Strategic Management - Dow Chemical Company

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Increased rate of motor vehicle accident

To reach the goal of safety and health, Dow had fully used the DMAIC approach to reduce the motor vehicle accident problem.

Step 1: Measure

A project team has been established by Dow Chemical for the initial goal of reducing accident rate by 20% over a year and reach 50% for the following years. The team began to collect data on the variables that caused motor accident.

Step 2: Analyze

After an extensive research, the team had categorized three possible risk factors that caused accidents: environment, methods and people. One TQM tool has been used (cause and effect diagram) to support this research. The cause and effect diagram can clearly state out all the small factors that categorized under 3 main factors that together lead to the occurrence of motor vehicle accidents. (Next page to see the diagram)

Step 3: Improve

After the risk factors clearly shown in cause and effect diagram, the team constructed a series of standard procedure to deal with the risk factors. Furthermore, to make sure that whole worker clearly knew about the risks factors that caused accidents, the team published the finding of the Six Sigma project into their web-based newsletter (United States Department of Labor, 2005).

Step 4: Control

This will be the final phrase for DMAIC approach as Dow need to ensure that the project need to be controlled all the time so that to continue develop further for improvements. Specific presentation and new criteria for investigation of motor accident had been held for developing suitable measures and worker education program.

Result: There is a 30 % reduction of accident occurred in 2003 and 2004. Dow was able to reach their line goal in 2005 as they successfully reduced the accident rate for 50%. Six sigma project has succeed after Dow adopted it by forming a project team to investigate on this issue.

Ineffectiveness project planning and organization

Here are some of the strategies which can solve the problem stated in the previous question. Other tools are inefficient at this moment but Mindjet offer a much better product to use which also in turns to train employees. By having Mindjet connecting with the employees, it is important to have link with the six sigma curriculum. Dow chemical company created a better space to think of creative ideas and share information.(Mindjet, n.d.). Thus, the platform combines into the six sigma methodology, allowing employees to generate and share ideas. Given the needs to enhance better in the future business world, Dow’s employees will need an easy platform to use which makes partnership without proximity. (Mindjet, n.d.). It is all under one roof, with the dialogue mapping method means it tracks the meeting content. (Mindjet, n.d.). To further explain, the participant input is in the reality, so that the details of the participants account are check at the end of the conclusion of a meeting. (Mindjet, n.d.). It also have other functions such as, summarizes topics covered and how does it relate with the central meeting theme and its specific task owners. (Mindjet, n.d.). With the six sigma training, more employees will be using the Mindjet platform because it is easy to use and its effectiveness of it. This makes more employees to obtain the license to use the platform. Below is the scatterplot diagram, this is the result after applying the six sigma. The higher the level of clarity in communication, the more effective the project planning and organization.

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Recommendations for improvement

Lack of product storage and loading infrastructure

Our recommendation is to practice the just in time manufacturing (JIT), where Dow Chemical company will only produce the product when the customer place an order and complete the payment. However, the company also have to analyse, record down the quantity and what type of raw material of the product that customers commonly requested is in the inventory, update the quantity of everything they have in the inventory and how much time for the raw material to delivered to the company to continue with the manufacture to avoid any shortage or surplus, inefficiency and waste of time. For example, where a customer order 10 thousand units for that particular product and the Dow Chemical have estimated the time needed to deliver the raw material to the company for producing is about 2days time. Therefore, Dow Chemical Company have to keep a minimum of 2 days raw material for the production so they can manufacture while waiting for the raw material to delivered and continue manufacturing without wasting anytime. By practicing this, it allows the company to save a lot of inventory space as the raw material for production is not needed until the customers demand for it which leads to lower cost for inventory and more storage for others product. Wilson (2013), mentioned that, Toyota is one of the company being considered by many to be the poster child for JIT success. The Toyota Company kept a small amounts of raw material at each node in production, so that production can take place for any production

Increased