Speed Queen's senior executive team asked Sullivan Walsh Associates to help implement flexible manufacturing in Speed Queen's production facility in Ripon, Wisconsin. The Ripon plant manufactured commercial wash machines under the Speed Queen name and home wash machines under the Amana name. The pay system stood as a major obstacle to change, so we developed an entirely new compensation structure that would support cellular manufacturing. After intense debate, the United Steelworkers ratified the compensation and deployment changes that stimulated the plant to improve manufacturing processes dramatically. The dollar value of improvements made in the Ripon facility totaled over $20 million, and the plant went from one of Raytheon's least productive to its most productive in one year.