supply chain management

MNGT 334-01 Individual Assignment #1 Spring 2019

Identifying the Source of the Problem

Larraine Scharadin. Milo Scharadin 's niece, had recently been appointed to run the San Antonio hotel. A recent business school graduate, Larraine had grown up in the hotel business. She was poised and confident and understood the importance of high quality for the hotel. When she became aware of the billing problem, she immediately called a staff meeting to uncover the source of the problem. During the staff meeting, discussion quickly turned to problems with the

new computer system and software that had been put in place. Tim Coleman, head of MIS, defended the system, stating that it was sound and the problems were exaggerated. Tim claimed

that a few hotel guests made an issue of a few random problems. Scott Schultz, head of operations, was not so sure. Scott said that he noticed that the number of complaints seemed to

have significantly increased since the new system was installed. He said that he had asked his team to perform an audit of 50 random bills per day over the past 30 days. Scott showed the

following numbers to Larraine, Tim, and the other staff members.

Number of Number of Number of

Incorrect Incorrect Incorrect

Day Bills Day Bills Day Bills

I 2 11 I 21 3

2 l 12 2 22 3

3 l 13 3 23 3

➔ 2 14 3 2-! 4

5 2 15 2 25 5 6 3 16 3 26 5

i 2 17 2 27 6 8 2 18 2 28 5 9 I 19 I 29 5

10 2 20 3 30 5

Everyone looked at the data that had been presented. Then Tim exclaimed, "Notice that the number of errors increases in the last third of the month. The computer system had been in place for the entire month, so that can't be the problem. Scott, it is probably the new employees you have on staff that are not entering the data properly." Scott quickly retaliated, ''The employees are trained properly! Everyone knows the problem is the computer system!" The argument between Tim and Scott become heated, and Larraine decided to step in. She said, "Scott, I think it is best if you perform some statistical analysis of that data and send us your findings. You know that we want a high quality standard. We can 't be Motorola with Six Sigma quality, but let' s try for 3 sigma. Would you develop some control charts with the data and let us know if you think the process is in control?"

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