Applying Quality Improvement Tools to an Order Fulfillment Process

Applying Quality Improvement Tools to an Order Fulfillment Process

Question 1: Explanation of how the process the team followed might align with DMAIC, the Deming Cycle and the creative problem solving process described in Chapter 7.

The team’s process that was used is somehow related to the three processes that were mentioned in the question above, and I will explain each one of them briefly with a way of how it’s related to the team’s process. First of all, the DMAIC has five important steps and they are: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control. By explaining each one of them, I would say that Define is defining the current situation by setting objectives and forming the project team. Managers usually in this step choose a project team to analyze the situation. The second one is Measure, in this step the team discover that the variable that they need to measure was actually the time each order entered and left various activity areas. The third one is Analyze, this step involves collecting data. What the team does in this step is to analyze the average weekly time to complete orders. The forth one is Improve; in this step, the team discovers solutions to the process’s problems. In addition, the team found by analyzing that the pushing carts that were used were too small, so after analyzing they proposed to use the long carts. The last step of the DMAIC process is Control, after observing the way the new carts work, they found it effectively good in reducing the order time. Therefore, the team used the steps in DMAIC properly.

The Deming cycle has four stages, and they are: Plan, Do, Study and Act. Each one of them is related strongly to the DMAIC process steps and I will explain each one of them. The first one is Plan, in this stage the team identifies problems and proposes the right action. In addition, the problem that was discovered was the use of the small carts and the solution that was used is to replace it by longer once. For the Do stage, the project team tried the plan that was mentioned in the above stage. In the third stage (Study), the project team studied the plan stage and found out that plan was effective. The last stage Act, the team chooses to use the longer carts instead of the small ones.

The creative problem solving is related to the steps the team used. When the customer complained, the manager selected a team to find a way to solve this problem. In addition, after analyzing by the team, they found out what the problem is. They came up with some ideas and solutions such as using the long pushing carts instead of the small once. Finally, they used this problem and solve the problem. This process is the same as the one in