Please refer to the Case description of the hypothetical grocery delivery company.
Let's suppose the company has Taken Off, and is now a Big Deal in Silicon Valley. Thousands of otherworldly, overpaid people, many of whom could either find the time to go shopping themselves, or delegate the task to their PAs, have come to rely upon MyShoppingCart.com for groceries - and not just at 3:00 AM on Sunday morning.
The company's success has been due to its clean, beautifully intuitive shopping app, which works flawlessly on every device, and also to its awesomely fast delivery service. In one instance, which has become the stuff of local legend, a millionaire's trophy wife was horrified to discover that she was completely out of cocktail onions, and a party she was hosting was beginning in a half hour. She placed an order on her cellphone, and a motorcycle courier from MyShoppingCart had the onions in her hand in 17 minutes flat. (That $1.75 jar of onions did, of course, cost her $50, charged to her American Express card, but she didn't notice.)
But now the company has encountered a problem -- the warehouse. There are bottlenecks: it's taking too long for items to get from the receiving side of the shipping dock to the shelves. It's taking too long to pick an order from the shelves and get it out the door, in either a car trunk or motorcycle saddlebags. There's no minimum acceptable time for either activity; the emphasis is always on making things faster.
Obviously, it's impossible to know the particulars of what's going on. But how would you find out? Once you know, what sort of program would you put into place, to make things better? In particular:
1. How would you go about benchmarking the warehouse's performance?
2. How would you collect data concerning the details of warehouse performance?
3. How would you apply the PDCA process to improving performance?
References:
ASQ (2014). Plan-do-check-act (PDCA) cycle. Retrieved on 30 Nov 2015* from
https://asq.org/learn-about-quality/project-planning-tools/overview/pdca-cycle.html
Moen, R. & Norman, C. (n.d.) Evolution of PDCA cycle. Retrieved on 30 Nov 2015* from
https://pkpinc.com/files/NA01MoenNormanFullpaper.pdf
Murray, M. (2015c). Total quality management (TQM). Retrieved on 30 Nov 2015* from
https://logistics.about.com/od/qualityinthesupplychain/a/TQM.htm
Murray, M. (2015d). Benchmarking in the supply chain. Retrieved on 30 Nov 2015* from
https://logistics.about.com/od/qualityinthesupplychain/a/benchmarking.htm
Murray, M. (2015e). Continuous Improvement Tools. Retrieved on 30 Nov 2015* from
https://logistics.about.com/od/qualityinthesupplychain/a/Continuous-Improvement-Tools.htm