Text Book Purchasing: Supply Chain Management
BUS-230-W01
Joseph Marshone
Phillip Lemmon
Case Study
Avion, Inc.
9/28/14
In Case 1 (Avion, Inc.) of the text book Purchasing Supply Chain Management, procurement managers Susan Dey and Bill Mifflin are having a meeting about struggles of a supplier they are using for a certain material required to make their product. In this meeting they start by discussing how they are in a large surprise that this Foster Technologies, the supplier, is not meeting the quality and on time delivery they had set forth to get. Initially they discuss if the supplier had shown enough promise at their facility in order to meet these standards. Bill Mifflin then pushed the fact that Foster had shown great promise and had very impressive flow processes and innovation. However, later Kevin O’Donnell, another procurement manager, enters the conversation and discusses points that lead to the real issue at hand. The agreed upon lead time and production rates were not the same as what was being demanded. The production had increased almost double and the lead time was cut down from two weeks to 10 days. The next question that rose was did Foster communicate the issues that they could not keep up with production? The answer was that they had multiple records of trying to communicate and were not able to get these communications through. The conclusion of the discussion was that the problems with Foster were internal issues and not with the suppliers production side. Also, they concluded that they needed to come up with a solution quickly.
First, let’s discuss the root cause of the problem Avion, Inc. is having with Foster Technologies. What does it mean to get to the root cause of a problem? Getting to the root cause of a problem means finding the initial cause of a disruption in a causal chain. This chain is a difficult thing to do at times because there may be many causes of disruption, but there is just one initial or first cause. This means in order to get to the “root” you
Joseph Marshone
Phillip Lemmon
Case Study
Avion, Inc.
9/28/14
In Case 1 (Avion, Inc.) of the text book Purchasing Supply Chain Management, procurement managers Susan Dey and Bill Mifflin are having a meeting about struggles of a supplier they are using for a certain material required to make their product. In this meeting they start by discussing how they are in a large surprise that this Foster Technologies, the supplier, is not meeting the quality and on time delivery they had set forth to get. Initially they discuss if the supplier had shown enough promise at their facility in order to meet these standards. Bill Mifflin then pushed the fact that Foster had shown great promise and had very impressive flow processes and innovation. However, later Kevin O’Donnell, another procurement manager, enters the conversation and discusses points that lead to the real issue at hand. The agreed upon lead time and production rates were not the same as what was being demanded. The production had increased almost double and the lead time was cut down from two weeks to 10 days. The next question that rose was did Foster communicate the issues that they could not keep up with production? The answer was that they had multiple records of trying to communicate and were not able to get these communications through. The conclusion of the discussion was that the problems with Foster were internal issues and not with the suppliers production side. Also, they concluded that they needed to come up with a solution quickly.
First, let’s discuss the root cause of the problem Avion, Inc. is having with Foster Technologies. What does it mean to get to the root cause of a problem? Getting to the root cause of a problem means finding the initial cause of a disruption in a causal chain. This chain is a difficult thing to do at times because there may be many causes of disruption, but there is just one initial or first cause. This means in order to get to the “root” you
Cited: isixsigma. n.d. 28 9 2014. http://www.isixsigma.com/tools-templates/cause-effect/determine-root-cause-5-whys/ Magloff, Lisa. Chron. n.d. 28 9 2014. http://smallbusiness.chron.com/roles-purchasing-department-2270.html