Case Study 1: Quality Indicator for a TV Company

A TV company branded SS established in 80s was selling its brand based on price
differentiation. With several MNC entering the market, SS started facing stiff competition. The
owner Mr. Nattan felt if he focuses his companys image as a quality company then he can beat
the competition. Hence he shifted the companys focus from price differentiation to service.
He started concentrating in finding what the customer wants. Prior to quality introduction, the
performance measures were in terms of number of new clients, total billing etc. While meeting
the customer, the sales talk was on high service delivery without any regard to customers
needed level of service or on the satisfaction as in the minds of the customer. There was hence a
possibility of not meeting their own stated level of service delivery which led to disappointment
among customers. Quality goals were now established which were felt to be the indicators of
quality assuring the company in terms of tangible success.
Satisfaction of customer is indicated through

Bills paid on time

Retaining customer return at 70%
Accounts receivable days outstanding is improved by 30% within the next 6 months
Customer satisfaction survey will indicate customer satisfaction to be above 90%

Satisfaction of employee is indicated by

Turnover rate brought down by 3% in 6 months time

Absenteeism is lowered by 10%
Employee satisfaction survey indicating a level above 95%

Growth of the organization is indicated by

Obtaining ISO certification

Increase in share price by 30%
Increase in number of customers

Discuss:
1. Do you agree with the methodology adopted by the company for becoming quality
organization?
2. Evaluate the firms indicators of quality which is expected to measure quality.
3. Identify a few quality indicators to measure quality effectiveness for a company gearing
towards TQM
4. Discuss the dimensions of quality for the Product TV
5. Discuss how SS can improve their quality?

Case Study 2: Establishment of Quality Strategy for Brix & Co

Brix & Co is a proprietorship firm located in Dhaka. It is a TV Spare parts manufacturing

company. It is in existence for more than 55 years. There are recent plans in the company to
export its products abroad. Twenty young professionals who are highly talented were also
recruited recently.
The proprietor, Mr. Shah Alam is a strict disciplinarian who is 70 years old. He is known for his
autocratic style of management. Mr. Shah Alam attended seminar organized for executives on
quality management. Attracted by the principles taught in the seminar, he wanted to make his
company a quality company. The same day he sat alone till 2 am and formulated a vision
statement for his company. The next day morning at 8 am he called for an urgent meeting of all
the 60 employees he had and announce proudly his intentions of making the company a quality
company. He also announced the vision statement for the company. By 10 am about 100 placards
with the vision statement were made ready and fixed in all important locations. All the
employees were surprised to see the placard everywhere and wondered what it is all about. Mr.
Shah Alam enforced that the vision of the company has to be adhere to by everyone. He was
confident that company will soon become a quality company.
One month later, Mr. shah Azad approached his brother Mr. Shah Alam to help him in starting a
joint venture company. Mr. Shah Azad was new to business. Mr. Shah Alam being very much
attached to his family, readily agreed to his brothers proposal to start a new company. For the
next six months, Mr. Shah Alam spent more than 80% of his time in the establishment of the new
company.
In the meantime, Brix & Co in Dhaka, had a setback. Even though Brix & Co has set targets to
exports, the situation was so bad, they could not even penetrate the local market. Percentage
rejection increased and the balance sheet showed heavy loss.

Discuss:
1.
2.
3.
4.

What according to you is the reason for the setback in Brix & Co?
What would be your advice to Mr. Shah Alam to revamp the situation?
What would have been the right strategy for Mr. Shah Alam in the beginning?
Do you feel that Mr. Shah Alam should not have started the second company? If he
still wanted to start what he should have done?

