Management and the Technology Professional – B302

Case study answer 2

This morning I had a bad nights sleep. I realised that our team missed out a test from the previous day. I am going to speak to the supervisor regarding the delay this will occur. The tests will have to be redone from the start.

Looking back at the critical path analysis diagram the longest time scheduled for this project is 12 days. Unfortunately with the extra delay, this will now be 16 days. The options we have are:

• to let this one test go unnoticed
• scrap the bunch and start over from the beginning or
• start the tests over again

If we let this incident go unnoticed, we could end up with problems later down the chain. For instance if a high percentage of our goods are reported to be faulty, we will have to recall the entire batch. The one test we missed was considered as a medium priority. Therefore if we ignore this test (from past experience), there is a two percent chance of our items developing faults after production.

We could start over at step one with a new batch. This option is unnecessary as we have a good batch that has passed the tests we carried out. With the loss of one test, we would be looking into testing the entire batch over again rather than using a fresh batch. If problems do arise later on, we will start over. We should try to minimise the delay and increasing costs with unnecessary work. This will help keep our customers happy and the demands high.

We need to understand how this could have happened in the first place. My suspicions are that the trolley with the product must not have made it to the section where the test was going to start. This could have been communication issues where staff on the factory floor were not sure if they were taking the trolley over to another department or if it was being collected from them. This issue will have to be addressed for the next project our team deals with. Blaming people will not help.

Now our priority is to focus on speeding up the process. Currently my team is working 12 hours a day. We need to “fast track” our 4 day test as this will affect the production line of other products in the chain. I am aiming to have extra staff work nights so that we have double the time and can hopefully complete the tests in 2 days. This also means the next project would need overtime staff to bring everything back on track.

We do not wish to send out our items if they are not fully tested before they leave the site. We have been fortunate to pick up the error as quick as possible. This has helped us keep the delay to a minimum, allowing us to keep our customers happy and keep purchasing our products.

I would prefer to pay our staff for working the night shifts than paying for the cost of a product recall. With a product recall we will have to pay extra for the collecting our stock from the distributers, delivery costs and production of a fresh batch of items to go back out to market. This would also add another 12 days to the critical path and double our manufacturing costs at the same time.