Product details

A medium-sized Canadian packaging firm is facing the potential recall of 90,000 individual products by one of its major pharmaceutical clients. The defects are packaging-related and were traced to a lot of customer-finished boxes that Jones, Box and Label had recently delivered. The immediate issue is to determine the problem causing defective packaging materials and how to solve it. Other business basics include: quality assurance, what type of relationship between buyer and supplier is most effective for problem-solving and whether the anticipated level of uncertainty dictates the nature of buyer-supplier relationships. The case introduces students to Kepner-Tregoe problem solving and offers an opportunity to compare and contrast this problem resolution methodology with Ishikawa (or fishbone) diagrams and other problem-solving techniques.