Bayfield Mud Company Case Study

Case Study 1: Bayfield Mud Company

PROBLEM:

Wet Land Drilling had filed a complaint that the 50-pound bags of treating agents that it had just received from Bayfield were short-weight by approximately 5%.

CASE FACTS:

        The light-weight bags were initially detected by one of the Wet Lands receiving clerks who noticed that the railroad scale tickets indicated that the net weights were significantly less on all three of the boxcars than those of identical shipments received on October 25, 2011.

        Wells, investigated the complaint and was verified light-weight and issued a 5% credit to Wet Land.

        The quality control department at Bayfield suspected that the light-weight bags may have resulted from “growing pains” at the Orange plant. Because of economic conditions, it had caused of increase in demands for products produced by related industries, including drilling muds. Consequently, Bayfield had to expand from a one-shift (6:00 am to 2:00 pm) to a two-shift (6:00 am to 10:00 pm) operation in mid-2004 and finally to a three-shift operation (24 hours per day) in the fall of 2010.

ANALYSIS/HYPOTHESIS

        Based from the given sampled bag output, the average weight from the third shift seems to lost control. The recorded weight on the third shift were less than 50 pounds or should I say, they are light-weight. This is because the quality control in charge of checking this only remind occasionally.

ALTERNATIVE COURSES OF ACTION

        To avoid this type of conflict, Bayfield company should suspend their quality control in charge because of negligence. Another solution is, they could install security cameras to monitor their employees if they are really doing their jobs in working hours. Lastly, they should hire a new quality control specialist with high dedication on work that can periodically check the operation.

RECOMMENDATION

        Bayfield Mud Company should revise their quality management plan. First, they should check their machineries before the operation to avoid errors and disasters. Second option is they should hire a new quality control specialist that could monitor the operations from time to time to avoid errors.

Assignment

In

MGT05B: Total Quality Management

Submitted by:

Flora Mae O. Carilo

BSBA-FM/III-A

Submitted to:

Prof. Patrice Grace Caneo, MBA