Case Study 3: Implementing TQM for an institution

Chennai is famous for housing many prestigious and old colleges. SS College situated in the
suburbs of Chennai, recently celebrated 50th anniversary. It offers BE degree programme in eight
different descriptions. About 4000 students are studying in the college. The principal of the
college is in the verge of retirement. He has served the college for 35 years. The teaching staff
strength is 55; in addition 25 non-teaching staff are also working. Most of them are there for
more than 25 years.
Recently there has been a series of complaints from students that the facilities they get is in no
way comparable to the fees paid by them. All the hostel students went on a day fasting strike to
express their dissatisfaction. The college management was disturbed by this. They appointed a
one man committee to looking to the affairs of the college and offer remedies.
The one man committee, during the interrogation with students and staff found that there are
many problems in the college which have not come out earlier. The students were unhappy with
the teaching offered at the college. It was found that the results are also poor and the pass
percentage has been decreasing over the years. When enquired about the reason for this the staff
and students were blaming each other. It was noticed that even among staff there is no coordination. The committee noticed that the age old practices are being followed both in teaching
and administration. In the meanwhile one of the parents wrote a strong letter to management,
expressing his displeasure about the treatment he got during his last visit to the college. Already
the government issued a notice to the college to improve the library facilities.
With all these, the management is perplexed and looking for a direction to move.
Discuss:
1.
2.
3.
4.

What would be your recommendation to the college management?

Highlight five critical areas wherein focus is needed. Give reasons also.
What would be the best suited TQM model for this college?
What are the problems you anticipate while implementing TQM and how will you tackle
them?

Case Study 4: SWOT analysis for a Company

Mr. Tom is a manager in M/S Texon, a company producing goods for export. Third world
countries are their main customers. The company has been in existence for more than 40 years.
From Managing Director down to workers there are 9 cadres in the organization. Most of the
employees are specialists in their work area. Company has been doing good. The rejection rate
has been only about 1%. Employees are all demanding for wage increase, threatening to go on
for indefinite strike. There are about 4 unions active and the employees are equally divided. The
Managing Director of the company is a very busy person and manages about 6 different firms in
different countries. He visits this firm once a month and stays for 2 to 3 days. Suddenly the
customers have posed a few restrictions. They wanted to buy products only from quality
companies. Mr. Tom has been given the responsibility of sustaining the market share.

Discuss:
1. What will be your SWOT analysis for the company?
2. What will be the strategic planning process that you would recommend?

Case Study 5: Fishbone analysis for an Educational Institution

Mr. Suresh is a student of an engineering college doing 1st year BE. He stays in the college
hostel. In the first semester, he was a regular student but could not score good mark. In the
second semester, the college introduced shift system for classes, with the good intention of
providing about 4 to 5 hours of time at a stretch for studies and other useful purpose. It was
expected that he would improve his studies and score good marks. On the contrary, he has failed
in a couple of subjects.
Discuss:
1. Analyze this problem and draw a fish bone diagram.
2. Suggest methodologies for solving the problem.

Case Study 6: 5S Implementation for Moon Motor

Moon motors has been the sole distributors of EX motorbike in the Chaluk district. The EX
motorbike was known for its quality and Moon motors were hence able to establish a name for
themselves through high sales. They also did the servicing of EX motorbikes but the servicing
department had been facing several complaints from customers. The customer complaint runs as
follows:

Service personnel are rude

The delivery of a serviced vehicle is not prompt
The stated faults are not completely rectified
Servicing cost is high
Customers coming to the service station have to wait standing in the dust and oil

Their only advantage is being the sole distributorship which is getting them the sales. Complaints
from the customer have reached EX Motorbikes and the company is now on the lookout for
another dealer for that area.
Mr. Pal Singh of Moon Motors finds himself to the brink of business. He has to immediately do
something. Getting to talk with his employees, he found that there is lot of friction between the
sales and service personnel. Also sales office was in direct contrast to the service department.
Sales office was at the front end and the place was really decked up, flashy and sparkling bright,
while the service station was dirty. There were oil stains all over; the service staff clothes were
all messy. The instruments were lying all over the place. One mechanic was shouting for a size 4
spanner and his colleague was finding difficulty in locating it. Mr. Pal returned back to his AC
cabin since there was a call on his cell informing him that officials from EX Motorbikes are
waiting in his office.
Discuss:

What are the problems with Moon Motors?

