited oversight to the SKS engagement during a lucrative period (first six weeks) of the
engagement.

Thirdly, Maria Chen was a fairly new consultant and inexperienced to lead a vague and difficult situation on
her own. Her lack of experience coupled with the lack of support from David Hendry and Annette Wattley-
Davis was detrimental and derailing. She was assigned specifically to lead and address the production
scheduling processes and synchronize production operations with purchasing while working along side Ben
Rohan. He was tasked to lead the material and procurement processes and raw material levels. Maria and Ben
were assigned to work in conjunction with each other.

Maria had her own challenges given the scope of her assignment with the production line and her working
relationship with Stan Janovich. In addition, a lack of prioritization, she focused mainly on a complex
worksheet to impress Wattley-Davis instead of spending valuable time on the manufacturing floor.

The expectation at SKS Manufacturing was to decrease inventory in a short time span of 12 weeks.

To remedy the situation at SKS Manufacturing the best solution was to have an intact engagement team of
four or five. Ideally, a team with a partner and senior manager onboard who are focused with 100% of their
time dedicated to the project.

David Hendry should remain the partner assigned to this project. Since his new responsibility is to bring in
new business. He shall maintain his relationship with SKS by maintaining lines of communication open and
ongoing with progress updates.

Secondly, a dedicated senior manager without competing demands will be needed to provide the necessary
guidance and leadership to the rest of the team. This is imperative to make it a successful engagement and
provide promising results to SKS Manufacturing. In particular when Deloitte & Touche’s goal is to gain
additional business in future consulting projects.
Thirdly, a cohesive integrated team where the consultant and client are actively engaged in transferring
knowledge and creating a learning engagement. The consultants make objective recommendations and the
client learns new ways to efficiently and effectively improve processes and procedures for the long haul.

Deloitte Case

First, Maria should acknowledge the foreman’s abundant floor experience because foreman has spent most of
his working hours on the production line. Maintain ongoing communication with clients will help the consulting
team better understanding the environment and the situation. Second, Maria should educate the client that
even though she does not have the relevant experience in automotive manufacturing, her team does have a
senior consultant, who had prior experience in the field and had been on three different engagements.
Moreover, Maria should mention their team would use the larger resource from Deloitte to serve the client
and provide the best suitable solution for SKS. Finally, Maria should point-out that her team’s goal is to help
the foreman and SKS to achieve their goals. By aligning their goals, the Foreman will recognize he is also part
of the consulting team and solidify their trust.

Here is a script I come up for Maria Chen.

“I recognize the fact that I do not have the hands-on experience like you do on the shop floor, and I will take
any information and advice you give us into our project consideration. In addition, my team does have
professionals with relevant experiences in the manufacturing industry and more resources from Deloitte
Consulting Group ready to support the project. With our training and experiences, my team will have a big
picture analysis and provide you and the rest of SKS a “re-engineered” production process that will allow your
job to be better accomplished and reduce inventory cost at the same time.

Man Consulting

Even though Maria Chen is seemingly the focal point of the case, she in fact just serves as a proxy to the bigger
issues that were present during the engagement.

The Deloitte team was made up of five members. Two senior leads of the group, David Hendry, and Annette
Wattley-Davis, had extensive experience both with the Consulting Company and the automotive industry.
Given the complexity of the project, and especially the urge for delivering concrete quantifiable results within
relatively short 12 week engagement, it seemed as a sound strategic decision to enforce the consulting team
with these high-profile experienced employees.

The other three members, Ben Rohan, Maria Chen and Ramesh Patel, were the most critical part of the
engagement. Of this group only one, Rohan, was a senior consultant with extensive prior experience in
procurement and manufacturing. He also had been on three different engagements while with Deloitte. On
the other hand, Maria and Ramesh did not have enough relevant experience, especially in client-facing
situations.
The three team members were supposed to do all the actual legwork in interacting with the client on daily
basis, collecting and analyzing data, finding, presenting, and helping with the implementation of the solution
to the client’s inventory problems. It is obvious that their outstanding academic credentials and technical
skills were a great asset for the team, and given the right guidance from the senior managers they were
capable of tackling the problem at hand.

