Mead Johnson: A Case Study of the Four Frames Solution
Mead Johnson, a manufacturing and marketing company on the frontier of pediatric nutritional products, was on the verge of disaster in their first attempt to retire an old and costly ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system to a revamped more cost-efficient one, entailing the transfer and conversion of IT sales and marketing data to new software and hardware platforms. Their critical system, manufacturing, was down during the system change—a disaster as they could not make products nor have an online presence for customer service and ordering. Mead Johnson finally employed qualified project managers to remedy the initial disastrous IT conversion attempt.

The introduction or accommodation for ever changing IT systems in an organization requires the strategic acumen of project managers, project managers who would have to implement a holistic systems model for carrying out the daunting task in order to streamline operations and mitigate organizational crisis. The holistic model in question consists of four frames that, as Bolman and Deal, in their Book “Reframing Organizations” claim, are necessary in “…help[ing] those to better understand and approach issues about organizational diagnosis, development and change” (2003). Project Management is a broad field that can be universally defined as the application of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to activities of a project for the achievement of the project objectives/requirements. Skilled project managers would ensure that the project’s outcome has an ensured deadline, has used the appropriate resources, and has a scrupulously projected quality level. In this paper I would propose that the implementation of the four frames model would fulfill this trifecta for project management, furthering and foster the growth, productivity and profitability of an