If the officials of EX Motorbikes have come to find out how they can help- may be giving
a six months test period- before they terminate the distributorship then what assurance
would they demand from Mr. Pal and what promises can Mr. Pal make?
How can 5S benefit in this scenario? How will you implement 5S here?

Case Study 7: Poka Yoke model for an Automobile company

Naveen Scott was running an established automobile manufacturing business. The firm
manufactured family cars under the trade name Scotto and commercial vehicles Motto. The
vehicles were known for their quality and tradition.Changes in government policies brought in
multinationals. A competitor to Scotto entered the business with tie-ups with multinationals.
The firm with its brand of Eskimo flooded the market with small cars for a nucleus family,
which was five times lower in price than Scotto. Eskimo also came in from a quality certified
house since this was insisted by the multinational.
Naneen found that Eskimo was taking away a major share of his family-car market. Naveen
wanted to use his companys niche on quality and tradition. He called for a meeting of the
managers and briefed them on the market situation. He said the company would have to obtain
either the C11 quality award or Peacock award for quality in two years time. The top officials put
their heads together and came out with a vision market leadership through quality. They
stressed the need to bring in quality into the process, which would ensure product quality.
Naveen in all meetings kept stressing that total quality management is a never ending process. It
is a process of continuous improvement of continuously questioning the way you do things, and
of continuously re-evaluating the market, customers needs and work process and procedures. It is
a process if done properly would continuously renew itself.
Training was focused so that everyone in the organization is aware and come in unison towards
the managements vision. Top manager were first trained on TQM. It was their responsibility to
train their subordinates who in turn was asked to train their immediate juniors. Over a period of
three months the entire organization was reared towards TQM. The organization started bringing
in improvisation in the commercial vehicle segment. There was a new fleet of vehicles. The
design was made using the feedback from their existing customers. Some of the vehicles were so
designed that they could also be used as a family car. The family car Scotto continued in the
market. Another mini car was attached to the family cars category called Flash. Flash was
brought in to compete with Eskimo in the mini car category. The entire team had worked
towards the vision and was waiting for the launch of the new breed of commercial vehicles and
family cars in the national auto fair. A quality consultant was approached and was asked how to
proceed further and how to launch the products. There was a 200% price hike announced by
Eskimo. The original price seemed to be an introductory offer.
Discuss:
1. The new set of vehicles have been designed considering the existing customers feedback.
Do you feel it is sufficient in the present scenario? What will be your suggestions?
2. As the quality consultant what will be your recommendations?
3. How Pokayoke can be used in this scenario?

Case Study 8: Westover Electrical, INC.

Westover Electrical, Inc., is a medium-sized Houston manufacturer of wire windings used in

making electric motors. Joe Wilson, Operations Manager, has experienced an increasing problem
with rejected product found during the manufacturing operation. "I'm not sure where to begin,"
said Joe at the weekly staff meeting with his boss. "Rejects in the winding department have been
killing us the past two months. Nobody in operations has any idea why. I have just brought in a
consultant, Roger Gagnon, to take a look at the situation and make recommendations about how
we can find out what is going on. I don't expect Roger to make technical recommendations -- just
see if he can point us in the right direction."
Gagnon's first stop later that day was the production floor. His discussions with the production
supervisors in the winding department indicated they had no real grasp of what the problem was
or what to do to correct it. A tour of the winding operation indicated that there were three
machines that wound wire onto plastic cores to produce the primary and secondary electric motor
windings. After inspection by quality control (QC), these windings then went to the packaging
department. Packaging personnel, Gagnon found, inspect their own work and make corrections
on the spot. The problem is that too many windings are found to be defective and require
reworking before they can be packaged.
Gagnon's next stop was the quality control department where he obtained the records for the past
month's winding department rejects (Table 1).
Table
1
[SIGMA] January Transformer Reject Log: Winding Process
No. Of Reject Units By Cause
Date

No.
Winder Bad
Inspected
Wind

Twisted Broken Abraded Wrong Wrong Failed

Wire
Leads Wire
Core
Wire
Electrical
Test

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

10

11

12

15

16

17

18

19

22

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

23

24

25

26

29

30

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

Discussion:
1. Prepare P chart and interpret.

