Weingart aircraft case free essay sample

The President Ralph Larsen has realized that Wengart has some major problems with the quality however he is focusing on the profitability instead of the longevity of the company. He needs to have the team focus on improving the quality problem or the company’s profits will continue to decrease. Larsen in the effort to improve the quality has decided to seek out help from an OD practitioner who suggests to Ralph to implement Top Quality Management (TQM). Larsen feels that this should be easy to implement and hands it off to Kent Kelly the Vice President. He feels that the TQM program was a matter of common sense (Brown, 2011, p. 365). I. Problems A. Macro 1. Wengart Aircraft should mandate total quality management throughout the whole company. All groups should be embracing this change including the CEO and other top managers must visibly support TQM, which is not happening by current President Ralph Larsen because he is more concerned with improving profits. Larsen wants to spend his time trying to increase profits for Wengart Aircraft. His yearly bonus is totally based on the profits. Since he spending his energy in other places instead of investing his time in implementing TQM but Larsen thinks he is not needed to lead the team. Larsen should spend more time making sure the company’s customers are happy with the quality and the profits will come. 2. Wengart Aircraft has been spending a lot of time on rework and that is now acceptable in their company. This has had a different effect of how the customers feel and they are now complaining about this need for rework and lack of quality from Wengart Aircraft. Wengart Aircraft needs to change their corporate culture to reflect the need for quality the concept of TQM cannot be successful going forward. Corporate culture must support continues improvement and quality needs to be seen as a way of life (Brown, 2011, p. 346). B. Micro 1. Profits are not where they need to be with the quality issues and could continue to decrease if there are not improvements to the quality. The Secretary of Defense sent a letter to Larsen stating that if there is not a 20% quality improvement in the next six months the government will exercise its contract provision to withhold partial payment as a penalty (Brown, 2011, p. 364). 2. Wengart Aircraft top management officials are worried about the increasing of profits because of their bonuses. The President Ralph Larsen stated that he didn’t have time to get involved in the implementation of TQM because he needed to spend his time and energy improving profits (Brown, 2011, p. 365). II. Causes 1. Wengart Aircraft needs to implement TQM because of the recent lack of quality in their aircraft. It is currently at an all time low. Due to the bad quality of their aircrafts large contracts such as the federal government are threatening to not pay for services rendered. The federal government has encouraged all defense contractors to implement TQM and would look favorably on Wengart Aircraft if they were to implement TQM as well (Brown, 2011, p. 364). This process is not being bought into by upper management by their biggest concern of the profit side of the company. 2. TQM is being implemented by Wengart Aircraft because of the acceptance of rework. Wengart Aircraft must buy into TQM making the corporate culture change of accepting of the rework they have done because of the poor quality of their product. Wengart Aircraft must incorporate â€Å"doing it right the first time† in their TQM objectives and change the corporate culture so there is a reward for exceeding internal and external client’s needs (Brown, 2011, p. 346). Since there is not quality built in to each step of the aircraft assembly they are not embracing the TQM standards. 3. The implementation of the TQM program is not being properly clarified for the other groups of management. The managers haven’t had proper training or guidance of what the expectations of the team to attain the desired results to improve the quality throughout the company. III. Systems Affected 1. Structural – the company needs to flatten out the management authority for better communication at all levels. The teams are lacking structure to implement TQM and understand of how it can affect quality. 2. Quality – the company throughout management and productions workers question TQM and believe that it is designed to speed up production and would cause the reduction of the third shift. Allen Yoshida is now more worried about production instead of productivity 3. Productivity – Veteran workers George Karas and Shannon Potowski calculated that 20 % of the time their group worked on reworking defective harnesses (Brown, 2011, p. 365). They believe that TQM will increase productivity and cause layoffs in the plant. IV. Alternatives 1. Bring in a new Quality Manager with TQM experience to implement the needed changes to bring improvement and make their customers feel that favorable changes are coming. Set up a quality team that includes union and management members of the company 3. Educate all members of management on TQM implementation and the importance of quality products reaching their customers. V. Recommendations The recommendation for Wengart Aircrafts is the first alternative along with implementing specific goal setting for each department. By also implementing continues improvement and performance management standards and expectations the president is setting clearer goals for his expect