Fluent Essays

Peer Responses It is important to become comfortable receiving and giving constructive criticisms, since this is an important component in one’s professional growth and development and a core competency for leaders. Students will be expected to read the initial posting of at least TWO peers, and then provide thoughtful comments addressing the following: Point out what you perceived to be the strengths of the initial posting along with supporting rationale. Identify specific opportunities for improvement with regard to the content in the initial posting. Furthermore, you should provide supporting rationale for your stated position, as well as concrete suggestions and guidance intended to strengthen the effectiveness of the content. Peer responses should be typed directly into the discussion thread and not attached to a posting. For these responses, should outside sources be used to support the content within the postings, proper in-text citations and correctly formatted references should be prepared consistent with the APA. The list of references should be physically positioned at the end of the postings. 1 2 Unit 6: Discussion Katelyn Franklin Park University MBA576: Operations Management Dr. Kevin Loy September 21, 2021 Abstract Businesses face a range of challenges throughout operations and management of processes in production. Quality of product is a crucial factor in the production business that impacts customer satisfaction, reputation, creditability, costs, and more. Quality issues must be taken seriously and addressed purposefully. With process improvement, data collection, inspections, and root cause identification and analysis, quality issues can be overcome and prevented in the future. Keywords: quality, improvement, inspections, point of measure, quality control, root cause analysis Quality Improvement With the current month’s quality issues resulting in customer dissatisfaction, Kibby and Strand must act in response with identification of quality issues and an improvement plan. The quality of Kibby and Strand products and customer satisfaction is at the heart of the company. These complaints must be addressed with thorough identification of issues as well as an impactful quality improvement measures based on those issues (Stevenson, 2020). Without action, Kibby and Strand risks not only the reputation within the industry market, but also the values and pride the business holds in true quality products that supersedes customer expectations. The quality improvement plan consists of five steps that impacted the creation of the plan to include: setting goals, the collection and analyzation of data, the origination of quality issues, goal targets, and counter measures (Anjoran, 2020). The main goal set to this improvement plan is the reduction of poor-quality materials received from suppliers and poor-quality product sent out to customers. With this goal, the company will also reduce costs, duplicate work, and duplicate labor efforts towards that work (Anjoran, 2020). The data collection will consist of reports from the receiving manager regarding the percentage of defective materials received from suppliers with detail of supplier name, type of material, and lead time. Additionally, the production manager will be responsible to implement a quality check process of finish products before packaging. This new process will track and produce data with a percentage of defective finished products with details regarding what product, where in the production process caused the poor-quality, and impact to overall contract processing time (Anjoran, 2020). With the data, Kibby and Stand leadership will be able to identify the main issues the company is having regarding the quality issues. This allows for a pinpoint strategy to hone in on and give the attention it needs. From this point, the company can make decisions based on supplier, specific materials causing issues, machinery, employees and needs for additional training, etc. Furthermore, with this plan, Kibby and Strand can set target goals to improve quality of products with the knowledge of the key problem areas and implementing improvement plans within the team (Anjoran, 2020). Quality Inspections Specifically to quality control, quality will be measured within a range of tolerances, impacting both receiving and production departments. With the complaints from our customer base regarding incorrect sizing, Kibby and Strand must implement guidelines to each type of garment or material for a type of product with point of measurement consistent with sizing guide provided to customers (Burkhart, 2019). The point of measure will have measurement range that is acceptable with specificity to each type of material and product (Burkhart, 2019). This allows the customer to trust the Kibby and Strand sizing guide and receive the same quality of product as promised. As previously mentioned, the production manager is to implement a quality control process before sending product to the shipping department. This process should include a series of tests to prove the ultimate quality of the finished product (Burkhart, 2019). The fitting test will consist of mannequin modeling for the respective size being tested. The seam strength test will inspect the strength and durability of the product seam to ensure there is no breakage or weak points. The fatigue test applies to products with buckles, zippers, fastener, etc. With a test of 50 cycles of opening and closing the fastener, there should not be a change in functionality or durability of the fastener. The stretch test will inspect the straps or elasticity of the applicable garment manually to ensure the durability does not wear (Burkhart, 2019). With this quality control process implemented, Kibby and Strand will tackle the quality concerns that it is currently experiencing. This will reduce costs, duplicate work, and improve overall customer satisfaction. This plan must be carried out with attention to detail and precision. If the production manager sees