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Medium Operations Root Cause Analysis Process Optimization

Crunch Time at ChipCo.

#Food and Beverage #Manufacturing
ProHub Comment

This case requires candidates to diagnose production bottlenecks through data analysis and then optimize maintenance scheduling by balancing cost minimization against operational reliability. The key insight is recognizing that the Seasoner tool's declining uptime correlates with the drop in customer commitment attainment, followed by a cost-benefit analysis of preventative maintenance frequencies that considers both financial impact and the strategic objective of meeting customer commitments.

Estimated Time 15 minutes
Difficulty Medium
Source Darden
50 / 100
Your client is Bryant, a Plant Director at ChipCo., a global tortilla chip producer. While sales are strong, the North Carolina-based plant that Bryant oversees has been failing to meet customer commitments for several months. Bryant has hired us to diagnose the cause of the downtick in on-time deliveries and to propose a solution.

Clarifying Information

  1. What is the client’s objective? The client wants to be able to meet sales commitments without incurring excessive costs.
  2. Where does the ChipCo plant fall in the overall tortilla chip value chain? The plant receives raw materials inputs such as corn, oil, and seasonings from suppliers and performs all the steps required to output store-ready bags of chips. The plant also has its own sales team internal to the plant itself.
  3. Is there any timeline that ChipCo needs to get production back up within? Bryant would obviously like to begin meeting sales commitments ASAP but provided no specific timeline constraint.