However, this did not happen. David Hendry was only nominally involved with the project and provided a very
high-level oversight for the engagement. Due to his other very demanding responsibilities as a partner at
Deloitte he was not physically present at the engagement, except for the milestone meetings with the client.

Annette Wattley-Davis was the one to lead the team on the ground. Unfortunately, she was not able to solely
focus on the project and managing the team because of her finishing another project across the country,
which left her with only two-three days a week available on the SKS engagement. Her double focus effectively
prevented her from being closely involved in monitoring the project progress and the work performed by the
team. Given the constraints on the team leaders mentioned here, the leads for the engagement were not able
to provide guidance, constructive evaluation, and timely feedback to the group members.

From these observations it appears that the engagement team’s efforts were seriously undermined by two
major factors:

• Leadership vacuum

• Communication breakdown

To avoid this type of situation in the future, it is highly advisable that the senior manager who is selected for
the project, would be able to be more directly involved in the engagement. If this were the case in this
engagement, then the manager could have kept track of the team efforts and direction. Overall, the leaders
of the engagement reduced their participation to reactive mode instead of embracing on the leadership role.

To be fair, Maria made a few mistakes of her own:

• Failed to initially establish rapport with the SKS stakeholders and include the client’s team in the process

• Did not maintain ongoing communication with the client’s team, Deloitte peers and managers

• Focused on technical analysis without getting first-hand information from the people and actual processes

• Got caught up into developing a spreadsheet model based on inaccurate premises instead of focusing on the
final objective of the engagement

• Did not work closely with Rohan’s team even though their pieces of the project were very closely connected

Because of these mistakes three weeks of Maria’s time were virtually lost, as she spent all that time on the
model that was eventually thrown out. Had she had more guidance from the manager, she could have gotten
corrected earlier on and would have had a chance to redirect her efforts. Also an involved manager could
have gone over the presentation with the team members before the meeting at a three weeks mark, to
validate the team’s findings and at least to remove the most embarrassing parts that did not make sense.

Under the circumstances the Deloitte team should try to do damage control at the upcoming steering
committee meeting:

• Managers of the consulting team should take responsibility for the engagement progress being slower than
originally anticipated

• Acknowledge that original hypothesis (model presented by Maria) was flawed and focus more on the progress
made by the team, including Maria, in the last three weeks

• Emphasize the progress made and results obtained from the Rohan’s team

• Present clear objectives and milestones in the remaining six weeks of the engagement, as well as the means
of reaching them

The lessons for Deloitte from this engagement:

• Pay more attention to the group make up

• Realistically evaluate the ongoing commitments of the team members, especially the teams leaders

• Emphasize with their senior level employees (partners and mangers) the need for giving timely constructive
feedback and guidance to their team members.

