Operations and Production Management System - MyAssignmenthelp.com

Question: Discuss about the Operations and Production Management System. Answer: Introduction Latino Engineering is based in New South Wales in Australia. It is a midsize company with 300 employees. The company provides the services of design, development and manufacturing of the engineering equipment supplies to the industries, such as utilities, oil gas and construction infrastructure. The company has grown tremendously, by the founder Dominic Latino, who is a passionate mechanical engineer with profound designing and developing skills in engineering equipment. The company has got several patents for the engineering equipment and Dominic has designed them for over years, with passion. The company has grown tremendously for over 30 years, winning great clientele, who have great regard and respect for the professionalism and quality work of Dominic and became a much sought after company with huge profitability. Dominic, reaching to his 65 years of age wants to retire and want to sell the whole part of the company, and there are many investors, who are interested to purchase Latino Engineering, because of its great reputation, patents and profitability. Finally, Dominic has sold the company to an investment group for sizeable amount and the new company continued operations with the same name of the company and most of the work force, though some of senior engineering professionals have sought other opportunities. The assumptions are made as the following, during the development of the continuous improvement plan. Latino Engineering company has been declined in the quality, because of insufficient passion, possessed by the new investment group. So, having everything similar, except some of the senior management professionals leaving the company, the quality of the product and so reputation of the company has been deteriorated. The new senior management has comparatively, lesser commitment, towards maintaining the quality of the manufacturing products and consistent reputation of the company. The senior management provides all the necessary support for the new continuous improvement process, which would be proposed and developed by the project management. The general process of manufacturing of engineering equipment is considered and the business processes with associated activities are assumed and listed. The most possible and general root causes of the manufacturing company are assumed and presented in the report. The data given in the case study, about the reputation of the company and the respective problems in the business processes are considered as the evidences. The complaints from the clients are given as the following. Defective engineering equipment Poor follow up of design and development with clients Much longer turnaround time for the resolution of the issue Non-responsive team for customer service Packing of wrong engineering equipment and delivery to the clients in some cases The senior management was initially surprised at the quality decline of their products, though most of the workforce is retained and similar work processes are disrupted minimally, and responded to arrest the situation. The initiative has been taken for continuous improvement plan for overcoming the complaints and issues. The plan is expected to be developed and implemented in the next three months of duration. The current problems and issues should be focussed deeper so that their root causes are identified and based on the root cause the solution can be developed and proposed for the identified problem (Chanda, 2017). There are various methodologies to implement this process and six sigma is one of the famous and well proven methodologies. Initially, six sigma team has to be developed with black belt or master black belt, to identify the problem and improve the quality of the processes in Latin Engineering. The six sigma methodology can be implemented in this case and context, by implementing the following phases of DMAIC (Manger Shinde, 2014). DMAIC is one of the six sigma methodologies, developed and proposed for the continuous improvement processes. DMAIC involves the processes to be done in the following phases. Define Measure Analyse Improve Control This is the key phase in applying the six sigma methodology, since when this phase is done appropriately, the right root cause can be identified and the following phases go in the appropriate ways, without any deviation. This phase helps improving the goals of project and these goals are to be based on the needs and wants of the customer. In the context of the Latino engineering it is important to investigate and identify the root cause of the dissatisfaction and complaints received by the customers. In this context, feasible project scope has to be refined and the project goals are to be set up and the root cause of the quality decline in manufacturing the engineering equipment have to be discovered (Sokovic et al., 2009). Defectiveness of product Poor design and development follow up with clients Longer turnaround time for issue resolution Wrong product delivery, some times Based on the complaints found from the customers, it is understood that there are quality issues in multiple departments, like in the basic design process, based on the customer feedback, process of manufacturing, customer service and sales departments. Since, these are the key departments that can influence the overall performance and reputation of the company, the entire business processes are to be developed, in terms of quality. In terms of design and development, mostly the previous work processes are not disrupted and the company has to realize any product has to be developed, in terms of changing the needs of the customers. So, apart from the complaints and feedback received by the company, these concerns and suggestions are not considered for the refinement of the engineering equipment. Customers complaints are to be taken as opportunities to develop the product design and develop updated engineering equipment. The problem can be defined in this context is the quality decline the following business processes. Manufacturing process Design and development process of product Customer service process Sales process Though it is also possible to reengineer the product, based on the requirements of the customers, it is basically important to refine the manufacturing the processes. Identification and defining the problem involves the quality tool of cause and effect diagram. To find the deviation or decline of the quality, it is important to measure the quality existing, in the present business. Quality measurement can be done by the following critical success factors, measured. The process of measuring is done through the check sheet quality tool (Jeyaraman Teo, 2010). Each of the complaint received from the customer, has to be placed, in any one of the following critical success factors, related to the Latino Engineering business processes. Now, it is important to find the competitive leverages, by identifying the most important critical success factors. This is an important phase again, since, each and every complaint from the customer has to be categorized in each of the categories, mentioned above. Then the final score has to be considered for the following phase of analysis (Sunder, 2016). Plan to Reduce