Hank Kolb – Director of Quality Assurance
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2. a) What general steps should Hank follow in setting up a continuous improvement program for the company?
Hank should first analysis the cost of quality since the high quality problems are made by lack of training, motivation, communication and testing. They can measure the appraisal costs, prevention costs, internal failure costs and external failure cost through the cost of quality measurement. After the measure of the cost, the Hank should follow “ plan, do, check and act” steps to make improvement to satisfy the six-sigma standards. To implement a six-sigma improvement program, the company should follow “ define, measure, analysis, improve and control”. Then, the hank needs to train and make the new policy for all the employees. To make a good communicate and motivated environment among current workers. Thereafter, the company needs to define the limit and the boundary for their equipment, and change to more efficient machines. The hank also needs to define a team leader. The leader should translate the needs from different customers to the requirements of the products. And then, the company can come up a new flow chart that better fit for their production process. Once all the processes have been defined, the Hank should set up a new measurement system. The new measurement system should identify the key process that affects most on the cost and the process that gets the most defective products. Then the company can analysis the cause of the defective products and try to decrease the rate of defective products. b) What problems will he have to overcome to make it work? One of the problems for the Hank is “ lack of quality attitude”. To avoid this problem, the company should take more time to redirect all the employees with a specific process definition.
2. a) What general steps should Hank follow in setting up a continuous improvement program for the company?
Hank should first analysis the cost of quality since the high quality problems are made by lack of training, motivation, communication and testing. They can measure the appraisal costs, prevention costs, internal failure costs and external failure cost through the cost of quality measurement. After the measure of the cost, the Hank should follow “ plan, do, check and act” steps to make improvement to satisfy the six-sigma standards. To implement a six-sigma improvement program, the company should follow “ define, measure, analysis, improve and control”. Then, the hank needs to train and make the new policy for all the employees. To make a good communicate and motivated environment among current workers. Thereafter, the company needs to define the limit and the boundary for their equipment, and change to more efficient machines. The hank also needs to define a team leader. The leader should translate the needs from different customers to the requirements of the products. And then, the company can come up a new flow chart that better fit for their production process. Once all the processes have been defined, the Hank should set up a new measurement system. The new measurement system should identify the key process that affects most on the cost and the process that gets the most defective products. Then the company can analysis the cause of the defective products and try to decrease the rate of defective products. b) What problems will he have to overcome to make it work? One of the problems for the Hank is “ lack of quality attitude”. To avoid this problem, the company should take more time to redirect all the employees with a specific process definition.