Sam Monahan Dropped His Car Off For Repair At Cranston Nissan

Operations Management

Mini-Case Analysis #6

A customer, Sam Monahan, dropped his car off for repair at Cranston Nissan on August 28th, with a quoted repair time of three to four days. The ensuing three weeks consist of a litany of issues involving the repaired vehicle cropping up again and again. It is important to note that none of these issues involved the initial reason for the car being dropped off for servicing. The majority of Sam’s issues were sent to Jim Boyd, the body shop manager. On multiple occasions from September 1st to the 6th, Jim Boyd failed to return the car to Sam in proper working condition, with often one repair creating another issue. After multiple failed attempts and billing issues, Sam began to deal with Ted

Many dealerships require workers to sign off on the work order stating the repairs were done properly. This makes it easy to see who is causing the problems and forces workers to be responsible for their mistakes. If you knew the exact person who was failing to properly fix Jim’s car, you can reprimand him and demand a higher quality of work. This would have cut down on Jim needing to return multiple times to the dealership due to shoddy work. I would also ensure that the managers are aware that putting a customer through this sort of ordeal is unacceptable and by the time Jim came back for the third time it was their responsibility to get the car working properly. I would make managers become more involved by reprimanding them if a customer has to return a third time for the same issue. This not only makes managers care more for the quality of their employees work, but also gives them a vested interest in making sure no customer has toe endure what Jim did. I would also institute a review system to allow customers to rate the workers they deal with. A customer should not have to write a letter to the general manager for such an issue. A review system would allow customers to express any displeasure with any employee whether management or worker. This review system could be tracked to see who is being thorough

Since the general manager probably did not implement this process, his company failed to identify these problems before a customer came with a complaint about lack of service quality. There was also a lack of Continuous Process Improvement, which is to examine processes in an organization and redesign them to improve throughput, the flow of goods and services to customers, and the collection of revenues. The general manager should immediately investigate for the cause of the poor performance. This can be achieved through the implementation of Statistical Process Control (the use of control charts), and Continuous Process Improvement. Through these methods, the GM can narrow down where the quality within the company is faltering and how to best remedy the issue at hand. Once those problems have been eliminated, quality can be restored to a nominal level and in turn can produce customer-pleasing results. As Total Quality Management suggests, improved quality achieves lower warranty costs, lower repair costs, higher efficiency and higher customer satisfaction, which in turn provides repeat business and increased profits, a mutually advantageous scenario for all parties. The GM’s long-term goals should be to enforce these procedures far enough in advance that quality will always stay at peak levels of performance. The GM should try to avoid