You just took a new job as general manager with a manufacturing company. They brought you in because sales and profits are declining. As you look into the company sales and profits issues during the first few weeks, you also observe that in addition to the declining sales, the company has complaints from customers about a variety of issues, including late shipments, defective products, and wrong invoices. Your sales and manufacturing groups blame each other and the customer for the issues, including misleading information given to the customer by sales, incorrect information from the customer regarding specifications, and unrealistic ship dates. On Thursday morning of your third week, a customer called with a complaint about a defective product. The cost of the complaint could be significant. The department managers all have different opinions on how to handle the complaint. By Thursday afternoon, you find that some of the required information to make the part was missing. It was a rush job. The information is normally requested from the customer by customer service. By late Thursday, you have the following positions:

You have two roles here. The first is how to handle the complaint from the customer. Secondly you must decide on the customer relations position you want for the company.

Bob Yeader:  Sales Manager

We have policies on how to handle the complaint. The policy is clear; it is the customer's responsibility to provide the correct information. The customer did not provide all the information needed in a timely basis to produce the part. This is a long term customer and they know what information is needed.

Dori Lately:  Operations Manager 

I agree with Bob. It is not our issue. It is certainly not a production issue. We did not have the correct information. The customer needs to pay for a second run or sales needs to pick up the cost. It is not my issue. This is due to a rush job, which we see way too often. I need more time to run these jobs. And we cannot run this job again for a week.

Jennifer Garland: CFO

I don't care whose issue it is, we can't afford to rerun this part. Sales and operations you need to get your act together. Customers are paying a lot for these rush jobs. If you did them right, our financial picture would be much better.

Monica Milton: Customer Service Representative

I am terribly sorry about this mix-up. We did request the information but received it late Friday. It was too late to get the information to the production floor and the part ran on Saturday. No one authorized me to work overtime and no one was available late Friday to process the information.

Sam Spaniel:  Customer

I need parts and I needed them last week. What are you going to do to get me parts today?