Operations Management - Final assessment
Turnaround at the Preston plant
About the company
The Preston plant of Rendall graphics was located in Preston, Vancouver. The plant produced Precision coated papers for ink-jet printers which accounted for the majority of the plant’s output. In 2000, the plant was bought from the Georgetown Corporation by Rendall even if, during this period, the plant was losing around $2 million a year. A significant turning point came in 1999 when Tom Branton was appointed as Managing Director.
Questions:
1. What are the most significant events in the story of how the plant survived because of its adoption of quality-based principles?
The plant started to experience problems in the quality of their output of the ink-jet paper and had received feedback in late 1998 from Hewlett-Packard (HP), one of his customers, about the problem. The team at Preston worked to resolve it. In October of 1999 some recommendations were made to revise and improve the coating formula. However in 2000, productivity, scrap and re-work levels continued to be poor. Operations Management team’s response was to increase the speed of the line and made a number of changes to operating practice in order to raise productivity.
Two significant events happened to the Preston plant. Rendall Corporation purchased the plant, even though it was losing around $2 million a year. Rendall was not impressed by what they found at the plant and it seems that they did not do a very good analysis of the overall operations of the plant and the management of its operations.
The other big challenge for the Preston plant was the bidding for the “Vector Contract” which would ensure a safe amount of orders for the next years. But to ensure good results and success on this deal, the plant had to change drastically his quality process on all the manufacturing line.
From 1999,