Comments on: A Lean Case Interview

By: Donovan

Donovan — Sun, 16 Sep 2012 04:03:54 +0000

Kate has the answer. It should have been SIPOC, Pareto, 5 whys and boom you’re at the “CH labeling problem”. I wonder if changing the button labels to an image would work — at least for the Chili Fries. Seems like that might be difficult to implement as a $2 fix, but I am sure it would be very inexpensive.

By: Kate

Kate — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 03:32:36 +0000

All the items have a “ch” as part of their name. Probably next to each other on the cash register (Chicken sandwich, Chicken sandwich – spicy, and Chili Fries). Change the templates on the cash register to be a more logical layout.

By: Jennifer Ford

Jennifer Ford — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 19:07:17 +0000

Please don’t say that the item on the register was mis-labeled lol. If they didn’t get what they wanted, I would wonder what they ordered vs. what they got to see if there was a pattern there. What happened next?

By: psabilla

psabilla — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 00:11:54 +0000

Using a standard checksheet, There are many fast-food-type products. But, the three that had the highest returns were Chicken Sandwich (52%), Spicy Chicken Sandwich (13%), and Chili Fries (4%). The rest of the returns are spread-out and trivial.

Question 1: What is an appropriate way to visualize the quantitative data above?

This company collected free-text responses for the returned products. The free-text responses are difficult to summarize because that is the nature of free-text responses. BUT, there seemed to be an overwhelming theme:

“I didn’t get what I wanted”

Question 2: Given the information above, what would you now do?

By: Julien Couvreur

Julien Couvreur — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 20:27:17 +0000

Peter, do you plan to follow-up on this post? Will you share the story in a future post?

By: Prasad

Prasad — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 08:30:21 +0000

Under what circumstances would customers return products? Was it because the order was not executed properly? Was there a change in the way returns were captured over the past three months?

By: james

james — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 00:30:19 +0000

Hmmm…what were the product types that had the increase?

By: psabilla

psabilla — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 03:55:12 +0000

“Scrap Rate” is actually better called “Returns” — in other words, the frequency of returns by product type. So, fries, burgers, etc. would be returned by the customer, those returns were collected by the front-line associates via a checksheet.

This checksheet data showed an increase in returns for 3 specific product types. Why?

By: Sean

Sean — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 20:30:08 +0000

What is the ‘scrap rate’, how are the metrics collected, by whom, and how does it cost the company $35K / month?

By: james

james — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 15:57:21 +0000

Hey Peter,

That was going to be my first question. Sometimes how we measure a defect changes over time or changes from location to location.

So, how did they define “scrap rate”?

james

By: psabilla

psabilla — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 04:29:46 +0000

Hey Thomas,

You’re right, that is a good place to start. It might help to also know what exactly is meant by “Scrap Rate”.

By: thomas marotta

thomas marotta — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 14:08:51 +0000

Good place to start would be:

Question 1 – Why is the scrap rate increasing?
Question 2 – Why?
Question 3 – Why?
Question 4 – Why?
Question 5 – Why?