The management and control of quality

James R. Evans y William M. Lindsay.

Mason OH: South-Western: Cengage Learning., 2011, páginas 579-581
ISBN: 9780324783209

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Managing for Quality and Performance
Excellence, Eighth Edition
James R. Evans and William M. Lindsay
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Chapter 11 Six Sigma and Process Improvement
QUALITY IN PRACTICE
ApPLYING QUALITY IMPROVEMENT TOOLS TO AN ORDER FULFILLMENT PROCESS44
This case study involves a large automotive parts
distribution center in Europe. Car dealerships
and repair garages from several countries call in
orders for replacement parts needed to repair vari-
ous types of motor vehicles. When an order is re-
ceived, the distribution center must quickly locate
the requested parts and ship them to the repair
facility. Time is of the essence because car owners
typically become increasingly upset the longer
their vehicles are out of service.
Because the distribution center was having
trouble shipping orders on time, many of its cus-
tomers were unhappy and threatening to switch to
other part distributors. To appease these custom-
ers, the manager of the center promised all orders
would be delivered within 24 hours or the cus-
tomer would get the parts at no charge. The man-
ager then assembled a team to discover ways to
reduce order processing time so at least 98 percent
of orders would meet the 24-hour deadline.
To better understand the situation, the team
decided to draw a map showing how an order
was received, filled, checked, packed, and finally
shipped to the customer. After discussing the re-
quired steps and actually following an order from
start to finish, the team created a flowchart of the
entire order fulfillment process. The diagram,
which is shown in Figure 11.19,identifies those
activities the team had the power to change and, it 50. When these average times were analyzed with
was hoped, improve. This type of layout also en-
couraged every team member to focus on the big
picture rather than on only the particular activity
in which he or she worked.
To determine where the longest time delays
were occurring, the team randomly chose 50 orders
from those received during a one-week period. As
members tracked these selected orders through
the distribution center, they noted the time each
entered and left the various activity areas appear-
ing on the flowchart. To ensure these times were
accurately and consistently recorded, the team
designed the check sheet shown in Figure 11.20.
One sheet was used per order, with the completion
time for a given activity computed by subtracting
its in time from its out time. For example, order
XR-03018began the "pack parts" activity at 2:16P.M.
and finished at 2:34 P.M. Therefore, the time to
579
Figure 11.19 Flowchart for the Order
Fulfillment Process
Receive order
Pick parts
Move to inspection
Check order
Move to packing
Pack parts
Move to shipping
Ship to customer
Source: Reprinted with permission from Davis R. Bothe, "Improve
Service and Administration;' Quality Progress, September 2003,
pp. 53-57. Copyright © 2003. No further distribution allowed without
permission.
. complete this particular activity was 18 minutes
(2:34-2:16).At the end of the week, the average
completion time for each activity was calculated
by adding its 50 completion times-one for each of
the 50 orders tracked-and dividing this total by
the Pareto diagram in Figure 11.21,picking time
was identified as the largest contributor to order
processing delays, representing about 52 percent
of the total time needed to process an order.
Based on this new information, the team re-
fined its original mission statement, "Reduce the
time for processing an order," to the more specific,
"Reduce the time for picking parts." With the
scope of the search narrowed to just the picking
operation, members invited some of the part pick-
ers to join the team because these personnel were
the local experts in picking parts and possessed
the most knowledge about the function.
Toprovide a more detailed analysis of the pick-
ing operation, the 50 individual times recorded for
picking orders (one from each of the 50 check sheets
collected during the team's earlier study) were plot-
ted on the histogram in Figure 11.22.The shape of
580 Part 3 Six Sigma and the Technical System

Figure 11.20 Check Sheet for Recording Times Figure 11.22 Histogram of Picking Times

10
C!J
OJ X n = 50
""0 8 X
Order # XR=03018 Recorder Robert X=
- 0 X X
13.9
Date 16 Dec Comments '0 6
>- X X X
Times 0
c 4
x x x x
Activity In Completion
OJ X X X X X X
Out ::::J
0" X X X X X X X X X
Receive order 1:24 131 7 OJ
t.t 2 X X X X X X X X X X
Pick parts 1:32 1:51 19 X X X X X X X X X X X X X X
0
Move to inspection 1:52 2:03 11 0 4 8 12 16 20 24 28 32
Check order 2:04 2:10 6 Time to complete picking activity (minutes)
Move to packing 2:11 2:15 4
Pack parts 2:16 2:34 18
Source: Reprinted with permission from Davis R. Bothe, "Improve
Move to shipping 235 2:38 3
Service and Administration;' Quality Progress, September 2003,
pp. 53-57. Copyright © 2003 American Society for Quality. No further
distribution allowed without permission.

