part 1 and 2

Assume that you have travelled back in time to the point before Nuts and Boltz decided to pursue the new time tracking system. I would like you to create a cause-and-effect/fishbone diagram that tries to uncover the root problems that existed, which lead to the need for such a system.

Assuming that you have talked with several managers at the company, they all probably told you “our profitability on engineering projects is not acceptable, and we don’t know why.” You’re not an expert with regard to Nuts and Boltz’s processes, so you will need to employ the fishbone diagram technique to uncover what the real issues are and the causes behind those issues. You can use “Low Profitability on Engineering Projects” as the main problem to the right of the diagram.

Each of the larger fishbone pieces that radiate out from the main line should be a major issue that could be causes for the problem. Remember that not all of the issues necessarily are financial in nature… For each major issue, you should draw spurs off of it that detail causes of that issue. Plan on putting sufficient time and energy into building this diagram up (at least 3 levels of detail!

Please make the diagram in electronic form (Word, Excel, draw.oi, Visio, etc).

Part 2) Now assume that you have somehow calculated the different percentages up for the issues that you have encountered and somehow logically grouped them. Create a Pareto graph in Excel that displays the issues graphically. You’ll need to group your individual cause findings into logical groups, and simulate number of occurrences of each, so you can tally numbers per cause. Then you’ll create a table in Excel as shown in the demonstration, and sort by percent of total, so the higher incident causes show in the chart first, followed by lower percentage causes.