Aznavour Hotels are a national hotel chain started in 1972 by Andre Aznavour. What started as one upscale hotel in Tampa turned into a highly reputable national hotel chain. Today Aznavour Hotels serve over 70 locations and are recognized for their customer service and quality. Aznavour Hotels are typically located in large metropolitan areas close to convention centers and centers of commerce. They cater to both business and nonbusiness customers and offer a wide array of services. Maintaining high customer service has been considered a priority for the hotel chain.

Quality: Is there a problem?

The Aznavour Hotel in Tampa, Florida, had recently been experiencing a large number of guest complaints due to billing errors. The complaints seem to center around guests disputing charges on their final hotel bill. Guest complaints ranged from extra charges, such as meals or services that were not purchased, to confusion for not being charged at all. Most hotel guests use express checkout on their day of departure. Withexpress checkout the hotel bill is left under the guest's door in theearly morning hours and, if all is in order, does not require any additionalaction on the guest's part. Express checkout is awelcome service by busy travelers who are free to depart the hotel at their convenience. However, the increased number of billing errors began creating unnecessary delays and frustration for the guests who unexpectedly needed to settle their bill with the front desk. The hotel staff often had to calm frustrated guests who were rushing to the airport and were aggravated that they were getting charged for items they had not purchased.

Is there a source for the problem?

Claude Aznavour, Andre Aznavour'sniece, had recently been appointed to run the Tampa hotel. A recent business school graduate, Claude had grown up in the hotel business. She was poised and confident, and understood the importance of high quality for the hotel. When she became aware of the billing problem, she immediately called a staff meeting to uncover the source of the problem.

During the staff meeting discussion quickly turned to problems with the new computer system and software that had been put in place. Omar Haddad, head of MIS, defended the system, stating that the system was sound and the problems were exaggerated. Omar claimed that a few hotel guests made an issue of a few random problems. Boris Stragano, head of operations, was not so sure. Boris said that he noticed that the number of complaints seem to have significantly increased since the new system was installed. He said that he had asked his team to perform an audit of 50 random bills per day over the past 30 days. Boris showed the following numbers to Claude, Omar, and the other staff members.

Everyone looked at the data that had been presented.Then Omar exclaimed: "Notice that the number of errors increases in the last third of the month. The computer system had been in place for the entire month so thatcan't be the problem.Boris, it is probably the new employees you have on staff that are not entering the data properly." Boris quickly retaliated: "The employees are trained properly!Everyone knows theproblem is the computer system!"

The argument between Omar and Boris became heated, and Claude decided to step in. She said, "Boris, I think it is best you perform some statistical analysis of that data and send us your findings. You know that we want a high-quality standard. We can't be Motorola withSix Sigma quality, but let's try for three sigma. Would you develop some control charts with the data and let us know if you think the process is in control?"

1. Set up three-sigma control limits with the given data.

2. Is the process in control? Why?

3. Based on your analysis do you think the problem is the new computer system or something else?

4. What advice would you give to Claude based on the information that you have?