Source: Reprinted with permission from Davis R. Bothe, "Improve

Service and Administration;' Quality Progress, September 2003, He explained that many orders were filled with just
pp. 53-57. Copyright © 2003 American Society for Quality. No further
distribution allowed without permission.
one trip, but two were sometimes required and,
on occasion, even three. Thus, the left hump could
the histogram-having three humps-was an initial consist of times an order was completed with only
surprise because it implied the existence of three dis- one trip, the middle could represent those requiring
tinct clusters of picking times. With this valuable clue two, whereas the third could be those in which three
in mind, the team now concentrated on what could trips were needed. By watching the part picking t
be responsible for these three separate time groups. activity for two days, the team members could a
During a brainstorming session, a part picker verify the part picker's theory was indeed correct. 1
suggested the three humps of the histogram re- Armed with this additional insight, the team a
flected the number of trips made to the parts storage brainstormed reasons multiple trips were needed to c
area of the distribution center to complete an order. complete an order and then 'organized these ideas
on the cause-and-effect diagram in Figure 11.23. F
Figure 11.21 Pareto Diagram for Average Time After discussion, the team eventually decided the
of Each Activity push carts used by the part pickers to carry the
parts were too small (see the equipment branch of F
Figure 11.23).When part pickers were gathering L
60
parts to fill a large order, the cart became full long
OJ before all the needed parts were gathered. The c
E G
;:0
picker had to travel to the inspection area to empty "(
'0 40 C
OJ the cart and make a return trip to the warehouse to C
OJ
co retrieve the remainder of the order.
C
OJ
2 20
As a pilot study, a few wider push carts were
OJ
0... ordered and put into service for a one-week trial C
Q

run. Although more parts could fit into these new u:

0
r carts, the pickers complained they were so wide
'i'S''0 ,*,<:::-'0 '*' ' 0 ~o" ~0'S'e<" two of them could not pass each other in the
0,,00
~\0 «0-0 00
,,09 narrow aisles, causing traffic jams and thereby
,-0\
~o-..\0 actually increasing picking times. The team then sc
tried using longer carts, which were found to take Ac
care of both problems. By watching the part pick- Cc
Source: Reprinted with permission from Davis R. Bothe, "Improve
ing activity over the next several days, the team
Service and Administration;' Quality Progress, September, 2003,
pp. 53-57. Copyright © 2003 American Society for Quality. No further was able to verify the switch to longer carts greatly A
distribution allowed without permission. reduced the number of multiple trips needed. In th
 Chapter 11 Six Sigma and Process Improvement 581

Figure 11.23 Cause-and-Effect Diagram of Potential Causes of MultipleTrips

Stacking method

Location of parts Picking style

Number of parts in order Items carried per trip

-+-
32 Part timers
Forklift
Experience

ier

Source: Reprinted with permission from Davis R. Bothe, "Improve Service and Administration;' Quality Progress, September 2003,
pp. 53-57. Copyright © 2003 American Society for Quality. No further distribution allowed without permission.

fact, with the new push carts, a picker could often consider that on an eight-hour shift, a part picker
19 complete two small orders during the same trip. spends about seven hours-420 minutes-actually
:ee To estimate the decrease in part picking time, the gathering parts. Using the old push carts, a
team constructed a histogram of 30 picking times picker would complete an average of 30.2 orders
associated with the longer carts (see Figure 11.24). (420/13.9) per shift. With the longer carts, that same
This example has a urtimodal distribution, with an picker could now complete 50.6 orders (420/8.3)
average picking time of only 8.3 minutes vs. the per shift. This increase of 20.4 orders (50.6-30.2)per
to original average of 13.9minutes. worker meant the four part pickers could fulfill an
Although a reduction of 5.6 minutes (13.9-8.3) additional 81 orders (20.4x 4) during their shift.
per trip doesn't seem like much of a time savings, Thus, the seemingly small reduction in average trip
time translated into a fairly significant increase in
the throughput of this bottleneck operation.
Figure 11.24 Histogram of Picking Times with
,f Longer Carts
Key Issues for Discussion
10 1. Explain how the process the team followed
(j)

Qi
8
x n = 30 might align with DMAIC, the Deming
<J X
a x x x= 8.3 Cycle, and the creative problem solving
'0 6 X X
>- process described in Chapter 7.
o X X X
c
Q) 4 X X X X 2. What might the team do if the reduction in
'e :::J
0' X X X X order processing time resulting from the in-
11 Q)
u:
2 X X X X X X
x x x x x x x troduction of the longer carts was not large
~w 0 enough to achieve the goal of having 98 per-
e 0 4 8 12 16 20 24 28 32
cent of the orders meet the 24-hour deadline?
Time to complete picking activity (minutes)
3. Suppose packing parts is now the activity
responsible for the greatest delays in pro-
n Source: Adapted from Davis R. Bothe, "Improve Services and
Administration;' Quality Progress, September 2003, pp, 53-57.
cessing an order. How might this affect the
ike
Copyright 2003 American Society for Quality. Reprinted by permission. project organization and next steps? _
:k- T"""'I
1
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