Continuous Improvement Process And Plan For Latino Engineering

Introduction to Continuous Improvement Process

Question:

Discuss about the Software Testing and Continuous Quality Improvement.

Continuous improvement refers to the ongoing efforts of companies for improving quality of their products, services or business processes. It is also well known as continual improvement process. For some of the organizations, continuous improvement process is a meta-process which improves their most of the management systems like project management, quality management, business process management, program management and many others. It is a never-ending change which works for increasing efficiency and effectiveness of a firm (First, Kendler and Leibenluft, 2017).

For the current study, given a case study of Latino Engineering, a midsize organization of New South Wales, Australia is taken into consideration. By focusing on the situation of the body, the file explains the causes of its problem by using appropriate tools and techniques, a plan for eliminating them and continuous improvement plan for ending them.

According to the given case, Latino Engineering a medium scale firm is situated in New South Wales, Australia. The company offers to design, developing and manufacturing of the engineering equipment to the different industrial sectors such as construction, infrastructure, etc. The cited firm is working for 30 years and famous among the customers due to its quality of services and products. After a specific time, Dominic Latino took a big step of selling outrights of the company to the suitable investment group. After 12 months of the takeover, Latino Engineering started receiving complaints from the clients. It is essential for the company to resolve these claims for maintaining its brand image among the clients. For handling the situation, it is necessary to understand the cause of the allegations, and this can be done only by using appropriate tools and techniques. In context to this, some of the 7 Quality Control tools are described below which will help in identifying the cause of the problem efficiently (Milner, Milner, Savage and Savage, 2016).

Cause and Effect Tool: This is also called as fishbone method which represents the various causes of occurring incident. This method includes the group causes into the categories: People, methods, materials, environment, machines, and measurements. Concerning this, 5 Ms is appropriate for the Latino Engineering for finding the root cause of its problem.

• Machine: The Company is using latest technologies for designing, developing and manufacturing the systems. There is no problem in this factor of the Latino Engineering as all the machines are updated and as per the requirement of time.
• Methods: The processes used by the employees of the firm are somewhere inappropriate as clients are receiving defective equipment, wrong packaged products along with long turnaround time. This represents that company processes are improper which is decreasing the quality of services to the clients (Dale, 2015).
• Materials: The type of raw materials, techniques, information and consumables used by the Latino Engineering are of high quality. There is no ignorance concerning the quality of materials used for the production of equipment.
• Man: The root cause of the complaints is the workforce of the Latino Engineering. According to the case, the company is receiving claims in the area of defective equipment; poor follow up with the clients, no response to the customers, etc. This shows that workers of the firm are working carelessly and this is affecting the quality of services and products as well.
• Medium: The environment of Latino Engineering can also be the reason behind occurring problems as the company has purchased by the investors. Due to which some senior engineers with good experience, proper knowledge, leave the organization. Lack of talented and experienced employees in the company can result to create a problem in handling issues and managing processes.

Check Sheet: In this, the company gathers the data in real time at the location from where it was generated. With the help of this, data is collected in the form of defect type, defect location and defect cause. In context to it, defect type is related to the equipment manufactured by the firm, defect location is nothing, and defect cause is the improper management of the business activities. This collected information shows that quality of the machines is decreasing with time after the takeover of the Latino Engineering.

Quality Control Tools for Identifying the Causes of Problems

Histogram: This tool helped in understanding the problem in graphical representation. While using this method, data regarding the sales, profitability, cost related to raw materials, etc. are calculated. The graph shows decline in the sales along with profit margin which shows dissatisfaction of the clients towards the equipment and services of Latino Engineering.

Control Chart: This tool of quality control helps in finding whether the business processes are in a state of control or not. Use of this tool shows that quality of the products and services of the Latino Engineering are not right which results to dissatisfy the customers. Various complaints within a year of turnover represent that control over the business processes is not appropriate. The company needs to analyze its internal working environment for handling the issue (Hexom and Menoher, 2015).

Pareto Chart: In this, left vertical axis of the graph represents the frequency of occurrence whereas right vertical axis defines the cumulative percentage of the total number of incidents, total cost, etc. The bars show that before the take over the company was gaining high profit due to more demand for equipment but after the takeover, this line has been decreased which indicates that there is some change in the business processes and management processes of the firm.

