Question

Chick-n-Gravy Dinner Line

The operations manager of a company that produces frozen dinners had received numerous complaints from supermarkets about the company’s Chick-n-Gravy dinners. The manager asked her assistant, Ann, to investigate the matter and to report her recommendations.

Ann’s first task was to determine what problems were generating the complaints. The majority of complaints centred on five defects: under-filled packages, a missing item, spilled/mixed items, unacceptable taste, and improperly sealed packages.

Next, she took 800 samples of dinners from the two production lines and examined each sample, making note of any defects that she found. A summary of those results is shown in the table below.

Defect Observed
Date	Time	Line	Under-filled	Missing Item	Spilled/Mixed	Unacceptable Taste	Improperly Sealed
5/12	0900	1		✓✓	✓	✓✓✓
5/12	1330	2			✓✓		✓✓
5/13	1000	2				✓	✓✓✓
5/13	1345	1	✓✓		✓✓
5/13	1530	2		✓✓	✓✓✓		✓
5/14	0830	1		✓✓✓		✓✓✓
5/14	1100	2	✓✓		✓	✓✓
5/14	1400	1			✓		✓
5/15	1030	1		✓✓✓		✓✓✓✓✓
5/15	1145	2			✓	✓✓
5/15	1500	1	✓		✓
5/16	0845	2				✓✓	✓✓
5/16	1030	1		✓✓✓	✓	✓✓✓
5/16	1400	1
5/16	1545	2	✓	✓✓✓✓✓	✓	✓	✓✓

1. Name one non-conformance.
2. Make a check sheet for the chick-n-Gravy Dinner Line.
3. Make a Pareto Chart for the chick-n-Gravy Dinner Line. *use Excel to create Pareto chart and insert it in Word document.
4. What problem should Ann solve first and why?
5. List two potential causes for problem chosen in previous question (Q4 part 4).

Answer 1

Ann should solve the problem of unacceptable taste as it is the major contributor to the defects (30.99%).

The top two contributors are Unacceptable taste and missing item.

Applying the Pareto 80-20 rule. the first 3 defects are the contributors of 76% of the defects.