The Story

The DXL printer produced by Cranda Technologies has been in trouble-free production for over two years. It is a miracle of miniaturization with the paper drivers attached to the sheet guide by a space-age adhesive. Cranda was a respected player in the electronics field with over 35,000 employees domestically and as many in 30 different countries.

But in a short period of time 2,226 printers had been returned from the consumer, to the retailer, to the wholesaler, back to Cranda. The consumer’s complaint was a defective paper driver which detached itself from the sheet guide, making the printer useless. Now the Printer Assembly Section was in turmoil with accusations of incompetence flying all over the shop.

The Markets Division immediately sent out replacement printers to the customers. 1,126 of these replacements were returned with exactly the same defect. Now there was a negative spectre looming over Cranda: There were still defective printers out on the consumer market which hadn’t yet been reported and the replacement printers were defective. It appeared that there was a major problem in the Printer Assembly Section.

Job Hansen, the Printer Assembly Section Chief, had a very angry group of workers on his hands; the Markets Division had gone out of their way to heap abuse on everyone in Job’s section. There was even a fist fight in the parking lot involving members from the two Divisions. Job had always been a quality conscious manager; yet he was considering leaving Cranda because of the failure. Senior Management at Cranda decided to act swiftly; the media had gotten ahead of the story and the issue was rising to crisis proportions. All this in a company that had always prided itself on high staff morale and loyalty as well as low turnover.