Hank Kolb Case
GENERAL INFORMATION AND MAJOR PROBLEMS The company Hank Kolb works in is a big plant with 1200 people working in it. Greasex, which is a specialized degreasing solvent packed in a spray can, is one of the major products of this company. Hank Kolb was hired as a director of quality assurance. A problem occurred with the new filling equipment in the previous week and some of the cans were pressurized beyond the upper specification limit. If we analyze the main problems in the plant, the fundamental problem is management. There is a lack of cooperation between departments and the management seems to be insufficient to satisfy integration of these departments. There are also some serious problems in the production, design and inspection of the Greasex. Below is the list of these problems in detail:
1. The plant has a poor quality attitude. Quality department isn’t taken seriously by production people. We can understand this from the behavior of the foreman. Wayne Simmons vented the products without even consulting any inspector or employee of the quality department.
2. Operators for the filling equipment are not trained enough to run the equipment. As it is mentioned in the text, operators were transferred from a different department only two weeks ago without any experience.
3. Filling equipment was not designed for the production of Greasex. Therefore the machines are needed to be adjusted and repaired to fit the manufacturing. With respect to this requirement, twelve work orders were placed in the last six months.
4. The plastic nozzle heads purchased from out sources do not fit to Greasex cans and this problem is not properly fixed. They force the heads to fit the cans.
5. The design of the cans have been changed due to market research without any further testing. But this design may cause some problems on filling speed or hydrodynamics.
6. Due to the high pressure in defective cans, venting holes on the cans was
1. The plant has a poor quality attitude. Quality department isn’t taken seriously by production people. We can understand this from the behavior of the foreman. Wayne Simmons vented the products without even consulting any inspector or employee of the quality department.
2. Operators for the filling equipment are not trained enough to run the equipment. As it is mentioned in the text, operators were transferred from a different department only two weeks ago without any experience.
3. Filling equipment was not designed for the production of Greasex. Therefore the machines are needed to be adjusted and repaired to fit the manufacturing. With respect to this requirement, twelve work orders were placed in the last six months.
4. The plastic nozzle heads purchased from out sources do not fit to Greasex cans and this problem is not properly fixed. They force the heads to fit the cans.
5. The design of the cans have been changed due to market research without any further testing. But this design may cause some problems on filling speed or hydrodynamics.
6. Due to the high pressure in defective cans, venting holes on the cans was