Unify company installs and maintains environmental control, heating and air conditioning systems. It has set up an improvement team to suggest ways to improve its levels of customer service. The improvement team at Unify Company was working on a particular area, proving to be a problem. Whenever service engineers were called out to perform emergency servicing for a customer, they took with them the spares and equipment that they thought would be necessary to repair the system. Although engineers could never be sure exactly what materials and equipment they would need for a job, they could guess what was likely to be required and take a range of spares and equipment which would cover most eventualities. Too often, however, the engineers would find that they needed a spare that they had not brought with them. They would then need to return to base to collect the spares and head out again to the customer site causing unnecessary travel time and costs. a. Based on the case above, discuss and describe the impact of this issue on the five (5) performance objectives suggested by Slack and Brandon-Jones. (10 marks)

b. What are the two (2) main methods that can be used to determine the root causes for this issue? Explain these methods critically. (5 marks) Do explain thoroughly.

c. Explain the continuous improvement cycle approach using PDCA cycle model. Based on the issue faced by the company above, critically discuss the application of PDCA approach to help resolve this issue.