fit, leadership will support the recruitment of additional staff in order to meet these crucial quality improvement goals. Root Cause Analysis With the quality issues at hand, it is essential for the best success to identify the root causes of the quality issues. With the knowledge of the root cause, the best decision making can be made to tackle the problem at hand. A root cause analysis (RCA) can be conducted to discover the problem or problems, develop in detail how to fix the problem, and apply what is learned to reduce the potential of similar issues going forward (“Root cause”, n.d.). Kibby and Strand will adopt the 5 Whys Approach as it will utilize the data of defective materials and products to answer the “hows” and “whys” to each issue reported. The answers should begin to reveal root causes either pointed back to a certain supplier, machine malfunction, employee performance, etc. (“Root cause”, n.d.). Throughout the life of the data collection, the root cause analysis will clarify information and reveal additional trends which will be considered in the adaptive plan (Root cause”, n.d.). References Anjoran, R. (2020, August 12). Setting up a step-by-step process improvement plan in your factory. China Manufacturing Consultants. Retrieved September 21, 2021, from https://www.cmc-consultants.com/blog/setting-up-a-step-by-step-process-improvement-plan-in-your-factory. Burkhart, M. (2019, April 16). 3 ways to manage garment quality control. QC in China. Retrieved September 21, 2021, from https://www.intouch-quality.com/blog/3-key-areas-of-quality-control-for-garments. Root cause analysis explained: Definition, examples, and methods. Tableau. (n.d.). Retrieved September 21, 2021, from https://www.tableau.com/learn/articles/root-cause-analysis. Stevenson, W. J. (2020). Operations management (14th ed.). McGraw-Hill Education. 6 Week 6 Discussion Andrew Head MBA576 Operations Management Dr. Kevin J. Loy Park University 1 9/22/2021 Abstract This discussion creates the overall Quality Improvement Plan and RCA plans using research and knowledge learned in the scenario Week 6 Discussion The issue plaguing Kibby and Strand when it comes to quality will have a profound impact on the reputation of the company. Taking a proactive approach to fixing and ensuring quality doesn’t lack in the deliverables will go a long way in being successful in the industry. Stevenson (2021) discusses TQM, total quality management, which refers to a quest for quality within an organization. The three philosophies in this approach are: continuous improvement, involvement of everyone, and customer satisfaction (Stevenson, 2021). The overall Quality Improvement Plan includes correcting the issues of some shirts labeled with incorrect sizes and girl’s shorts having weak stitching that did not meet specifications. In order to determine how many shirts were mislabeled, Kibby and Strand is going to utilize a check sheet. This check sheet will enable us to record and organize data collected about shirts that are mislabeled. Defect Size & Label Incorrect Daily Total Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday This chart will be used to track which day the majority of the mislabeled are occurring and then can be tracked down into which portion of the process is producing the issue. Corrections can be made to the area when the problem is determined. We also have the issue of stitching in the girls shorts not being up to specifications. This requires a slightly different approach to converting qualitative data to quantitative data but I believe the best way to do this is a control chart. Since control charts are used to monitor a process to see if output is random and can detect the presence of correctable causes of variation (Stevenson, 2021). The utilization of this chart will allow the sewing department to gauge where the less effective stitching occurs in the process. We know that the quality problem does exists across all products in the sewing machine and therefore we should be able to detect a correctable variation. The previously described methods of determining a problem fall under the root cause analysis plan. Both charting implementations are designed to assist in discovering where the problem in production is occurring. These method introduced into the system should provide insight into what solution would resolve the root cause of the problem. Determining a mislabeled size shirt can be done during inspection of the final product, as as described in Burkhart (2019). In that example, the inspector fits the shirt on to a mannequin to make sure the fit is correct. Burkhart (2019) also discussed the seam strength test, which involves stretching the seams and observing for any cracking of the stitches. A second useful tool we can implement to determine stitching quality issues is the stitches per inch check. Burkhart (2019) outlines that the more stitches per inch in a seam, the stronger and more dense that garment will be. This test, can result in a direct change to the sewing process and has the possibility of eliminating the quality issues of stitches. Stitches Issues in Girls Shorts Root Cause Action Measurement Inadequate number of stitches per inch Increase the number of stitches per inch while garments are in the sewing phase of production Check the stitching quality via stitch per inch check. Mislabeled shirts and short sizes Root Cause Action Measurement Poor organization within the sewing department. Workers are applying the incorrect label to the shirt and short size Reorganization of the sewing department to ensure that sizing and labels are in a more efficient area to be sewn into the garment. Visually checking the shirt for obvious misinformation. Also, checking the fitting of the shirt on a mannequin. 2 References Burkhart, M. (2019). 3 WAYS TO MANAGE GARMENT QUALITY CONTROL. Manufacturing and QC Blog. Retrieved from https://www.intouch-quality.com/blog/3-key-areas-of-quality-control-for-garments Stevenson, W. J. (2021). Operations management. McGraw-Hill Education.