Date of Award
1989
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Business Administration
Department
Business
First Advisor
Jack Kirk and Joe Ancona
Second Advisor
Arlene Taich
Third Advisor
Mike Wood
Abstract
The intent of this project is to suggest a more efficient way to increase productivity and reduce errors in customer shipments. This method will save our facility $1.7 million annually while costing nothing to implement. In the Service Parts Operation in St. Louis, we service some 1,200 dealers in 14 states. At G.M. Parts, our goal is to offer a better, more effective distribution network to service our dealers and satisfy their customers. To maintain this high level of service, we must constantly strive for new ways to reduce errors, cut cost and improve worker satisfaction, We must not only use the state of the art equipment to track our work, we must also strive to get worker involvement and participation. Once the workers buy into the program and take responsibility for servicing our customers, half the battle is won, On the other side of the coin, management must listen to the workers who handle the parts on a daily basis and take their suggestions seriously.
In this project we will demonstrate that getting workers involved and expecting them to do things right the first time will be cost effective, increase productivity, and lead to job enrichment. We will put checks in place to monitor our system on a random sampling basis, If these checks indicate a jump in errors of more than 2 percent, we will trace back to the source and cure the problem at this point rather than waiting four weeks for our current reports to come out. By this time, the cause may be untraceable and reoccur on a cyclical basis, This trace back will also give us future references should a similar problem arise.
We will also monitor through receivable and shipment reports our fast and slow moving parts so they may be located in the warehouse accordingly. The faster moving parts will be centrally located rather than scattered throughout the warehouse. This will reduce walk time and cut down on fatigue.
Once this system is in place, overtime should be drastically reduced. Employee complaints should be greatly reduced and customer satisfaction should increase.
Recommended Citation
English, Ralph (Randy) R., "Quality and Productivity Improvement Through Defect Prevention and Worker Involvement" (1989). Theses. 152.
https://digitalcommons.lindenwood.edu/theses/152
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License