ANALYSIS OF BUSINESS PROBLEM – CAN YOU ANALYZE THIS PROBLEM? (1)

As an MBA student, I know that most of what I will be studying at the Lagos Business school will be case studies that deal with real life situation. I was well prepared for this and for someone just coming out of an 18-years of professional examination, I thought this will be a push-over. Alas, I was proved wrong the first time I stepped into LBS, analysis of business problem class.

The first case that caught my attention was “can you analyse this problem”. When the facilitator mentioned that, I thought that was the topic but was dazed, when he said that was the title of the case we shall be analysing. How can the title of the case be can you analyse this problem? Well that was the title so, get down to it. What was even the case all about? Why don’t you read the case and see if you will like it? I thought to myself.

The case was in form of a dialogue between various managers in in a plant which manufactures quarter panels. These are the body parts that cover the front quarters of the car, including the wheels. There was a defective output of about 10% of the panels coming from some lines were being rejected by the Quality control because of some burrs and other rough spots. There were different managers responsible for the various lines and they have different personalities and ways of dealing with their operators.

So, the plant manager and three key subordinates are trying to find out why burrs and rough spots are suddenly appearing on so many panels, causing them to be rejected. They strongly suspected deliberate sabotage by the operators on the production lines, who were reported to be angry over the suspension of one of the operators by a supervisor who accused him of drinking on the job. The operators have threatened to call for strike if the supervisor was not reprimanded for his action which seem to be arbitrary and also that the operator should be recalled.

Meeting had been called and various submissions had been made by the supervisor and the decision is now left for the manager to make but before then he had called someone to join the follow-up meeting. This person just came back from a problem solving and decision-making course. She was called in just to gauge if she had learned anything from the course she recently attended.

In analysing the problem, the new entrant to the meeting noticed that the problems were not properly defined and so she felt that was the first thing to do. She was also able to separate problem from a decision. She felt that in analysing the problem initially, what the participants came up with was the decision. She also felt that they were jumping into conclusion without necessarily defining the problem. She sees problem as a deviation from some standard of desired performance and decision is a choice among various ways of getting a particular thing achieved. She affirmed that every problem has only one cause. She also pointed out the one-by-one process of going from one problem to its cause, which may be a problem to be solved.

to be continued…