Case Study #3 Part I You are working as a quality improvement engineer at a firm (ABC) that produces plastic gears for small motors, such as those in hand tools and appliances (e.g., electric screwdrivers and blenders). The primary customer for the gears is ACME Manufacturing. Recently, ACME has been complaining to your sales staff of late delivery of trucks containing ABC gears. ACME has monitored and examined their production process by recording truck delivery time, as shown in the table below. In the past, ACME states that trucks were rarely exceeding eight (8) days for delivery. Truck # Delivery Time 5 Truck # 14 15 8 0000 Delivery Time Truck # Delivery Time 1 2 10 3 6 4 6 5698923 7 8 7 7 8 9 10 5 11 9 12 6 13 6 19222222222 5 27 8 28 7 16 8 29 9 17 9 30 7 18 7 31 10 9 32 8 20 6 33 7 10 34 7 5 35 8 23 6 24 7 25 8 26 6 Questions 1. ACME wants to show the variation in delivery time. Select and plot the delivery time data on the most appropriate quality management tool. (Hint: consider classes of delivery days, such as 0-3, 4-6, 7-9, etc.) 2. Does ACME have a valid compliant? (You will need to report the percentage of late deliveries.) Part 2 ACME continues to complain to your sales team about late deliveries. As any good quality engineer, you have already begun to investigate potential causes of late deliveries. Your team has collected some significant data as shown in the table below. Cause Code ABC production delays A Trucks not available for loading Truck breakdown in transit Employee absenteeism Low-skilled workers BCDEFG Loading forklift out of service Incorrect packaging material Questions Frequency 110 1. Choose an appropriate quality management problem-solving tools to identify the root cause of the late deliveries. You must show a visual solution and provide a description of the root cause of late deliveries for full credit. 2. Using the data provided, construct the most appropriate quality problem-solving tool to identify which variable(s) have the most influence on the ability of ABC to provide gears to ACME. Part 3 You have directed your team to further investigate delivery times from ABC to ACME. One of your team members suspects a potential relationship between order quantities and delivery time. The following table shows the number of boxes of gears ordered and actual delivery time in days. Quantity Delivery Time (days) 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 7 3 10 5 4 8 6 Questions 1. Use the data in the table to select and construct the most appropriate problem-solving quality method to check if there is a relationship between order quantities and delivery time. 2. Describe the next steps for ABC based on your results and analysis of quantity vs. delivery time. Case Study #3 Enrichment All the gears manufactured by ABC require a set of ball-bearings. ABC outsources the ball-bearings from XYZ Company. While ACME is ABC's largest customer, ABC has many other customers and manufactures hundreds of thousands of gears and other plastic parts per month. ABC has committed to Lean Production to save cost and is introducing Kanban to reduce inventory. Using the data in the table below, how many Kanbans are required? Daily Demand Lead Time Safety Stock Kanban Size 2000 ball-bearings 4 days 1 day 1000 ball-bearings