Let me see - this is a success because its a company GE didn't want in its portfolio but couldn't sell so being smart enough not to invest their own money, grabbed some government handouts, beat the workers back to 1980's pay scale, threw some people in a room and declared victory? No doubt appliance sales must have improved recently or you would not have been granted access to do this story. Probably improving with the improved economy that Jack was refuting right before the election.

Back to red flags - How about the CEO quote that IT can't be what holds this project back. Are you kidding me? This is a business that was held up as a raging success 15 years ago for having figured out how to successfully offshore IT and lower costs. Now we hear that We didn't really invest in IT for 20 years. That will get you savings every time.

I wonder how much easier this upgrade would have been with local IT folks that had 15 years worth of experience maintaining these systems and investing in their manufacturing IT skills? And when I say "local IT folks" I'm not talking about managers. Would love to know how much was paid to offshore resources during this time.

Also wondering what's become of all the other save-the-day business/IT innovations now that we've moved on to Agile? No mention of (in addition to Outsourcing, which failed here) Six Sigma, DFSS, DMAIC, Work Out, CAP, Work Life Balance...