Professional Documents
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Murphy Trucking, Inc. (MTI), supplies contract transportation services to many different
manufacturing firms. One of its principal customers, Crawford Consumer Products (CCP), is
actively improving quality by using the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award criteria. In an
effort to improve supplier quality. Crawford Consumer Products mandated, last year, that all
suppliers provide factual evidence of quality improvement efforts that lead to highly capable
processes.
As part of its supplier development program, CCP held a seminar for all its suppliers to
outline this initiative and provide initial assistance. The executive officers of MTI participated in
the seminar and recognized that MTI was seriously lacking in its quality improvement efforts.
More importantly, Jeff Blaine, who was the purchasing manager at CCP, told them privately that
many errors had been found in MTIs shipping documents. CCP would not continue to tolerate
this high number of errors; and if no improvements were made, it would seek transportation
services elsewhere. Rick Murphy, president and CEO of MTI, was concerned.
During an off-site meeting, Murphy and other MTI executives developed a
comprehensive blueprint to help MTI develop a total quality focus. One of the key objectives
was to establish an SPC effort to gain control of key customer-focused processes and establish
priorities for improvement.
Discussion Questions
1. At this point, MTI is unsure of how to interpret these results. You have been hired as a
consultant by the executive committee to analyze these data and provide additional
recommendations for integrating SPC concepts into MTIs quality system. Using the
initial results from the base case data, determine the performance, that is, the process
capability, in a qualitative and quantitative senses, of the billing input. What is the
average rate of defective bills? Is the process in control? What error rates might the
company expect in the future? What general conclusions do you reach?
2. Perform the same statistical analysis with the second set of data. How do the results
differ? What is the average rate of defective bills? Is the process in control? What error
rates might the company expect in the future? What general conclusions do you reach?
The Billing Study, Part II The revelations from the initial study had been startling. The results
from the second study were encouraging, but not yet where the company wanted to be. Rick
Murphy personally led a group problem-solving session to address the root causes of the
current error rate. During this session, the group members constructed a cause-and-effect
diagram to help determine the causes of incorrect bills of lading.
Eight categories of causes were identified:
1. Incomplete shipper name or address
2. Incomplete consignee name or address
3. Missing container type
4. Incomplete description of freight
5. Weight not shown on bill of lading
6. Improper destination code
7. Incomplete drivers signature information
8. Inaccurate piece count