New Product Introduction Process for Centre Punch Technology (CPT) - Quality Manager's Challenge

This project asks you to put yourself in the shoes of the Quality Manager for a small but ambitious manufacturing company that wish to grow their customer base. The company is called Centre Punch Technology (CPT), and their primary business is the manufacture of centre punches for sale around the globe.

The company prides itself on a strong quality reputation, and this has been the basis of its organic growth to date. Some of CPT competitors do not have that same quality reputation and have had to do product recalls for the following failure modes:

• Soft punch tips
• Punches fracture when being used
• The punch slides across the work piece when being used
• Punches going rusty in the customers tool box

The Managing Director of CPT has given you the challenge of creating a New Product Introduction process that will ensure any new centre punches that the company wishes to introduce to the market place to grow its business as a minimum keep the customer satisfaction at the current levels butpreferably improve them.

The Managing Director (also known as the lecturing team) would like to see in your proposal the following:

1. Create a management philosophy for CPT based on the teachings of leading academics, authorities or industrialists. Your philosophy should include:
2. Five golden rules that the company should always follow to ensure customer satisfaction
3. Critical analysis of why you have selected your five golden rules
4. Define the role that business leaders will need to play and what sort of business culture your golden rules will create
5. References or case studies to support for proposal

A description of the Quality / Engineering tools and techniques that you are proposing the company should adopt to assure the quality of the centre punches and ensure customer satisfaction. You should identify at least 5 different methods and be able to explain:

What the tool or technique does

How do you apply the technique

Classify if the technique is:

1. Inspection
2. Quality Control
3. Quality Assurance
4. Total Quality Management
5. The benefits its application will bring to CPT

A one page graphical summary of the new product introduction process, the process should contain all of the tools and techniques you have identified in part 2 (see above). Please share your proposal in the form of either:

1. A timing plan with linked activities showing leadership for each task
2. A process flow diagram showing the links and ownership for tasks

Learning Objectives:

1. Apply the philosophies, tools, techniques and systems associated with Total Quality Management
2. Differentiate between Inspection, Quality Control, Quality Assurance and Total Quality Management programmes and critically review where and when these techniques are applicable.
3. Assess the maturity of an organisation's quality programme including cultural and leadership aspects.
4. Developing new products and processes into an organisation.
5. Plan and implement activities which will improve a quality programme within an organisation and move the organisation towards Total Quality Management
6. Underpin work with reference to supporting literature and case studies