Running Head: CASE STUDY 2 1

CASE STUDY 2

Nguyen Nhat Minh

BSM405

City University of Seattle

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EXCUTIVE SUMMARY

A Tip Top store at southern US has gotten numerous protests from clients. As result, the

administrator of the store recorded the grumblings for last nine Tuesdays to investigate and make

suggestions for advancement. The store performed an improving maintenance on July 15 for

restrain principle issues like out-of-stocks, checkout/pricing issues and update the store support.

By gathering the information from investigation, this analysis assesses the maintenance on July

fifteenth and make suggestions for the store to diminish client's grumblings.

ANALYSIS

1. Check sheet

1- 8- 15- 22- 29- 6- 13- 20- 27-

Date
Jun Jun Jun Jun Jun Jul Jul Jul Jul
Out of stocks 4 4 5 8 7 9 8 13 12
Pricing/Checkout 5 3 9 2 5 4 6 5 1
Maintenance
3 5 3 3 3 7 4 4 8
layout
Quality issue 7 7 5 4 2 1 0 0 0

Employee behavior 2 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 1

The check sheet above outlines the objections from clients by partitioning them to five

classifications of grumblings. First of all, the out-of-stock issues tripled after nine-week

period. The pricing/checkout and maintenance layout problems has the same trend as

fluctuated around 4 and 5 complaints. In contrast, the quality issue dropped from 7

complaints to 0 in last three weeks. Employee behavior is a trivial cause which has only 0
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to 1or 2 complaints. After the maintenance performed on July 15th the pricing/checkout

issue decreased to 1 on July 27th while other two main issue took off in last two weeks.

2. Pareto diagram

The pareto analysis shows the complaints from customers by different groups of issues. Following

to the diagram, the highest amount of complaints related to out-of-stock issue with 70 complaints

overall. The pricing/checkout and maintenance problems have followed behind by 40 complaints.

In addition, the quality issue is recorded with nearly 30 complaints. As can be seen from the

diagram, little complaints from customers relates to employee behavior as a trivial category. As

result, the principle issues like out-of-stock, pricing/checkout and maintenance problems the store

cause to almost 80% complaints of customers.

3. Run chart
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23
22 22 22
21
20
19
18
17

1-Jun 8-Jun 15-Jun 22-Jun 29-Jun 6-Jul 13-Jul 20-Jul 27-Jul

Number of complaint

A run chart describes the trend of complaining from customers from June 1st to July 27th. As we

can see from the chart, normally the complaints recorded around 20 complaints. The highest

complaints recorded on June 15th and dropped to 17 after that a week. After the store performed

an improving maintenance on July 15 for restrain principle issues like out-of-stocks,

checkout/pricing issues and update the store support, the line rose from 19 to 22 on July 22nd and

27th as none of effect reflected from the improvement.

4. Cause and effect diagram

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The common cause of out-of-stock issue is the delay in delivering goods which can be caused by

suppliers or external effects such as traffic jam. Moreover, the low-quality goods imported from

suppliers also a major reason for out-of-stock to sell. From the store ground, if the manager does

not spend time to check inventory and predict customer’s demands, then the inventory cannot

handle enough supply for customers. Last but not least, suppliers can refuse to deliver goods if the

store cannot afford imported costs.

5. Recommendations

Bargaining with suppliers for the quality of goods and the timely delivery can help to limit out-of-

stock problems. Besides, new suppliers should be ready to replace if the current suppliers are

unable to deliver goods for unexpected reasons or the quality of products of current suppliers is

not guaranteed. Moreover, the manager should spend more time to concern about customer

demands and the improve the inventory system.

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As the quality of product issue did not received any complaints in last three weeks, then this issue

does not need to be concerned. However, the maintenance layout should be improved by maintain

and upgrade machines in the store like air conditioner, shopping cart, ATM, etc. Recruiting more

sanitation workers to clean up the store.

Training employees is a solution to rise the working speed and efficient of cashiers. In addition,

the training program can also support the development of employee’s behavior. Come back to the

pricing/checkout issue, more new checkout counters can share a number of customers with current

checkout counters to reduce the waiting time of customer.