This Case Study Is About ‘integrated Devices

Case Analysis

This case study is about ‘Integrated Devices’ a company that works with a number of suppliers that supply goods to the company. The company has an existent supply chain that spans suppliers, production facility and hen to distributors. Bill Edwards is the quality engineer of Injected Molding Commodity Team that is responsible for evaluating, selecting and negotiating agreements with suppliers. The suppliers of Integrated Devices are major partners of the company with 70% of the revenues of the company being spent on purchase of goods and materials from the different suppliers. The case summary and the major problems and artifacts of the case can be discussed as:

Case Summary

The company, ‘Integrated Devices’ operates several plants in its business but particular case reflects the problem identified in plant number 3. There are a number of suppliers of materials to this plant. It is reported that a customer for this plant is experiencing quality issues with a key plastic injected molding component. This problematic component is being supplied by Trexler Plastics. This component has to be assembled with other components in order to arrive at the final product however the problem is that sometimes this component (from Trexler Plastics) is shorter in length and sometimes longer in length.

This component is not an expensive component, costing 1.55% or thereabouts but this component has to be assembled with other components and this makes the ripple effect of quality of the component very high. Bill as a member of the corporate commodity team has been asked to intervene in the matter because the management of plant number 3 seems unable to resolve the problem at its end.

It is evident that there are problems at “Trexler Plastics” and at ‘Integrated Devices’ end as well. The major problem at ‘Integrated Devices’ is that it selected a single supplier ‘Trexler Plastics’ due to cost advantage. The main problem at ‘Trexler Plastics’ is that it does not have established processes and procedures as defined in the organization. Therefore, the problem definition and the detailed problems associated with the case can be discussed as:

Problem definition

The problem on the highest level is about the quality of the key component from ‘Trexler Plastics’. Through RCA (Root Cause Analysis) of this case we can establish that the major cause of concern is the lack of operational guidelines at ‘Trexler Plastics’. Few of the other major problems as highlighted in the case can be discussed as:

• Steve Smith the process engineer at ‘Trexler Plastics’ is new to the company having joined “Trexler” only 2 months ago is not sure about the overall plant layout, process capability, quality considerations and engineering tests. This is a problem to the company.

• ‘Trexler