| Course | GM504 Organizational Excellence and Change |
|---|---|
| Unit | Unit 9 |
| Paper type | Sustainment plan |
| Length | About 1,040 words, 6 pages double-spaced |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Purdue University Global |
| Program | MS in Management |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for GM504 Unit 9
Who Carries the Gain on Monday: A Unit 9 Sustainment Plan for Scan-Confirmed Picking
[Student Name]
Purdue University Global
GM504: Organizational Excellence and Change
Unit 9 Sustainment Plan
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
Ridgeway Building Supply, its staff and every figure are composite and illustrative; the methods and studies cited are real.
Why a Sustainment Plan
The staging-lane check in Unit 1 and the 5S event examined in Unit 6 both faded once the people driving them moved on. Research on improvement sustainability points to the same cause: gains decay when nobody owns the follow-up and nobody reviews it (Bateman, 2005). This plan exists so that scan-confirmed picking does not repeat that pattern.
Where the Process Stands
The pilot ran for six weeks in the main yard and was extended to all four branches over the following eight weeks. In the eight weeks since full rollout, wrong-item corrections have averaged about 18 a month, down from 52, and short-quantity corrections about 29, down from 41. Bin-location accuracy in the weekly fifty-bin sample has averaged 97 percent, up from 84.5. The overall correction rate has been running at about 3.7 percent.
The Control Plan
A control plan lists each thing that must stay true for the gain to hold, with its measure, owner, review frequency, method, threshold and the reaction when the threshold is crossed. Four rows make up Ridgeway's plan.
Row 1: correction rate. The measure is the share of delivery orders needing a redelivery or credit memo within ten days, as defined in Unit 5. The owner is the yard operations manager. It is reviewed every Monday at the operations meeting from the billing clerks' coded reports, displayed as a proportion control chart. The threshold is any single week above 5.0 percent, or two consecutive weeks above 4.5 percent. The reaction is that the owner pulls that week's corrections, sorts them by reason and branch, and reports the cause at the next Monday meeting.
Row 2: bin-location accuracy. The measure is the share of fifty randomly sampled bins whose contents match the system. The owner is the inventory control lead. It is reviewed weekly from her audit sheet. The threshold is any week below 95 percent. The reaction is a full recount of the aisle where mismatches cluster and a check of whether receiving crews recorded their moves.
Row 3: scan compliance. The measure is the share of pick lines confirmed by scan rather than overridden with the yard lead's code. The owner is the yard lead at each branch. It is reviewed daily from the system's override log, and weekly by the yard operations manager. The threshold is overrides above 3 percent of pick lines in any week. The reaction is a review of each override's reason and retraining or barcode correction where needed.
Row 4: item master for new products. The measure is whether each new item has a verified unit of measure and barcode before it is activated. The owner is the inventory clerk. It is checked for every new item before activation. The threshold is any new item activated without verification. The reaction is that the item is deactivated until verified.
Each row names one person who looks at one number on a fixed day and knows exactly what to do when it moves, so the gain does not depend on anyone remembering to care.
Why These Thresholds
The thresholds for the correction rate are set from the control chart but deliberately tighter than its limits. With the new process running at about 3.7 percent and about 600 orders a week, the chart's upper control limit sits near 6.0 percent, three standard errors above the mean (Montgomery, 2020). Waiting for a point beyond that limit would mean the old process had nearly returned before anyone acted. A single week above 5.0 percent, or two consecutive weeks above 4.5 percent, is an early warning: not proof that the process has changed, but a reason to look before it does. The 95 percent threshold for bin accuracy is the level the pilot reached in its first month, below which wrong-item corrections began to rise in the pilot data.
Standard Work
Written standard work for picking and moving stock describes the process as the pilot crews actually worked it, not as the vendor's manual describes it. It covers how to scan a move into overflow when the target bin has no barcode, what to do when the scanner rejects an item that looks correct and when to call the yard lead for an override. Each step was reviewed by two pickers from the pilot before it was finalized.
Onboarding New Pickers
Because yard turnover runs about 35 percent a year, new pickers arrive constantly. Each new picker will spend the first two shifts paired with an experienced picker, practicing directed moves and pick confirmation, and will be signed off by the yard lead before picking alone.
Ownership Transfer
Ownership passes from the project lead to the yard operations manager on the first Monday of next month, at a meeting where the project lead walks through each row of the control plan. The inventory control lead takes ownership of bin accuracy at the same meeting. The owner's manager, the director of operations, will attend the Monday review once a month for the first six months, which signals that the measures matter.
The Annual Review
One year after handover, the director of operations will review the plan itself: whether the thresholds still make sense, whether any row can be dropped because the process has proved stable, and whether new risks, such as a change of inventory system, need a row. Improvement that is never reviewed tends to erode as attention moves to the next urgent problem (Repenning & Sterman, 2001).
Conclusion
The gain from scan-confirmed picking is real: wrong-item corrections are down by about two thirds. This plan assigns each measure to the person who owns the process it tracks, sets thresholds from the control chart and the pilot data, and defines what happens when a threshold is crossed. Standard work, onboarding and a scheduled review of the plan itself give the gain a better chance than the improvements that came before it.
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. (2020). Introduction to statistical quality control (8th ed.). Wiley.
