Hank Kolb Case - Operations Management

Hank should do the following: 1. Take one to two weeks to create a strategic quality initiative based on the Six Sigma methodology. Continue to probe the Greasex problem as one part of creating a plan. Do not treat the most recent Greasex problem as a stand-alone issue. View it as a broader, company wide quality issue. 2. Get upper level management to review the strategic quality initiative and get their input 3. Communicate the plan to the other members of the quality department and get their input 4. The entire quality department works on presenting the strategic quality initiative to the entire company 5. Undertake the solution to the Greasex problem as part of the larger strategic quality initiative by doing the following: a. Define the Greasex problem. i. Identifying the customer quality issues with Greasex. Understand what the customers want from the product and whether your company is giving the customers what they want. Hank’s team needs to talk to the customers. ii. Use the customer feedback to define the need for the Six Sigma quality initiative related to Greasex. iii. Use the customer feedback to create the customer non-negotiable quality characteristics of the Greasex product b. Observe and measure the Greasex production process iv. Determine the metrics for production performance v. Decide which parts of the production process have the greatest impact on the customer non-negotiable quality characteristics of the product vi. Measure the defects in the processes that are related to the customer non-negotiable quality characteristics of the Greasex product. c. Analyze the most likely causes of the Greasex production defects by understanding the variations in the production process which create the defects d. Create solutions that improve the variability which creates the defects vii. Verify that the solution will really have an