Reference no: EM132878886

You have just been hired as the director of process improvement, a new position, by the VP of Operations for the ABC Manufacturing Company. ABC has been plagued by both internal and external vendor issues; the vendor issues involved repeated late deliveries and poor quality, while internally poor deliveries to customers resulted from both vendor issues, as well as quality and scheduling issues. The CEO's instinct is that the factory could benefit from some wide-reaching process improvements.

The VP of Operations has decided that a far greater focus on vendor quality and internal process improvements must be taken. The VP of Procurement, prior to your coming on board, had already met with the CEO's of ABC's 4 major vendors and alerted them that he expected them to begin turning around their quality performance. About a month prior, he had sent each a letter suggesting several formal overall quality programs that they may embark upon, which included the following:

· TQM

· Juran's Trilogy

· Crosby's program

· Deming's program

· Six Sigma

Before you begin to put together a vendor visitation schedule, your boss, the VP of Procurement, advised you that the CEO expects a comprehensive report, in about a month, covering the following specific topics:

· The key characteristics and requirements and the pros and cons of each of the following overarching quality programs should be put into a chart format. The chart should have columns for an overall 1-sentence description of each program, its pros, and its cons.

o TQM

o Juran's Trilogy

o Deming

o Crosby

o Six Sigma

1. Provide your view on how a formal process improvement program could help at both vendor locations and inside ABC's own factory.

2. Specifically, in the areas of vendor quality and delivery performance, what are the benefits of creating a vendor certification program, and what does it involve?

3. Specifically, in the area of ABC's own internal workings, what opportunities for continuous improvement exist, and what exactly would you do?

4. How do you get ABC itself to adopt a more continuous improvement mentality?