Effective management: a case of identifying issues in Cranston Nissan and modelling solutions to these isues

Author: Iloka Benneth Chiemelie

Published: 22-September-2014

Question 1

Cause – effect model for Cranston Nissan

Figure 1: cause and effect model for Cranston Nissan

The cause and effect diagram (Ishikawa as it is popularly known) is one of the most effective way for analyzing issues in a company and the factors that influenced such issues. Thus, it is expected that the diagram will be able to point out individual factors that have influenced quality issues in Cranston Nissan. These factors have been grouped under different variables as shown above and they are explained below.

People – in numerous cases as highlighted in the case, the mechanics did not own up to their faults. As noted, the case began with the car owner presented his car for “a paint job” following rust. However, the car went on to develop a number of mechanical problems such as door light not working, the security alarm always on, and the rearview mirror broken out and so on. It showcases a high level of irresponsibility from the side of the people involved because they did not do what the car owner wanted, they went on and spoilt the car, and they did not come out to take responsibility for their actions. It is also unethical because the ethics of the repair job should have been to repair the rust damages, thus any action (intended or unintended) to damage the car (either to delay repair or to extort money from the car owner) is considered unethical and that is exactly what happened in the case of people.

Management – the management is very poor, diffused and unaccountable because they tried to shift numerous issues relating to the car to either the owner or others. For instance, the repair manager shifted the car repairs to the service department manager after his team has been held accountable for a number of technical issues. Additionally, Jim Boyd told the customer that he will be accountable (incur costs) for all prices involved in the course of repairing damages caused by its department. This is insubordination at its grandest level and it left the car owner frustrated as well as discouraged with their services.

Process – there is no standard in the process of repair as anybody could easily walk in and do whatever he wanted on the car. It is expected that a rust repair would only involve rearranging the metals and painting it (two department at the maximum), but the mechanics went into unauthorized areas and soon caused numerous mechanical issues. A standardized process would have eliminated the potential for such issues to occur.

Environment – the repair shop has a low customer service environment as they did not take any remorse or some caution in addressing the customer needs. They are cases where the customers had been directly blamed for what is not his fault and also forced to pay $127 bill for damages which he was earlier told that he will not be held responsible for.

Equipment and materials – the company lacked some of the needed equipment and materials are understocked and this delayed the repair process. For instance, the repair was delayed buy at least 24 hours due to the company ordering “molding” as it was not in stock.

From the above discussion, it is now clear that numerous issues have combined together to create the low quality standards. In any case, all these issues revolve around the management as the management needs to organize the whole process in such a way that efficiency and effectiveness is ensure in the service deliver process.

Question 1

The most probable cause: Management

Literatures have noted that consumer complaints are healthy for a business because it helps to highlight where the business has been underperforming and provide possible solutions to such underperformance (Susskind, 2005). On the same hand, past literatures have also made known that it is the responsibility of management to ensure that such complaint are well addressed just as it is also their responsibility to ensure that such complaints are not there in the first place (Gountas & Gountas, 2007; Gursoy, Mcleary, & Lepisito, 2007; Jones, Mcleary, & Lepsito, 2002; Kim & Chen 2010; Singh, 1990).

Figure 2: How management is the most probably cause of problem in Cranston Nissan

From the above figure 2, it is evidenced that the management is the main root of all the problem because the management has the power to control the whole process and ensure that effectiveness and efficiency is delivered. For instance, they can directly hold all involved departments responsible for their actions in the course of the repair and this will ensure that individuals who effected the damages on the car are easily fished out and addressed with cautionary messages as necessary.

Additionally, it is also the responsibility of the management to create standards in the delivery process by ensuring that each department clearly understand their responsibilities and address such responsibilities with highest level of quality standards already defined. Since the management did not do this, all departments where free to attend to the car even when there were no issues emanating from the repair process that is related to their department. The outcome is more damage than repair as experienced in this case.

The management also has the responsibility of recruiting high performing staffs by closely review all applications and ensuring that they meet standards in employment because they are given the necessary opportunity to work with the company. Since they did not do this, the company is potentially filled with incompetent staffs.

