Philosophy and Skills of Leadership.

CLASSMATE #1: John William Crescenzo Response

Our customers have every right to be concerned that our supply of products will not meet the specifications of their demand for widgets. However, we can utilize some statistical analysis to present that we will continue to be able to create a product that will routinely avoid defects for a number of years. Assuming that our standard deviation and mean remain the same across the board, the next several years look pretty positive. We can see the current year plus a number, upper and lower specification limits that are tightening across the years, the process capability index, defect percentage, and parts per million of defects.

Depending on what type of capability index we’re looking for will depend on when we could consider ourselves in danger of not meeting specifications. In the current year plus 13, we hit a process capability index of 2, indicative of a six-sigma standard deviation. Most process management strategists recommend maintaining ourselves greater than two for reducing defects within the process (Cachon & Terwiesch, 2017). However, we need to aim at a process capability index of greater than 1.33 which occurs in the current year plus 24.

The next step here would be to find ways to improve our process such that we can continue to meet the needs of continually tightening tolerances. However, we have over a decade to find ways to improve the process using the statistical process control framework. This involves performing a capability and conformity analysis, investigating for assignable causes, and eliminating those causes (Cachon & Terwiesch, 2017). There is a very good chance that we will be able to reduce our defect probability given this process.

Assuming our math is correct and that our standard deviation and mean will remain the same, we have several years to address our customer’s concerns. Given that we have so many years to fix a future problem, there is no need to inform the customers that we will eventually not be able to meet their needs with the current forecast. Even if we told them within 10 years, we would not be able to meet their needs, it is likely they would start to shop around and leave our business for better future prospects and longevity.

References

Cachon, G., & Terwiesch, C. (2017). Operations Management (1st ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

 

Classmate #2: ROBERT FARRELL

Defect probabilities in process flow & resources…

What year (use “Current Year + number) will your widget machine no longer be able to meet specifications? Explain how you determined this and Include a graph showing the distribution and tolerance information.

Past year +30 the process capability index, C_p is below 1.

For example, see table 9.1 for Xootr production. The further the C_p is from the target C_p, which C_p= 1 is a three-sigma deviation, and C_p= 2 is a six-sigma deviation (Cachon & Terwiesch, 2017). The further the C_p is from the target C_p, the greater the defect probability, and the defects per million produced, or PPM (Cachon & Terwiesch, 2017). Our wigets exceed C_p = 1 at 30+ years.

 

What is your next steps? Explain your reasoning.

Our next steps are to plan for, really, year thirteen, where our standard deviation from the mean is outside of six-sigma. After year thirteen our C_p drops below two. We have thirteen years for our engineers to determine how we can improve the predicted standard deviation degradation at year +14, of C_p=1.9492, back to C_p=2 (Cachon & Terwiesch, 2017).

There are several resource steps in the process flow of making our wigets. Any probability of defects in each resource adds to the overall probability of a defect at the output of the process (Cachon & Terwiesch, 2017). Reducing, and maintaining, each resource standard deviation at twelve-sigma wide, or six-sigma, provides us a probability of only two defects per resource, per billion units (Cachon & Terwiesch, 2017). We can ensure great quality to our customers, and a significantly reduce number of reworks, or returned products for rework, by maintaining a six-sigma standard.

Will you inform your customers that you will not be able to meet their demand in Current Year + number? Why or why not?

I do not see any reason to inform our customers that there is a potential for not meeting their demand in year 31 as we are going to focus on maintaining a C_p = 2, and we will plan for that now. As we have thirteen years to work a solution for the drop below C_p = 2, I believe we will not have issues meeting demand through the future.

Robert

Cachon, G., & Terwiesch, C. (2017). Operations Management. New York: McGraw-Hill education.

References

Cachon, G., & Terwiesch, C. (2017). Operations management (1st ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.