Thus, from the above tools of Quality control, it is clear that main reason behind the occurring problems in Latino Engineering is its turnover. After this, the company is facing issues regarding the low-quality equipment and services. Turnover of the firm results to make senior workers leave their job for better opportunities. Lack of talented and experienced employees is affecting the management of business processes, decisions regarding manufacturing strategies and approaches and other management activities. All this is resulting to improper packaging and delivering of the products to the clients, damages in equipment, poor follow up and many other complaints. It is essential for the organization to search out best suitable solutions for the problems for regaining its market position and reputation.

The plan for eliminating the cause of occurring problems in Latino Engineering needs Critical Success Factors (CSF). These factors are essential for the companies or their projects to accomplish the missions. This is also called as key result area (KRA) and Key Success Factors (KSF). As a project management consultant, it is clear that CSF will help the organization in handling its complaints related to the poor quality of equipment, improper customer service, inappropriate follow-up and many others. For developing an effective continuous improvement plan, it is necessary to find the right critical success factors which can help the respected firm in accomplishing its objective of eliminating the root causes of the problems. The CSF which can help in improving the issues by handling the causes behind them are described as below:

Case Study: The Situation of Latino Engineering

Leadership: According to the given case, employees of the Latino Engineering are unable to provide desired products and services to the customers who are tending to dissatisfaction. For handling this issue, it is necessary to have experienced and skilled leader who can guide and monitor the work of the workers. Under the guidance of the leader, staff members of the cited firm will able to improve their performance and working capabilities. Along with this, use of participative leadership style will help workers in taking appropriate decisions regarding the follow up with clients, handling queries of the customers, delivery, and packaging of the equipment and many others. Apart from this, leadership will also enhance motivation level and self-esteem of the employees which will create open and interactive working environment of the organization (Lewis, 2016).

Training and education: Latino engineering needs to provide appropriate training to its employees for developing their management, communication, decision making, etc. skills along with knowledge regarding the production, packaging, and delivery of the produced equipment. This critical success factor will help in fulfilling the absence of senior engineers for handling the business processes effectively and efficiently. Training will also enhance the quality of production which will improve the complaints of the clients regarding this. Along with this, training needs to be conducted under the guidance of experts which will lead to answering the queries of the employees regarding the poor services. Training is required in order to provide customer service team of the Latino Engineering for enhancing their problem solving, communication, time management, and relationship management skills. This will eliminate the complaint of customers regarding the non-responsive customer service team.

Customer Focus: Another critical success factor for eliminating the cause is to pay attention to the demands and needs of the clients. By focusing on the customer requirements, employees of the company will able to handle the issues regarding the wrong engineering equipment packaging and delivery, defective engineering equipment and too long turnaround time for the issue resolution. It is the prime responsibility of the organizations to fulfill wants, desires, and needs of their customers. In context to this, Latino Engineering must look after the requirements of their clients along with the issues occurring to them. This critical success factor will not only improve the market position of the firm but also redevelop the trust and loyalty of consumers towards it.

Project Tracking and reviewing: By using this critical success factor, Latino Engineering will able to improve its packaging and delivering processes along with reducing the chances of producing damaging engineering equipment. It is necessary for the company to track and review the business processes for handling occurring issues and enhancing the quality. This CSF will lead to improving the quality of equipment by documenting and storing the information regarding the delivery of materials.

Critical Success Factors for Eliminating the Causes of Problems

With the help of above CSF, Latino Engineering will able to design effective and efficient continuous improvement plan. The Continuous process improvement (CPI) program which will lead to the formation of CIP is as follows:

Identification of the issue: In this step, the problem of the Latino Engineering will be identified. As per the case, the company is suffering from delivery of inferior quality products or services to the customers which is affecting its brand image, market reputation, and customer base. The primary issue is lack of proper management strategies for handling the manufacturing processes along with worker’s performance.

Documentation: In this stage of CPI, Latino Engineering needs to keep a record of all the problems it is facing along with the CSF which can handle them properly. This will help in the appropriate assessment of the issues like poor customer service, damaged equipment, wrong packaging and delivery of products, etc.

Alignment with the organization’s values, vision, and strategy: It is necessary that the changes which are proposed should fit the plan and vision of the Latino Engineering. The firm can use business values for supporting the change and improving the present situation. In this, CSF customer focus will lead to fair decision-making process regarding the selection of strategies and approaches.