Overall, the management has responsibility to ensure efficiency and effectiveness through organizing the repair process and ensuring that needed stocks are available in the warehouse. This responsibility is what they failed to uphold to and the outcome is a high degree of inefficiency and ineffectiveness in their service delivery process. Thus, it is recommended that the management take up their responsibility is the whole process is to be changed for better and failure to do so will mean that process delivery will continue to be negatively affected and more customers will be dissatisfied.

Question 3

Solutions to address the quality problems: Must Dos for the general manager

Earlier understanding made known that complaint management is an important aspect of any given business, but the fact is that what matters most is how the company addresses such compliant. Existing researches also support the view that successful addressing of complaints can even increase customers’ loyalty and overall satisfaction because they feel that they are welcomed and attended to by the company (Gountas & Gountas, 2007; Gursoy, McCleary, & Lepisito, 2007; Jones, McCleary, & Lepisoto, 2002; Kim & Chen, 2010; Singh, 1989, 1990; Susskind, 2005). Thus, it is important that Cranston Nissan addresses the issues identified and since the management has been described as having a big role to play, below are the recommended must does in order to eliminate the issues discussed:

Establish a clear operations standards – the main reason for the issue is that there is no standards in terms of guidelines and approaches that must be followed. The management needs to group each functions into department, highlighting what each department needs to do and their overall power or authority in the repair process. This will limit the potential of workers undertaking tasks that are not assigned to their respective departments as is the case of “rust repair” transforming into mechanical issues that were not well repaired.

Assign supervisors to each repair function – throughout the case, there was no mention of a supervisor and I is supposed that the management didn’t assignment any supervisor for the repair process. Thus, this made it difficult to identify which staff did what and when the staff did it. Assuming there was a supervisor to monitor the whole repair process, mechanics responsible for the repair failures would have been easily identified, and thus it is recommended that the management should assign supervisors to monitor the whole repair process.

Enact quality customer relationship management team – in the whole process, the customer was not attended to by any quality customer representative as he was being rudely transferred from one department to another, resulting in more damages than repair. Thus, it is recommended that the management need to redesign their customers relationship management process in such a way that customer feel very welcomed and their issues clearly written down before any mechanic is allowed to attend to their needs. This will ensure that issues are clearly communicated between the customers and the company via the customer relationship management system and cases of customer bring an issue while a mechanic is busy handling different issue from the customers’ need is reduced.

Stock needed materials for production and recruit competent staffs – the management also needs to address the issues of stock availability by ensuring that all needed materials for the repair process are stocked as necessary. This is because delays where experienced in the case due to lack of stock. Additionally, the complaint made known that the company was not successful in addressing customers’ issue of “rust repair”, and also created numerous other technical problems in the process. As such, it can be said that this is because of incompetence in the side of the staffs. Had it been that the mechanics where competent, they would have solve the problem without creating additional ones or at least returned the car in its original state during the course of the repair. As such, it is recommended that the management should look into recruiting more competent mechanics that will handle repairs at ease without creating more problems for the customer.

Question 4

Preventing future reoccurrence and improving Cranston Nissan: TQM

Numerous definitions have been attributed Total Quality Management (TQM) by both practitioners and academicians. As defined by Besterfield (1995), TQM is both a philosophy and set of guiding principles used to represent the basic of an organization that is continuously improving. This is made possible by integrating fundamental elements of the organization’s management system with existing improvement on efforts and technical tools in order to define disciplined approach for undertaking their management process.

Wilkinson and Wither (1990 made use of three words to define TQM as:

1.      Total – involving everyone (customers and suppliers)

2.      Quality – meeting customers’ requirement exactly

3.      Management – senior executives are fully committed (Ho, 1999).

In another definition, Berry (1991) presented TQM as a total corporate focus on meeting and potentially exceeding the expectations of customers while also reducing the costs that customers incur due to poor quality by adopting a new form of management systems and corporate cultural values (Yusof, 1999).

In essence, TQM calls for a transformation in the organizational culture and this will require employees to be involved at all levels as well as have a high teamwork spirit with their customers, suppliers, the managers, and other employees alike. Employees’ involvement, participation and empowerment is the main bases for TQM (Saylor, 1992). There are a number of essential principles that can be implemented in order to ensure greater market share, higher profit level, and reduced costs. These principles are as discussed above in the case of Cranston Nissan with represent to how the company can avoid this quality issue in the future and become successful maintenance center for customers.

