You have just been hired as the director of process improvement, a new position, b

You have just been hired as the director of process improvement, a new position, by the VP of Operations for the ABC Manufacturing Company. ABC has been plagued by both internal and external vendor issues; the vendor issues involved repeated late deliveries and poor quality, while internally poor deliveries to customers resulted from both vendor issues, as well as quality and scheduling issues. The CEO’s instinct is that the factory could benefit from some wide-reaching process improvements.

The VP of Operations has decided that a far greater focus on vendor quality and internal process improvements must be taken. The VP of Procurement, prior to your coming on board, had already met with the CEO’s of ABC’s 4 major vendors and alerted them that he expected them to begin turning around their quality performance. About a month prior, he had sent each a letter suggesting several formal overall quality programs that they may embark upon, which included the following:

TQM

• Juran’s Trilogy
• Crosby’s program
• Deming’s program
• Six Sigma

The VP has already received the following responses from each of the main vendors, and he asked you, in coming months, to work with each vendor as they implement their quality initiatives.

• Company A had written back that it was planning to implement the Juran program but had not yet begun, hoping you could visit and shed some light on the overall concept, methodology, pros, and cons.
• Company B had written back that it was planning to implement the Crosby program but had not yet begun, hoping you could visit and shed some light on the overall concept, methodology, pros, and cons.
• Company C had written back that it was planning to implement the Deming program but had not yet begun, hoping you could visit and shed some light on the overall concept, methodology, pros, and cons.
• Company D had written back that it was planning to implement a TQM program but had not yet begun, hoping you could visit and shed some light on the overall concept, methodology, pros, and cons.
• Company E had written back that it was planning to implement the Six Sigma program but had not yet begun, hoping you could visit and shed some light on the overall concept, methodology, pros, and cons