What is needed? In this, Latino Engineering will segregate the processes which need to stop, improve and replace. This division of operations will handle them as per the requirement and lead to taking decisions related to implementing changes (10 Steps to Continuous Improvement. 2017).

Delegation: Latino engineering will make sure that all the workers along with their leaders will support the change. This will lead to the commission of work and responsibilities as per the talent and expertise of the employees. Nomination of the most desirable candidate will help in driving change regarding the improvement in customer services, change in strategies for packaging and delivery of products, etc.

Communication: By communicating the needed changes along with regular updates regarding the implementation will lead to better results. Sharing the information with the employees will increase their contribution and interest in making appropriate adjustments for handling the issues. CSF like training, leadership, etc. will help in applying this step of CPI effectively.

Starting small: By breaking the changes into the small goals, Latino Engineering will able to resolve each complaint one by one. This will also implement the changes more easily and effectively. One by one resolution of the problem will improve and enhance the quality of equipment and services.

Feedback: In this step, top management level of the company will have to take feedbacks from the both customers and employees. These reviews about the implemented change will aware about the results and level of improvement occurred in the problems. An open discussion will inform about the actual image of implemented solutions for handling the complaints discussed in the case.

Monitoring: It is important to monitor every step of collecting information regarding the impact of change on the overall performance and quality of the business processes and workers. Regular monitoring will also help in handling the issues causes during the process of implementation of change into the working environment of Latino Engineering. Project tracking and reviewing CSF will assist in monitoring the impact of applied solutions for improving the quality of services.

The above program will help in handling the issues of Latino Engineering effectively. These steps will help in development and deployment of the proper continuous improvement plan for resolving the problems described of the case (Dale, 2015).

From the above-discussed CPI program, an ongoing improvement plan for the Latino Engineering is as follows:

S.No.	Issue	Improvement action required	Responsible person	date	outcome
1	Poor customer services	Training to the customer service team for enhancing their communication, problem-solving, etc. skills	Project Manager	2 months	Proper handling of queries, development of effective relations with customers
2.	Defective Engineering equipment	Proper monitoring of the processes and selection of new strategies for reducing the chances of producing faulty products	Production Manager	1 month	Less defective equipment, high-quality products as per the needs of customers
3.	Poor design and development follow up with the clients	Formation of follow up under the guidance of leader	Leader	2 weeks	Proper discussion with the customers, adequate follow up with communication regarding the new strategies, techniques, etc.
4.	Too long turnaround time for issue resolution	Solving the problem under the guidance of leader, focus on the customer’s issue for offering the quality services	Project Manager	2 weeks	Implementation of Risk assessment process for handling the problems effectively.
5.	Wrong engineering equipment regarding the packaged and delivered to the clients	Proper monitoring of the processes	Production Manager and team	2 months	Packaging of right product and delivery to the right customer

Recommendations are explained below which Latino Engineering needs to follow:

• Company should analyze the working environment time to time for evaluating any risk or issue
• Organization need to use risk assessment process for identifying available risks
• The firm should hire senior workers for improving business processes.

Conclusion

From the above, it is concluded that Latino Engineering will able to handle the problems with the help of effective Continue process improvement which will result in the development of Continuous Improvement Plan.

References

Dale, B., 2015. Total quality management. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

First, M.B., Kendler, K.S., and Leibenluft, E., 2017. The future of the DSM: implementing a continuous improvement model. Jama Psychiatry, 74(2), pp.115-116.

Hexom, D. and Menoher, J., 2015, January. Using Data-Driven Decision Making for Continuous Improvement in University Programs. In International Conference on Education and e-Learning (EeL). Proceedings (p. 40). Global Science and Technology Forum.

Lewis, W.E., 2016. Software testing and continuous quality improvement. CRC press.

Milner, C.D., Milner, C.D., Savage, B.M., and Savage, B.M., 2016. Modeling continuous improvement evolution in the service sector: A comparative case study. International Journal of Quality and Service Sciences, 8(3), pp.438-460.

10 Steps to Continuous Improvement. 2017. [Online]. Available Through: <https://thisisremarkable.com/business-tips/10-steps-to-continuous-improvement/>. [Accessed on 5^th October 2017]