Root Cause Analysis has to be done, based on the resulted statistics after performing the previous phase called, Measure. The analysis of the process has to be done, by considering the scores obtained. The category or each of the critical success factors of Latino Engineering has to be compared among them and all these CSFs have to be ordered, in descending order. After analysing all the CSFs, the highest scored CSF has to be considered and followed. The analysis phase has to be realized with the cause and effect diagram. The analysis process is performed for identifying, validating and selecting the root cause. After the analysis, the root cause has to be listed based on descending order of CSF accordingly. Then the root cause has to be identified, based on, which process has got the maximum score has been obtained, for manufacturing, design development, sales and customer service processes. Root cause analysis can be done with fishbone diagram. The first two potential root causes and the respective processes are to be listed as the basic root causes and need primary focus. Another important aspect of the analysis phase of the Latino Engineering case, the inputs have to be identified, for each of the root cause obtained. It means if the manufacturing process has got highest priority, based on the score, then it is important to find the sub-category critical success factor. Then the input or the accurate process of the manufacturing process has to be identified. For example, if the product is found to be defective, in the very first usage of the product, it should be categorized in 1k, and the process of testing the final product has to be emphasized. In this way based on the high scored CSF, has to be analysed to be the major root cause that demands much focus for improvement (Pika et al., 2016). Let us assume that defective product, found in the first usage is found to be the root cause, followed by 4c, which is longer turnaround time. Then the improvement plans are to be proposed based on these factors and root causes. Continuous Improvement Plan Based on the high priority and high scored critical success factor, the pin-pointed root cause has to be identified, tested and implemented, both in part and completely as a whole as a solution, to the quality decline problem of Latino Engineering. Then, this process has to be refined primarily, by creating multiple solutions. These solutions can be, Setting six sigma policy to ensure that out of total number of engineering equipment manufactured, in each day, each of them has to be checked against its operation and quality and the report has to be submitted to the operation head. The quality check and control employees are to be trained for accuracy and accountability of their tasks and activities. Replacing the quality department workforce with much experienced and more accountable workforce. Recruiting quality control head with accountability of the final product quality. Adding additional cycle of quality check and ensure that each and every equipment is operational. Having created the multiple solutions, one of the solutions has to be selected. These solutions can be tested with PDCA (Plan Do Check Act) cycle and the results are to be obtained. Having analyzed the solutions, recruiting quality control head with the accountability of the final product quality and operation is found to be effective compared to all the other solutions (Hamin, 2016). After the best possible solution gets identified for the Latino Engineering, the risks and additional efforts associated with this solution have to be developed. So, for the recruitment of the quality control head, the company has to allocate additional budget expenses, in terms of salaries, benefits and slightly added process of the quality check process. However, the risks associated with this solution can still be, Recruited head may not be justifying the accountability of his or her tasks and activities and if happened so, there will be loss of time, efforts and money for the company, though, there would be no worse of the problem. Initial months should be allocated as the tolerant period. May take longer time to achieve the objective So, having understood the risks associated with the solution developed, as recruitments of the quality check head, the solution can be still implemented, since it solves the problem or may take longer time to solve the problem, but does not worse the problem. So, the implementation plan for the recruitment of head solution, can be (Nashmi et al., 2017), Contact recruit consulting firm Hire the quality control head Assign the responsibilities and accountability Give a tolerance period of two months as a probation period Confirm and continue the solution, if the objective of resolution of the issue is achieved. The final phase of the DMAIC for the continuous improvement plan is to control. The improvement plan has to be standardized with the control phase. The control phase consists of standardization process that should be consistently monitored and recorded to ensure that the results are obtained and objectives are achieved. For standardizing the process of continuous improvement plan, by considering one critical success factor of final quality check process and the solution of recruiting the head, a control chart has to be developed and implemented on regular, in fact on daily basis. A statistics of the total number of defects reported and complained by the customer, in each day has to be recorded. A graph has to be drawn with the 30 days period in the X-axis and number of defects complained for the ordered engineering equipment in each day. Ideally, the graph has to be grounded to zero, though it would be over expectation. So, the graph should be declining each and every day (Abraham, 2016). When the graph reaches to zero, on one day, the same results are to be strived to be continued. Recommendations After development of the continuous improvement plan having taken an example of one most probable critical success factor, the following recommendations are made for the senior management. The present quality standards to be followed with zero tolerance. The continuous improvement plan has to be implemented for the first three months and a meet has to be arranged with project management team to discuss the outcomes and results. Finally, the senior management has to be analyzing the reports and records at the end of each working day, with direct and on-site supervision. Conclusion The Latino Engineering company, having suffered from the quality decline after 12 months of period, after Dominic has sold the company to other investment group, the project has been initiated for continuous improvement process, by adopting the required quality tools, accordingly. Six sigma methodology has been taken as the reference to develop continuous improvement plan. One of the six sigma processes, DMAIC has been used directly, for the continuous improvement process. Finally, the solution has been proposed, by considering the each of the sub-category of each of the business process, manufacturing, design and development, sales and customer service processes. References Abraham, Z., Zhang, A., Wen, L., Yangyan, Shi, Ting, S. C., Xavier, S. Z. Sim. X. Z.2016. Lean and Six Sigma in logistics: a pilot survey study in Singapore. 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