BUS258 You Decide Week 2

Scenario
You just took a new job as general manager with
a manufacturing company. They brought you in because sales and profits are
declining. As you look into the company sales and profits issues during the
first few weeks, you also observe that in addition to the declining sales, the
company has complaints from customers about a variety of issues including late
shipments, defective products and wrong invoices. Your sales and manufacturing
groups blame each other and the customer for the issues including misleading
information given to the customer by sales, incorrect information from the
customer regarding specifications, and unrealistic ship dates. On Thursday
morning of your third week a customer called with a complaint about defective
product. The cost of the complaint could be significant. The department
managers all have different opinions on how to handle the complaint. By
Thursday afternoon you find that some of the required information to make the
part was missing. It was a rush job. The information is normally requested from
the customer by customer service. By late Thursday you have the following
positions:

Role
You have two roles here. The first is how to
handle the complaint from the customer. Secondly you must decide on the
customer relations position you want for the company.

PLAYERS:
Bob Yeader
Sales Manager
We have policies on how to handle the complaint.
The policy is clear; it is the customer’s responsibility to provide the correct
information. The customer did not provide all the information needed in a
timely basis to produce the part. This is a long term customer and they know
what information is needed.

Dori Lately
Operations Manager
I agree with Bob. It is not our issue. It is
certainly not a production issue. We did not have the correct information. The
customer needs to pay for a second run or sales needs to pick up the cost. It
is not my issue. This is due to a rush job, which we see way too often. I need
more time to run these jobs. And we cannot run this job again for a week.

Jennifer Garland
CFO
I don’t care whose issue it is, we can’t afford
to rerun this part. Sales and operations you need to get your act together.
Customers are paying a lot for these rush jobs. If you did them right, our
financial picture would be much better.

Monica Milton
Customer Service
Representative
I am terribly sorry about this mix-up. We did
request the information but received it late Friday. It was too late to get the
information to the production floor and the part ran on Saturday. No one
authorized me to work overtime and no one was available late Friday to process
the information.

Sam Spaniel
Customer
I need parts and I needed them last
week. What are you going to do to get me parts today?

Deliverable
Given the scenario, your role and the
information provided by the key players involved, it is time for you to make a
decision.