Reference no: EM133677150
Case: Chocollor Chocolates manufactures chocolate candy. Their main production line is fully automated, requiring little human intervention. Tasty Morsels uses charts to track production amounts, scrap rates, production times, order quantities, and delays in shipment. Every six weeks, these charts are collected and discussed by management. Every six weeks, these charts are collected and discussed by management. No statistical analysis takes place. Despite their efforts, they have production cost overruns. Cost overruns can be caused by excessive scrap rates, rework amounts, inspection costs, and overtime.
Two areas stand out as having problems. The first occurs following the cooling chamber. Chocolate is mixed until it reaches the right consistency, then it is poured into Mold trays. As the chocolates leave the cooling chamber, two workers reorganize the chocolate Mold trays on the conveyor belt. This non-value-added, inspection-type activity essentially wastes the time of two workers. It also could result in damaged chocolates if the trays were to flip over or off the conveyor.
Chocollor Chocolates prides itself on their quality product. To maintain their high standards, before packaging, four workers inspect nearly every piece of chocolate as it emerges from the wrapping machine. A full 25 percent of the chocolate production is thrown out in a large garbage can. Though this type of inspection presents poorly wrapped chocolates from reaching the consumer, this is a very high internal failure cost of quality. So far, though these two problems are apparent to nearly everyone in the plant, no efforts have been made to improve the process.
This huge waste of material, human resources, and production time prompted the production engineer to ask: why are the chocolates being thrown away? The simple answer was that the chocolates didn't meet standards. The production engineer persevered and discovered that the rejected chocolates were improperly wrapped. Despite the large amount of chocolate being thrown away, no one had suggested that the wrapper machine should be repaired.
If the production engineer hadn't studied the process carefully using a process map, these two enormous sources of waste and the costs associated with poor quality would have gone unnoticed:
Appraisal Costs in-process inspection.
Internal Failure Costs scrap, rework, production cost overruns, overtime, inefficient and ineffective production, employee lost time, low employee morale.
External Failure Costs customer warranty and order issues, late order fees, returned goods, replacement goods, corrective action costs.
Intangible Costs customer dissatisfaction, lost sales, offsetting customer dissatisfaction.
Up until this study, Chocollor considered these costs part of doing business. Based on the production engineer's discoveries, investigations were undertaken to correct the production flow through the cooling chamber. Adjustments were also made to the wrapping machine to correct a fixture misalignment. By taking steps to prevent poor quality, these modifications resulted in a workforce savings of five people, who were transferred to other areas of the plant. Rejected chocolates went from 25 percent to 0.05 percent! The savings that resulted from the changes paid for the modifications 10 times over.
Task
A). For the Chocollor case, identify as many different types of quality costs as you can. Categorize your costs of quality according to the five categories.
B). Name three of the important people (quality gurus) associated with the quality revolution. In each case write about each one summarizing their primary contribution to the field of quality management.
C). Construct a cause-and-effect diagram showing why the audience might be dissatisfied with a cinema.