Case Study 9: Bayfield Mud Company

In November 1990, John Wells, a customer service representative of Bayfield Mud Company,
was summoned to the Houston, Texas, warehouse of Wet-Land Drilling, Inc., to inspect three
boxcars of mud-treating agents that Bayfield Mud Company had shipped to the Houston firm.
(Bayfield's corporate offices and its largest plant are located in Orange, Texas, which is just west
of the Louisiana-Texas border.) Wet-Land Drilling had filed a complaint that the 50-pound bags
of treating agents that it had just received from Bayfield were short-weight by approximately 5%
The light-weight bags were initially detected by one of Wet-Land's receiving clerks, who noticed
that the railroad scale tickets indicated that the net weights were significantly less on all three of

the boxcars than those of identical shipments received on October 25, 1990. Bayfield's traffic
department was called to determine if lighter-weight dunnage or pallets were used on the
shipments. (This might explain the lighter net weights.) Bayfield indicated, however. that no
changes had been made in the loading or palletizing procedures. Hence, Wet-Land randomly
checked 50 of the bags and discovered that the average net weight was 47.51 pounds. They noted
from past shipments that the bag net weights averaged exactly 50.0 pounds, with an acceptable
standard deviation of 1.2 pounds. Consequently, they concluded that the sample indicated a
significant short-weight. (The reader may wish to verify the above conclusion.) Bayfield was
then contacted, and Wells was sent to investigate the complaint. Upon arrival, Wells verified the
complaint and issued a 5% credit to Wet-Land. Wet-Land's management, however, was not
completely satisfied with only the issuance of credit for the short shipment. The charts followed
by their mud engineers on the drilling platforms were based on 50-pound bags of treating agents.
Lighter-weight bags might result in poor chemical control during the drilling operation and might
adversely affect drilling efficiency. (Mud treating agents are used to control the pH and other
chemical properties of the cone during drilling operation.) This could cause severe economic
consequences because of the extremely high cost of oil and natural gas well drilling operations.
Consequently, special use instructions had to accompany the delivery of these shipments to the
drilling platforms. Moreover, the light-weight shipments had to be isolated in Wet-Land's
warehouse, causing extra handling and poor space utilization. Hence, Wells was informed that
Wet-Land Drilling might seek a new supplier of mud treating agents if, in the future, it received
bags that deviated significantly from 50 pounds.
The quality control department at Bayfield suspected that the light-weight bags may have
resulted from "growing pains" at the Orange plant. Because of the earlier energy crisis, oil and
natural gas exploration activity had greatly increased. This increased activity, in turn, created
increased demand for products produced by related industries, including drilling muds.
Consequently, Bayfield had to expand from a one-shift (6:00 A.M. to 2:00 P.M.) to a two-shift
(6:00 A.M. to 10:00 P.M.) Operation in mid-1988, and finally to a three-shift operation (24 hours
per day) in the fall of 1990.
The additional night-shift bagging crew was staffed entirely by new employees. The most
experienced foremen were temporarily assigned to supervise the night-shift employees. Most
emphasis was placed on increasing the output of bags to meet the ever-increasing demand. It was
suspected that only occasional reminders were made to double-check the bag weight-feeder. (A
double-check is performed by systematically weighing a bag on a scale to determine if the proper
weight is being loaded by the weight-feeder. If there is significant deviation from 50 pounds,
corrective adjustments are made to the weight-release mechanism.)
To verify this expectation, the quality control staff randomly sampled the bag output and
prepared the following chart. Six bags were sampled and weighed each hour.
Range

Time

Average
Weight
(Pounds)

Smallest

Largest

6:00 A.M.

