mgt415a3

Note: The following problem is fictitious but employs names of, and news from, real organizations. The idea is to increase the reality of the situation, and to improve your awareness of various industries and organizations.

You are a human resources specialist for Priority Dispatch, Inc., a delivery company in the Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky area. The director of operations is sick and tired of the errors that delivery drivers continue to make. This individual wants to implement a policy that would penalize drivers one hour's pay for each delivery mistake made.

Although you currently work in human resources rather than in operations, you have background training in effective quality management practices. Besides, any new policy related to personnel is something that requires your attention.

Your 'data driven' nature causes you to look into the number of errors made by each driver. Table 1 shows number of reported errors for each driver.

Table 1: Number of Reported Delivery Errors for Each Driver

Driver	Errors	Driver	Errors	Driver	Errors
1	2	9	1	17	1
2	5	10	3	18	4
3	4	11	5	19	0
4	0	12	11	20	3
5	1	13	2	21	1
6	6	14	1	22	5
7	7	15	0	23	2
8	2	16	3	24	1

Write a memo to the operations director that expresses your findings and analysis. Some issues to consider:

Do you support the manager of operations' proposed policy? Why or why not?
How does quality management philosophy, such as Deming's 14 points, relate to this situation?
How can the data be utilized to promote your point of view? (Hint: consider our in-class discussions related to understanding variation--Is the manager of operations interpreting variation effectively?)
Will a control chart work well here? What type of chart: x-bar, c, p?
Do you recommend an approach that differs from the manager of operations' policy?

Remember that one of the effective techniques in effective memo writing is the incorporation of graphs or tables that summarize or highlight key aspects of data. This supports "management by fact". In this case, how might you incorporate a graph that helps support your analysis?

Recognize also that many managers have little or no familiarity with quality lingo or quality 'gurus'. Thus, in your communication, you'll have to translate quality-specific terminology into terms that make sense to the every day manager.

NOTE: Depending on your approach to this problem, you may find this page of QC formulas and factors handy.

memo format sample memo tables graphs citations