Repenning, N. P., & Sterman, J. D. (2001). Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened: Creating and sustaining process improvement. California Management Review, 43(4), 64-88. https://doi.org/10.2307/41166101
GM504 Unit 9 instructions, in plain terms
GM504's ninth unit asks for a plan that keeps an improvement in place after the project ends. Explain why sustainment needs its own plan, ideally with evidence from earlier gains that faded. Report where the process stands now. Build a control plan with one row for each thing that must stay true, giving its measure, owner, review frequency, method, threshold and the reaction when the threshold is crossed. Explain how the thresholds were chosen from the process's own data. Add standard work written from how the work is actually done, onboarding for new staff and a clear handover of ownership, including who above the owner will attend reviews. Schedule a review of the plan itself. Close with a conclusion that names the gain and the arrangements protecting it. Expect about four pages centered on the control plan table, citing research on sustaining improvement and a statistical quality control source in APA 7.
How this GM504 Unit 9 example is built
The plan opens by recalling the staging check and the 5S event, citing Bateman on why gains decay. A status section reports wrong items at about 18 a month, short quantities at 29, bin accuracy at 97 percent and an overall rate near 3.7 percent. Four control plan rows follow: the correction rate owned by the yard operations manager with a Monday chart review, bin accuracy owned by the inventory control lead, scan compliance owned by each yard lead through the override log and new-item verification owned by the inventory clerk. The highlighted sentence explains the design principle. A thresholds section sets early warnings inside the 6.0 percent control limit, citing Montgomery. Standard work reviewed by pilot pickers, two shifts of paired onboarding and a handover meeting with the director of operations attending monthly follow. A one-year review of the plan, citing Repenning and Sterman, closes it.
GM504 Unit 9 rubric: what earns full points
The rubric for this GM504 plan rewards specificity of ownership and response. Instructors check that each control plan row has one owner, a review frequency, a method, a numeric threshold and a reaction that tells the owner what to do. Thresholds should be derived from the process's data, and explaining why they sit inside the control limits shows statistical understanding. Standard work earns credit when it reflects actual practice rather than a vendor manual. Onboarding matters in a workforce with high turnover. A handover with a manager attending reviews signals that the measures matter. Scheduling a review of the plan itself shows awareness that sustainment arrangements can decay. The design choices rest on three APA 7 sources: Bateman on why gains decay, Montgomery on control limits and the 2001 Repenning and Sterman study of eroding improvement.
GM504 Unit 9 help from the desk
GM504 Unit 9 plans often list measures to watch without naming who watches them or what happens when a number moves. That turns the plan into a hope. Others set thresholds as round targets with no connection to the process's variation. Plans also tend to omit the reaction: knowing a threshold was crossed is useless if no one knows what to do next. Some plans forget new employees, though turnover can undo standard work quickly. Many end at handover, with no review of whether the plan itself still works. Explain why the gain needs protecting, report its current level, give each critical measure one owner and a numeric trigger set from data, state the reaction, write standard work from real practice, plan onboarding and handover and set a date to check whether the plan still fits.
Get a GM504 Unit 9 example written to your instructions
Describe the improvement that needs holding, who could realistically own it once the project ends, and what data already gets reviewed where you work. Attach the Unit 9 prompt and rubric as well. The first sustainment plan is free, arrives in 24-48h, and names an owner, a threshold and a reaction for each measure. The paper above is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Purdue University Global document.
More GM504 papers and MS in Management samples
- GM504 Unit 1: Faded Improvement Discussion Post
- GM504 Unit 2: Baldrige Fit for a Distributor Analysis
- GM504 Unit 3: Delivery Order Process Map
- GM504 Unit 4: Wrong-Item Delivery Root Cause Analysis
- GM504 Unit 5: Delivery Correction Measurement Plan
- GM504 Unit 6: 5S Decay Seminar Reflection
- GM504 Unit 7: Scan-Confirmed Picking Proposal
- GM504 Unit 8: Scanning Cost and Benefit Analysis
- GM504 Unit 10: Excellence Project Report
- GM503 Unit 9: Translation Agency Trust Analysis
- GM502 Unit 9: Theater Production Manager Power Paper
- GM501 Unit 9: Producer Hiring Recommendation
- GM500 Unit 9: Six-Box Diagnosis of Crew Turnover
GM504 Unit 9 questions, answered
What is a control plan?
A table, common in Six Sigma work, listing each measure that must be maintained after an improvement, with its owner, method, frequency, limits and the response when a limit is breached. It turns sustainment from an intention into a set of assigned tasks. Some instructors accept a simpler owner-and-review table instead; the example uses the fuller version.
Where can I find a free GM504 Unit 9 sample paper?
This page carries a full GM504 Unit 9 sustainment plan for scan-confirmed picking, with a four-row control plan, owners, thresholds and reactions, standard work, onboarding and APA 7 references.
Why set thresholds inside the control limits?
The correction rate's upper control limit sits near 6.0 percent. Waiting for a point beyond it would mean the old process had nearly returned, so the plan treats one week above 5.0 percent, or two above 4.5, as an early warning that triggers a review.
Who owns each measure after handover?
The yard operations manager owns the correction rate, the inventory control lead owns bin accuracy, each branch's yard lead owns scan compliance and the inventory clerk owns verification of new items before they are activated.
How does the plan handle new pickers?
Each new picker spends the first two shifts paired with an experienced picker, practicing directed moves and pick confirmation, and is signed off by the yard lead before picking alone. Yard turnover of about 35 percent a year makes this step essential.