Reference no: EM133035874

Case Study.

Something's sour in the Gin 

Gin in a Box is a relatively new business started 5 years ago. Jorge, the owner's vision was to develop and supply convenient, high-quality, original, health-centric alcohol products to the market. He utilised the trend towards vegetable juices and the popularity of gin as an opportunity. The product range has grown so extensively that it produces 4 kinds of gin and juice mixtures, namely, beetroot, carrot, tomato and cucumber. He also began to manufacture and market more ordinary gin and juice mixtures. 

Gin in a Box uses their own vehicles to deliver the packaged products to a number of central distribution warehouses of 2 large supermarket groups. The supermarkets use their own fleet to transport them to their own retail stores.

 Sales were good until more complaints were received that the cartons leaked and the gin and juice mixtures were brought back by customers because they could not be used. Furthermore, it was discovered that packaging was being mishandled, incorrectly stored and sometimes the wrong orders were delivered and products were put into incorrect packaging. Incorrect orders were made to their suppliers, leading to quality inconsistencies. Some consumers have complained about a horrible sour taste and smell when consuming some the business' products. It seems that some products have gone off before their expiry date. Additionally, the business is still trying to recover from losses during the alcohol prohibition of the national lockdown. 

The human resource manager is under a substantial amount of stress, as it was found that one of the drivers who had been with the business from the beginning lied about their credentials and has been operating with an expired drivers licence. There is high employee absenteeism and many factory workers perpetually show up to work late and are reportedly seeking work from other alcohol product manufacturers. Gin in a Box's trucks also seem to be unreliable as they have been breaking down more often recently. This is partly due to their maintenance being on a backlog for about a year now. Lastly, one of the newer drivers has consistently been late with deliveries on Mondays

Question 1

1.1 From the scenario above, list the problems

1.2 Determine the hits & hotspot from the list of problems.

1.3 Apply the evaluation criteria to identify the most important problem. 

1.4 Compose a tentative problem statement. 

Question 2

After composing a problem statement you move to fact finding and problem finding (step 2 and 3). Since there is no need for more information, one can move on to determining the root/cause of the problem.

2.1 Apply the 5W's technique to determine the root problem. 

2.2 Compose a new problem statement.

Question 3

Use SCAM3PER2 to generate at least five ideas to solve the core problem identified in Question 2.

Question 4

Use the PPCo technique to evaluate the 3 best ideas generated in Question 3