...Hank Kolb, Director, Quality Assurance case study examines a manufacturing industrial plant that employs 1,200 people. Hank Kolb was the newly hired director, quality assurance. Kolb was warned by the general manager, Morganthal, about the “lack of a quality attitude” in the plant, and told Kolb that he “should try and do something about this.” Hank Kolb left a very good job to accept this position because he wanted a challenge and thought this company was serious about the importance of quality (Leonard, 1993). Before examining the quality (or lack thereof) within the different layers of the manufacturing plant procedures I feel it would be beneficial to layout each employee and their main roles / steps in the communication and production process. The following is the list of employees discussed within the case study: • Hank Kolb: Director, Quality Assurance • Mark Hamler: Kolb’s immediate subordinate as the quality control manager (Hamler’s evaluation form stated “superb technical knowledge; managerial skills lacking.”) • Mac Evans: Inspector of the line for Greasex • Wayne Simmons: First-line supervisor • Morganthal: General Manager (Morganthal warned Kolb, “lack of a quality attitude” and told him “should try and do something about this.” He also expressed his concern for the plant, “We have to improve our quality, it’s costing us a lot of money, I’m sure of it, but I can’t prove it! Hank, you have my full support in this matter; you’re in charge of these quality...
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...Hank Kolb Case Operations Management Spring 2016 March 17, 2016 The Case “Hank Kolb, Director of Quality Assurance” is about a production line of an industrial product plant called “Greasex”. After becoming the director, quality assurance, Kolb finds out that the company lacks the commitment to achieve an excellent quality product. Every department had a different method to define quality in where they focus from the design of the materials to the product itself. Like a chain effect, each department has symptoms that affect the quality of the product that is being provided to their clients. One issue they have is not having a person who is control of product qualities. The management lacks policies and visible support for quality standards. There’s no one to manage that so of course employees wouldn’t think that quality control is an important factor. There is also no proper training for equipment’s to employees too. In the plant maintenance department there is an inadequate supply of spare parts and filling machine purchased for another product and adapted to. In the purchasing department, the plastic nozzle head for the Greasex can designed by a vendor are not made correctly to fit the product. The product design and packaging was designed without consideration of production process. An issue in the manufacturing production is employees thinking that beating production quota more important than the products. All these departments do have issues that affect one another...
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...Case study Group C – Hank Kolb, Director of Quality Assurance Questions 1 What are the causes of the quality problems on the Greasex line? Display your answer on a fishbone diagram. Question 2 What general steps should Hank follow in setting up a continuous improvement program for the organization? What problems will he have to overcome to make it work? In order to initiate continuous improvement, Hank needed to understand the problem areas that affect the attitude toward quality in the entire organization as Mr. Morganthal has warn Hank Kolb, “lack of quality attitude in the plant”. With the assurance from Mr. Morganthal, the General Manager, he has plan to form a sterling team which comprise of staffs from each different function as members. This team will take an overview and be the devil’s advocate to point out areas that required changes. It has identify that there is a lack of senior management leadership involvement due to insufficient information from the ground. Functions such as personnel, manufacturing, design, plant maintenance, purchasing and marketing have their own area of responsibility to fulfil but doing it without any quality perspective. Changes in the leadership toward quality is requires to instil quality awareness among the staffs and workers. The program has to bring an understanding that quality does not rest on producing quality products to deliver to the customers and to the market but quality of work that provides quality result is equally...
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...9 Six-Sigma Quality I. Total Quality Management a. Total Quality management Defined b. Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Defined II. Quality Specification & Quality Costs c. Developing Quality Specifications i. Design Quality Defined d. Cost of Quality ii. Conformance Quality Defined e. Functions of The QC Department iii. Quality At The Source Defined iv. Dimensions of Quality Defined v. Cost of Quality Defined III. Six-Sigma Quality f. Six-Sigma Methodology vi. Six-Sigma Defined g. Analytical tools for Six-Sigma & Continuous Improvement vii. DPMO Defined viii. DMAIC Defined h. Six-Sigma Roles & Responsibilities ix. PDCA Cycle Defined x. Continuous Improvement Defined xi. Kaizen Defined xii. Lean Six-Sigma Defined xiii. Black Belts, Master Black Belts & Green Belts Defined IV. The Shingo System: Fail-Safe Design i. Fail-Safe Procedures Defined j. Poka-Yoke Defined V. ISO 9000 & ISO 14000 k. ISO 9000 Defined VI. External Benchmarking for Quality Improvement l. External Benchmarking Defined VII. Summary VIII. Case: Hank Kolb, Director of Quality Assurance IX. Case: Appreciative Inquiry- A Different kind of Fishbone Six-Sigma Quality 1. Total Quality Management a. Total Quality management Defined ...
