Hank Kolby Case Study

Executive Summary

Hank Kolby a newly hired director of quality assurance had encountered an issue with the quality of the production of the greasex line products at his plant. There had been a defect in the filling equipment and as a result spray cans were being pressurized beyond the upper specification limit, resulting in a defective and possibly hazardous product. This became a problem once the reject hold tags that were placed on the cans had been removed and the first line supervisor had vented the cans manually attempting to relieve the high pressure problem. After being improperly handled there was no way of knowing whether the cans were vented enough to effectively reduce hazard, and the high pressure of the cans pose a great safety threat. This product was now rushed out into the market after failing to meet  quality standards. The general manager, Morgenthal had warned Kolby of the lack of quality attitude at the plant, if not solved it  could put the plants reputation and revenue in jeopardy. To gain more insight behind the process Kolby spoke to multiple workers and learned the following information. Personnel said that the the operator filling the equipment was new and had no formal training of the equipment. In addition to this the operator had only learned about the rejected material after his shift, this shows poor interprofessional communication and management. In regards to the actual filling equipment, the equipment had been originally purchased for use on another product and had no scheduled preventative maintenance. The plastic nozzle heads were even found to be designed with flaws on the inside of the rims that were shipped out on rush order.  Resulting in the mass production of low quality products that are inefficient and poorly regulated. The product design and packaging had also been changed and no tests were run to see if the new design could tolerate the high pressure filling head. Not only were the defective cans being produced, the attitudes of the workers at the plant had no care for the quality and safety of their products. Simmons, the first line supervisor even bragged how he “beat his quota of production” compared to the other shift supervisors. This shows an attitude amongst the workforce that rushing a product out onto the market is more important than ensuring its quality and safety first.

Issue Identification

1.) The main issues that Kolby is facing in this situation is that functional failures have occurred with manufacturing of greasex products which has resulted in a safety threat to the consumers. This issue starts with the attitudes of the first line supervisor Wayne simmons and the staff whose main objective is to put as much product out into the market without the motivation to make the safest and highest quality products. Simmons was being considered for a promotion to shift supervisor because he was known for his high productivity rate. This is an internal flaw with the plants core value and mission, productivity turn out  is being praised over the importance of  quality production. Before issues are to be fixed with manufacturing of the products, Kolby must develop strategies to design and implement a set of internally consistent policies to ensure the organization's human capital (knowledge, skills etc) contributes to the overall business objective which should be the quality standards.