Management leadership and commitment – the company needs to establish solid management system that is committed towards meeting the needs of customers and increasing performance of the management. This will ensure that customers are more satisfied and loyalty increased through subsequent increase on the level of customers’ satisfaction.

Continues improvement - the difference between companies in quality management is reflected on the extent at which they change their low values at present into a higher value for future performance. Thus, continuous improvement is needed in Cranston Nissan. The company needs to take all complaints handed in by customers (such as the one being discussed in this case) seriously and improve based on such complaints in order to avoid future reoccurrence. For instance, is the company is able to resolve the issues complained about in this case, future reoccurrence will be significantly reduced and potentially eliminated.

Total customer satisfaction -  this is a must do for any business that wishes to create sustainable operation because it is only through customers; purchase that investments can be returned and customers repurchase when they are satisfied with past experience. Thus, Cranston Nissan needs to ensure that customers are satisfied at all times by offering quality services that exceeds their expectations. They can achieve this by taking down customers’ needs and addressing such needs as required by the customers.

Employee involvement – the needs of customer are meet through the individual actions of the staffs that form units of the production process, thus it is recommended that staffs of Cranston Nissan need to work together as a team and help each other in order to ensure effective delivery.

Training and education – as time pass by, changes are experienced in technology and such changes are transferred into the production of cars. Thus, it is necessary that those in the business of car repair are updated with such changes in order to further advance their competence. As such, it is recommended that Cranston Nissan should train its staffs in line with recent automobile technologies as the cases of unrepairable mechanical failures in the case analyze could be due to these staffs not being updated with new technologies.

Reward and recognition – reward and recognition is part of the HRM program and the purpose is to keep employees satisfied. Cranston Nissan needs to understand that its growth is dependent on the level of employees’ satisfaction because when employees are satisfied, they will increase their overall satisfaction with a subsequent increase in their productivity and commitment expected.

From the above analysis, it can be seen that careful adoption of all the features discussed will increased the performance of the company while also reducing potential for issues to reoccur in the future. The reason is because all the features are based on integrating the whole system to become one uniform unit where all processes are standardized and quality constantly enhanced. As such, success awaits Cranston Nissan is it will be able to successfully integrate all the TQM features discussed above into its management system.

References

Besterfield, D.H. (1995) Total Quality Management, New Jersey, Prentice Hall Inc.

Gountas, J., & Gountas, S. (2007). Personality orientations, emotional states, customer satisfaction, and intention to repurchase. Journal of Business Research, 60(1), 72-75.

Gursoy, D., McCleary, K. W., & Lepsito, L. R. (2007). Propensity to complain: Effects of personality and behavioral factors. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research, 31(3), 358-386.

Jones, D. L., McCleary, K. W., & Lepisto, L. R. (2002). Consumer complaint behavior manifestations for table service restaurants: Identifying sociodemographic characteristics, personality, and behavioral factors. Journal Of Hospitality & Tourism Research, 26(2), 105.

Kim, J., & Chen, J (2010). The effects of situational and personal characteristics on consumer complaint behavior in restaurant service. Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, 27(1), 96-112.

Saylor, J.H. (1992), TQM Field Manual, McGraw Hill, USA.

Singh, J. (1989). Determinants of consumers’ decisions to seek third party redress: An empirical study of dissatisfied patients. Journal of Consumer Affairs, 23(2), 329-363.

Singh, J. (1990). Identifying consumer dissatisfaction response styles: An agenda for future research. International Journal of Marketing, 24(6), 55-72. doi:10.1108/03090569010140516.

Susskind, A. M. (2005). A content analysis of consumer complaints, remedies, and repatronage intentions regarding dissatisfying service experiences. Journal of Hospitality &Tourism Research, 29(2), 150-169. doi:10.1177/1096348004273426

Yusof, S.M. & Aspinwall, E.M. (1999) Critical Success factors for total quality management implementation in small and medium enterprises, Total Quality Management, Vol. 10, pp. 803-809.