The Problem
A company which supplies parts and services has certain requirements from its customers, which include low cost, reliable assemblies, and on-time delivery. While all three factors are important to both the supplier and the customer, the customer has identified delivery time as their primary concern since they do not have the resources to handle the variation. The supplier is late far too often, and if the supplier ships the assemblies too early, it causes problems for the customer. As such, the company wishes to use a Six Sigma approach to reduce variability in delievery times. Six Sigma is a term for various coroporate strategies used to lower variation and unpredictability in some aspect of a product.
The company held an internal meeting to improve their delivery process. They defined a measurement, �Customer Delivery,� which is the number of days between when a shipment is promised and when it is actually shipped. The measurement is positive number if the shipment is late and is negative if the shipment is early. At the meeting, the company discussed what they can measure at their facility as a predictor of Customer Delivery. Students will mathematically identify which factors contribute to variation in Customer Delivery and produce a set of recommendations for the company to reduce that variation