Alabama Air Case

1. State any business problem that the enterprise needs to resolve: Darden Restaurants needs to manage a supply-chain of highly perishable items such as seafood, over 35 countries, while managing costs and product quality. Furthermore, the company needs to ensure a strict protocol of inspection and quality assurance throughout the supply chain. 2. Briefly summarize relevant background information from the case. Darden restaurant owns popular brands such Olive Garden and Red Lobster, comprising of 1400 restaurants in the US. These are 300 million meals served annually with purchases from 35 ountries. The average shelf life of the food item is 4 days and temperature of 34 degrees must be ensured at each step of the way. 3. Describe how the enterprise dealt with its issues and their relevance The airline executives have decided to use Statistical Process Control tools to measure the airlines on-time performance and to guage how it is doing in relation to the rest of the airline industry. The Data: WeekLate FlightsFraction Late 120. 02 240. 04 3100. 1 440. 04 510. 01 610. 01 7130. 13 890. 09 9110. 11 1000 1130. 03 1240. 04 1320. 02 1420. 02 1580. 08 620. 02 1730. 03 1870. 07 1930. 03 2020. 02 2130. 03 2270. 07 2340. 04 2430. 03 2520. 02 2620. 02 2700 2810. 01 2930. 03 3040. 04 120 4. Using a 95% confidence level plot the overall percentage of late flights p, and the upper and lower control limits. p =Total Number of errors Total Number of Sample p=120=0. 04 (100)*(30) sigma=SQRT(((. 04)*(1-. 04))/100) sigma=0. 02 UCL=p + 2*. 02=0. 08 LCL=p – 2*. 02=0 Using 95% Confidence leve l (z=2), we plot a control chart for the fraction of late flights for ezch week. We also superimpose the industry upper and ower control limits of . 1 and . 04 repectively: The Fraction of flights late on Week 3, 7, 8 and 9 fall above the UCL of . 08 for Alabama Air. For each of these weeks management needs to get detailed data on what the problems were with the flights that were late. The fact that 3 out of the 4 weeks where the process was out of bounds were consecutive point to non-random causes for the issue. Management can conclude that they are doing better than the industry averages since the industry industry control limits are higher than the Alabama Air ones.