Assignment:
Using basic TQM techniques and the case below answer the following 2 questions:
1. Should they have lowered their spec and established a new tolerance?
2. What should they do to solve this problem
A large baker of products sold across the U.S. began having serious problems. Although they had not changed the standards and tolerance for their most famous and widely sold product, the large batches were now routinely out of spec. The bread was to have a defined density but when measured during the process some loaves where found to be as much as 1% below spec. The tolerance was 0.05% so these loves were at variance to the established specifications.
They held a production meeting and after much argument, finally decided that perhaps the spec was too tight and moved the specification for density to 1%. Naturally this did not solve the problem and the density numbers kept growing and were now up to as much as 1.3%. Something is clearly wrong
Additional information:
Ingredients for this bread come from four different vendors.
Some of the equipment in the plant was more than 50 years old
Moves to modernize the process had always been met with great displeasure by the family/owners
They have 5 years of bread density data hiding in the production manager's office.
Four experienced new bakers had been added to production in the last four years
The bread is sourdough specialty bread that was difficult to make and had an art to making it correctly.