49.6

48.7

50.7

7:00

50.2

49.1

51.2

8:00

50.6

49.6

51.4

9:00

50.8

50.2

51.8

10.00

49.9

49.2

52.3

11:00

50.3

48.6

51.7

12 Noon

48.6

46.2

50.4

1:00 P.M.

49.0

46.4

50.0

2:00

49.0

46.0

50.6

3:00

49.8

48.2

50.8

4:00

50.3

49.2

52.7

5:00

51.4

50.0

55.3

6:00

51.6

49.2

54.7

7:00

51.8

50.0

55.6

8:00

51.0

48.6

53.2

9:00

50.5

49.4

52.4

10.00

49.2

46.1

50.7

11:00

49.0

46.3

50.8

12 Midnight

48.4

45.4

50.2

1:00 A.M.

47.6

44.3

49.7

2:00

47.4

44.1

49.6

3:00

48.2

45.2

49.0

4:00

48.0

45.5

49.1

5:00

48.4

47.1

49.6

6:00

48.6

47.4

52.0

7:00

50.0

49.2

52.2

8:00

49.8

49.0

52.4

9.00

50.3

49.4

51.7

10:00

50.2

49.6

51.8

11:00

50.0

49.0

52.3

12 Noon

50.0

48.8

52.4

1:00 A.M.

50.1

49.4

53.6

2:00

49.7

48.6

51.0

3:00

48.4

47.2

51.7

4:00

47.2

45.3

50.9

5.00

46.8

44.1

49.0

6:00

46.8

41.0

51.2

7:00

50.0

46.2

51.7

8:00

47.4

44.0

48.7

9:00

47.0

44.2

48.9

10:00

47.2

46.6

50.2

11:00

48.6

47.0

50.0

12 Midnight

49.8

48.2

50.4

1:00 A.M.

49.6

48.4

51.7

2:00

50.0

49.0

52.2

3:00

50.0

49.2

50.0

4.00

47.2

46.3

50.5

5:00

47.0

44.1

49.7

6:00

48.4

45.0

49.0

7:00

48.8

44.8

49.7

8:00

49.6

48.0

51.8

9:00

50.0

48.1

52.7

10:00

51.0

48.1

55.2

11:00

50.4

49.5

54.1

12 Noon

50.0

48.7

50.9

1:00 P.M.

48.9

47.6

51.2

2:00

49.8

48.4

51.0

3.00

49.8

48.8

50.8

4:00

50.0

49.1

50.6

5:00

47.8

45.2

51.2

6:00

46.4

44.0

49.7

7:00

46.4

44.4

50.0

8:00

47.2

46.6

48.9

9:00

48.4

47.2

49.5

10:00

49.2

48.1

50.7

11.00

48.4

47.0

50.8

12 Midnight

47.2

46.4

49.2

1:00 A.M.

47.4

46.8

49.0

2:00

48.8

47.2

51.4

3:00

49.6

49.0

50.6

4:00

51.0

50.5

51.5

5:00

50.5

50.0

51.9

Discussion:
1. What procedures would you recommend to maintain proper quality control?

Case study 10: Moped Reliability Analysis

Shyam, a third year college student had purchased a moped, 2 years back. During the first year of
purchase, there were four free service coupons available and he had given regularly his moped
for servicing.
Presently he finds it is six months since he has given his moped for service. During last one
month, there were three times the moped didnt start and he had to tow it to a roadside mechanic.
The mechanic took normally three hours for repairing it. The fault was very often minor such as
spark plug. The mechanic charged between 50 to 100 Rs.
Shyam was considering whether he should go for dealer service where standard service was Rs
75 plus additional item cost. It would take 2 days if left at dealer service. Shyam is wondering
whether he should buy a new spark plug which will cost his Rs. 150. He found the number of
failures of spark plug in ten years time in a magazine which is as follows:
Time

No. of 3
failures

10

11

17

30

10

Questions:
1. Identify all the options available to shyam.
2. Conduct Failure Rate analysis and Mean Failure rate
3. Find the course of action for him based on above analysis and costs.