Deloitte & Touche Consulting Group Case Analysis

APRIL 12, 2011
The presented case of Deloitte and Touche Consulting Group engagement with SKS Manufacturing is offering
invaluable lessons in team and project management. It briefly touches upon all major facets of the
consulting company involvement with client projects, such as:
• Engagement planning
• Team selection
• Roles and responsibilities of team members
• Background and qualifications of key people
• Client participation
• Gathering and analyzing data
• Making recommendations
Most importantly, however, the case is emphasizing the need for the proper balance between the core
competencies that consulting companies bring to the table in their engagement with the clients. Namely,
the balance between the technical knowledge and skills vs. internal communication and interaction with the
client.
It will be demonstrated in this analysis that there were a number of critical flaws in planning and conducting
the engagement in the first half of the project. These mistakes could potentially lead to extremely
unfavorable outcomes for the engagement team, and the Consulting Company at large.
Even though Maria Chen is seemingly the focal point of the case, she in fact just serves as a proxy to the
bigger issues that were present during the engagement.
The Deloitte team was made up of five members. Two senior leads of the group, David Hendry, and Annette
Wattley-Davis, had extensive experience both with the Consulting Company and the automotive industry.
Given the complexity of the project, and especially the urge for delivering concrete quantifiable results
within relatively short 12 week engagement, it seemed as a sound strategic decision to enforce the
consulting team with these high-profile experienced employees.
The other three members, Ben Rohan, Maria Chen and Ramesh Patel, were the most critical part of the
engagement. Of this group only one, Rohan, was a senior consultant with extensive prior experience in
procurement and manufacturing. He also had been on three different engagements while with Deloitte. On
the other hand, Maria and Ramesh did not have enough relevant experience, especially in client-facing
situations.
The three team members were supposed to do all the actual legwork in interacting with the client on daily
basis, collecting and analyzing data, finding, presenting, and helping with the implementation of the
solution to the client’s inventory problems. It is obvious that their outstanding academic credentials and
technical skills were a great asset for the team, and given the right guidance from the senior managers they
were capable of tackling the problem at hand.
However, this did not happen. David Hendry was only nominally involved with the project and provided a
very high-level oversight for the engagement. Due to his other very demanding responsibilities as a partner
at Deloitte he was not physically present at the engagement, except for the milestone meetings with the
client.
Annette Wattley-Davis was the one to lead the team on the ground. Unfortunately, she was not able to
solely focus on the project and managing the team because of her finishing another project across the
country, which left her with only two-three days a week available on the SKS engagement. Her double focus
effectively prevented her from being closely involved in monitoring the project progress and the work
performed by the team. Given the constraints on the team leaders mentioned here, the leads for the
engagement were not able to provide guidance, constructive evaluation, and timely feedback to the group
members.
From these observations it appears that the engagement team’s efforts were seriously undermined by two
major factors:
• Leadership vacuum
• Communication breakdown
To avoid this type of situation in the future, it is highly advisable that the senior manager who is selected
for the project, would be able to be more directly involved in the engagement. If this were the case in this
engagement, then the manager could have kept track of the team efforts and direction. Overall, the leaders
of the engagement reduced their participation to reactive mode instead of embracing on the leadership
role.
To be fair, Maria made a few mistakes of her own:
• Failed to initially establish rapport with the SKS stakeholders and include the client’s team in the process
• Did not maintain ongoing communication with the client’s team, Deloitte peers and managers
• Focused on technical analysis without getting first-hand information from the people and actual processes
• Got caught up into developing a spreadsheet model based on inaccurate premises instead of focusing on
the final objective of the engagement
• Did not work closely with Rohan’s team even though their pieces of the project were very closely
connected
Because of these mistakes three weeks of Maria’s time were virtually lost, as she spent all that time on the
model that was eventually thrown out. Had she had more guidance from the manager, she could have gotten
corrected earlier on and would have had a chance to redirect her efforts. Also an involved manager could
have gone over the presentation with the team members before the meeting at a three weeks mark, to
validate the team’s findings and at least to remove the most embarrassing parts that did not make sense.
Under the circumstances the Deloitte team should try to do damage control at the upcoming steering
committee meeting:
• Managers of the consulting team should take responsibility for the engagement progress being slower than
originally anticipated
• Acknowledge that original hypothesis (model presented by Maria) was flawed and focus more on the
progress made by the team, including Maria, in the last three weeks
• Emphasize the progress made and results obtained from the Rohan’s team
• Present clear objectives and milestones in the remaining six weeks of the engagement, as well as the
means of reaching them
•
The lessons for Deloitte from this engagement:
• Pay more attention to the group make up
• Realistically evaluate the ongoing commitments of the team members, especially the teams leaders
• Emphasize with their senior level employees (partners and mangers) the need for giving timely
constructive feedback and guidance to their team members.
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