Question: Window Frames. Christenson, Hutchinson, Mechem, and Theis worked with a manufacturing engineering department in an effort to identify cause(s) of variation and possibly reduce the amount of offset in window frame corner joints. (Excessive offset had previously been identified as the most frequently reported type of window nonconformity.)
(a) How might the company have come to know that excessive offset in corner joints was a problem of prime importance?
(b) What step in the six-step cycle corresponds to your answer in (a)?
(c) The team considered the following six categories of factors potentially contributing to unacceptable offset:
(1) measurements,
(2) materials,
(3) workers,
(4) environment,
(5) methods, and
(6) machines. Suggest at least one possible cause in each of these categories.
(d) Which step in the six-step cycle of Table is most clearly related to the kind of categorization of factors alluded to in part (c)?
