Building and Using Models

Building and Using Models

Per the textbook, in order to understand the causal relationship in business process, manager often asks “whys” to drill down the root cause of failures. Select one (1) project from your working or educational environment and propose at least three (3) “why” questions that you would ask in order to identify root cause of problem. Justify your responses.

Currently, I am dealing with a dilemma at work where 1588 vehicles were added to a campaign that impacts every location where each vehicle is domicile at Ryder Shop locations. What this does is impact each shop’s performance if they don’t schedule the units on time to fix the Telematics device that we support. The problem is that my group which consists of only two people, due to shortages that happened earlier, is getting bombarded with emails from all the 900 shops asking to remove these units from their Vehicle Maintenance Performance Metric. The excessive emails are not adding value to our daily tasks and are taking away time from tasks that are more necessary to perform. The decision came from my supervisor which I did not agreed with but now is impacting my group’s performance. As a manager, I am now analyzing where we failed to correct the problem by asking the five whys:

Q. Why was inaccurate data sent out to the shops?

• Why are the shops sending us numerous emails to remove units from their performance report?
• Because the data was not accurate.

R. Because we don’t have time to go over all the tickets opened on a daily basis to review them and close them appropriately.

Q. Why don’t we have time to review these tickets on a daily basis?

R. Because our Service Desks ticketing system does not communicate with our shop’s system and my group has to create a new ticket in our system so that it can impact the shop’s performance. We have a delayed information system and reviewing /closing tickets takes time.

Q. Why does the service desk system does not communicate with the shop’s system to prevent your group from creating an unnecessary (duplicate) work?

R. Because we recently transitioned to a 3rd party Service desk supported by our vendor and the amount of work that was done by the previous help desk was not accurately considered especially knowing that the gap that had to filled in by my group was not attainable for two individuals.

Q. Why was the duties performed by the previous help desk not considerably match against the members of my group?

R. Because we did not perform a statistical analysis. We did not collect all the necessary data, past trends, future projects to consider if the new project was physically possible. We did not thoroughly think this through and did not close all the gaps appropriately.

The root cause for this problem is that we did not gather actual data and numbers to show leadership that this project should have been rejected. We lack statistical skills, and our new leader is not knowledgeable about our process but pushed for this project to go through to mark a change. I think the process can be improved and we are fine-tuning the glitches as we move along. We are getting IT involved to make systems talk to each other to eliminate non-value added work.

Hi Aleah

I like your rationale and the 3 questions suggested have a valid point but I think that if we keep digging or asking more, we can find more validations to the hypothesis and actual root cause. For example, I agree with the critical thinking for the second question and I would add possible lack of training now compared to previous years. From this point, we can ask why Verizon is training less when technology is ever changing. Is it because management doesn’t view it as necessary or is there a cut in operation cost? If so, why… does leadership need to review their management structure or are finances affecting a part of a business. Statistical thinking can be complex if you start analyzing different avenues. We need to collect data and try to target the most significant events.

I agree with Mark fields, Ford’s CEO, opening statement that Leaders are always looking for innovation to set a standard. This is true but only if it is feasible and profitable. This is not a light decision that Ford would make before first having conducted extensive analysis especially when this truck makes up for Ford’s 90% of profits. Indeed, they had to have perceived some sort of niche when new product and development thought of the aluminum bodywork and fuel efficiency was probably the main factor that attracted the idea. Most of us have seen in the past how oil prices can affect the economy and it is not guaranteed that oil prices will remain low. Therefore, it makes sense for a company to be innovative and build a heavy duty truck that weighs less than competitor’s trucks, carries heavier cargo, and offers 20% better fuel efficiency because all three of these main benefits will attract consumers that like this type of trucks. In today’s, world where we have multinational companies globally competing, innovation is one of the key factors that would drive growth and an increase in market share.

Advantages:

Sits on Steel frame but the sides, roof, is all made of aluminum which makes it 700 lbs lighter and is capable of carrying heavier cargo. 20% better fuel efficiency

Aluminum is more dent resistant. Ford is teaching its dealers new aluminum body repair techniques .

Gas making it more attractive for customers which has been a challenge in the past

Shaniqua

All great points, I am impressed. All these key points I learned in one of my first classes at Strayer, Contemporary Business for Managers and Marketing. Every company needs to have a vision, mission, and values and definitely need to conduct a SWOT analysis if they want to survive in this ever changing global market where everyone is competing to become the “bigger fish”. All are check points that must be analyzed using statistical thinking and all the tools learned in this class so far.