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...of product quality and the complexity of quality problems. Uses a new director, quality assurance, and the discovery of a quality problem. The new director has to decide if it is a real problem, what to do about it, and how to go about orienting an organization toward a better quality attitude. Questions 1 What are the causes of the quality problems on the Greasex line? Display your answer on a fishbone diagram. Question 2 What general steps should Hank follow in setting up a continuous improvement program for the organization? What problems will he have to overcome to make it work? In order to initiate continuous improvement, Hank needed to understand the problem areas that affect the attitude toward quality in the entire organization as Mr. Morganthal has warn Hank Kolb, “lack of quality attitude in the plant”. With the assurance from Mr. Morganthal, the General Manager, he has plan to form a sterling team which comprise of staffs from each different function as members. This team will take an overview and be the devil’s advocate to point out areas that required changes. It has identify that there is a lack of senior management leadership involvement due to insufficient information from the ground. Functions such as personnel, manufacturing, design, plant maintenance, purchasing and marketing have their own area of responsibility to fulfil but doing it without any quality perspective. Changes in the leadership toward quality is requires to instil quality awareness...
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...Case Study of the Causes of Problems in the Greasex Line of a Company and the Possible Quality Improvement Steps In the high-technology sector, the Greasex line is specialized in manufacturing solvents packed in cans for degreasing. Nonetheless, the company had experienced some trouble with the new filling equipment. The main problem was the presence of high-pressure beyond the required upper specified limit in some second shift cans. However, these problems as identified from the case study are related to several areas. They include personnel such as the newly assigned operator from a different department. He lacked formal training and was also negligent as he was absent from his position of operation during the process. Moreover, Mac Evans; the line supervisor, after picking and tagging the cases as “hold”, went on his duties and did not supervise their progress. Although vetted by hand by Wayne Simmons, the first-line supervisor, they could still be of low quality and pose safety threats to the customers. In addition, the machinery used was not initially designed to handle the process involving lower viscosity of Greasex, lacked preventive maintenance schedule. The appropriate equipment, which is the special filling head for the process, had been poorly and haphazardly adjusted. Materials used in production such as plastic nozzle can heads were designed on a rush order by a vendor and, therefore, had slight burrs on the inside rims causing fitting problems. They had...
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...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...
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...Process Control and capability 9.1 Objective This chapter focuses primarily on product quality and process capability, although we try to position it more generally as dealing with variability in any product measure such as cost, availability and response time. We claim that they all vary from one flow unit to the next, and this variability leads to customer dissatisfaction. It is therefore necessary to measure this variability, track down its sources and eliminate them. In the process of measuring variability, we introduce some elementary tools of quality or process improvement such as Pareto charts. We then classify variability into “abnormal” and “normal” types. We introduce statistical process control over time as a device to identify and eliminate abnormal variability in the short run. Since our goal is to teach the fundamental framework of feedback control and control limit policy, our discussion of SPC is primarily conceptual, without getting into constructing charts from given data using ranges, constants, etc. However, these details can easily be covered by supplementing the chapter with a one page handout on estimating the mean and standard deviation from ranges. Once the process is internally stabilized by removing abnormal variability, we can discuss its capability in meeting external customer requirements, and how it can be improved. We conclude by discussing six sigma quality and some general principles of design for manufacturability and robust design. We...
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...Schwartzman -- Quality Giant (A) Henry Schwartzman -- Quality Giant (A) Enrique Schwartzman (Henry for short) came to the U.S. in the early 1950's from Chile. When he arrived he vowed to make something of his life and provide his young family with all the benefits he had been denied. Today he is a graduate of a prestigious Eastern engineering school, and after thirty years of hard work, he feels he is nearing his dream of success. His success is evidenced by his recent promotion to Manager of Quality Control at Walsh Cosmetics, reporting directly to the Plant Manager. At a party thrown by his former engineering group, his colleagues had jokingly bestowed upon him the title of Quality Giant. (Henry is only 5' 4" tall). As he surveyed his spacious new office, he thought of the many long years he had spent as a mechanical engineer. Somehow he had never envisioned himself becoming a manager of Quality Control. But here he was, waist (waste?) deep in an area where he had received little, formal academic training. Henry was not particularly worried. His training in engineering had been quite rigorous and he felt he could handle whatever technical preparation was needed for the new job. Additionally, before assuming his new duties he had spent several weeks at a quality control (Q.C.) training program run by one of the foremost Q.C. consulting firms in the country---Lopez, Lopez, and Associates (LL&A). The Lopez twins (Lopez J. Lopez and Lopez X. Lopez) offer Quality training...
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