Quality Management

 Quality Management - Samsung Electronics

Company Background

Samsung Electronics was founded in 1969 as one of the companies of the Samsung Group. In the early stage of the business, its product line included refrigerators, air conditioners and televisions. In the later period, home appliances, audiovisual devices and smartphones has also added to its product line. Nowadays, Samsung Electronics is one of the largest manufacturers of mobile phones. In 2019, it ranked as the second-largest technology company in the world in terms of revenue. In 2021, it reached its new high of revenue of 232.8 billion U.S. dollars, while the revenue from the semiconductor business accounted for one-third. The most well-known Samsung Electronics quality issue is the overheating problem of the batteries of Galaxy Note 7, which may lead to an explosion. At last, Samsung Electronics cost 5.3 billion U.S. dollars to recall the model.

Case Background

To deal with the complaints from the users, Samsung Electronics has a procedure to give respond and analyze the claims. First, the complaints can be filed by end-users through service center, agency or installation agency. Reports from organizations can also be the sources of collecting complaints, such as from government councils, media or related webpage. Next, the Voice of Customer (VoC) staff from Korea or overseas will respond to the customers. CS command Office is responsible to analyze the claims whether it is a valid problem or a misunderstanding of the function. According to the 80/20 rule, only 20% of complaints will really be related to the quality problems of the product. After that, the valid complaints will be sent to the headquarter of Samsung Electronics. Risk management committee or related department will do the follow-up or plan to make improvement.

The case is about the complaints collected from ConsmerAffairs.com about the Samsung LCD TV. It is an independent center publishing complaints, comments and compliments of services or consuming goods.

Measure

Affinity Diagrams

Affinity diagrams is used for organizing and reducing data and groping it into logical grouping, so to achieve efficiency when analyzing large amount and unorganized data. In this case, 33 complaints of the LCD TV are sorted into different types of problems using affinity diagram.

From the above affinity diagram, complaints sorted into 8 categories, each complaint can relate to more than one category. The problems related to the screen and power are the most often complained issues.

Pareto Charts

Pareto charts apply to the 80/20 rule. It indicates that 80% of complaints come from 20% of issues, hence, 20% of effort can solve 80% of them. It gives a direction for managers to make an improvement on.

From the Pareto charts above, we can see that the category of screen, power and motherboard accounted for almost 80% of frequency of complaints, which suits the 80/20 rule. That means Samsung Electronics should work on these three problems to satisfy 80% of customer complaints.

Analyze

5 Whys

5 whys is one of the methods of finding out the root cause of a specific problem. It allows users to get closer and closer to the root cause every time asking themselves why the issue is happening. However, users should ensure that they are not making assumptions and fail into logic traps when applying 5 whys. For example, if the screen of LCD TV is not working, the user shouldn’t assume that their kids broke the screen and claim on their kids. Instead, they should check whether it is related to the connection problem or other possible reasons.

Cause and Effect Diagram

Cause and Effect Diagram (Fishbone Diagram) allows user to brainstorm any possible reason that leads to the result issue in different dimensions. For instance, the potential cause resulting in an LCD TV power problem may include no working component in the materials dimension, or a missing component in the dimension of assembling. Compare with the 5 whys, the fishbone diagram allows users to think of more different aspects and get a bigger picture of the root cause, rather than just identifying one possible cause.

Improve and Control

Before starting to “solve” the problem, the manager should analyze the root cause found in the previous step, whether it is under the manager’s control or influence. Take the motherboard problem as an example, if the root cause is about loose connection in assembling process, then it is under the manufacturing manager's control. If the root cause is about non-working component, it is under the manager's influence, which can be solved by reporting to the suppliers. If the manager found that it is no way for him to control or influence, then he may be facing a constraint or making an assumption. He should try to minimize the effect brought by the constraints or conduct a test to prove the assumption. Next, the manager can start with the action plan, identifying the steps, goals, objectives and responsibilities, to really solve the quality problem.

After the problem is solved, control chart can be used to maintain the quality. It is a method using statistics to measure the product quality, whether it is in control or out of control, in order to help the manager to do further observation.

ICE Question

Based on the Pareto chart, we choose to solve the screen problem first. Since it is the most complained problem that the customers have been complaining about. There are 19 complaints filed against this defect, which holds 40% of the overall proportions. Moreover, according to the 80/20 rule, it can use the least effort to achieve the best results. According to our chart, 80% of the issue happens because of the screen, mainboard and switch defects. The issue of the screen is the most complained issue out of all of them. 

Another issue that the customers complained a lot about is the substandard customer service. An issue that can be solved with more resources available in the maintenance sector. Since screen issue is the most prominent issue, fixing this can best facilitate better customer services and subsequently help better customer experience.

5 Whys

Display problem of screen :The screen picture is distorted (e.g., orange and black screen, black line) 

Whys:

1. There are some physical damages on the screen 

2. Poor, packaging and thus, protection

3. Insufficient maintenance 

4. The poor connection between the display component 

5. Poor quality of TV hardware or software (LCD problems, capacitor problems, voltage system) (root cause)

In fact, we had made a mistake when doing 5 whys question. The 5 whys should relate to each other and have a gradation relationship. The revised version of 5 Whys should be:

1. The LCD screen is malfunction

2. The LCD screen cannot read the signal sent from the motherboard appropriately

3. The wire connected inside the LCD screen is not working

4. The wire inside is snapped

5. Poor quality of wire inside LCD screen (root cause)

 

Fishbone diagram

We identify that the root cause is Samsung Electronics lacks the technologies to manufacture TVs with longevity and reliability. Solutions are below:

1. Spend and invest more on the research and development process to improve the designs and materials, which can prolong the product’s service life.

2. Outsource the screen manufacturing process to other world-renowned screen manufacturing companies

3. Hire experts and professionals to help with the research and development process

4. Allocate more resources to the quality check process of TV software and hardware

5. Follow up the complaint case of screen to find out the most common problem occurred of the TV electronic component

6. Improve the technologies applied in developing TV hardware and software

7. Keep testing before launching the new products to reduce the chance of error

8. Closely monitor the manufacturing process to ensure there is no defective item in every process

Reflection

Complaints indicated the room of improvement. Only when we treat the complaints and comments seriously, the problems can be found out and solved, so the reputation and customer satisfaction can be maintained. In this case, we studied how to organize the data using affinity diagrams to achieve efficiency and using Pareto charts to determine which issue we should work on first. Following the 80/20 rule, we can avoid wasting resources on non-critical issues, but only put 20% effort to deal with 80% of problems. In the process of analyzing the root cause, 5 whys is a brand new method to us. Compared to fishbone diagram, 5 whys require fewer steps, we can even brainstorm it inside our head without drawing out a diagram. We believe that we can apply the 5 whys not only when doing quality management but also in our daily life.

References

Asia & Pacific. (2022, January 27). Samsung Electronics' revenue hits record high in 2021. Retrieved from https://english.news.cn/asiapacific/20220127/f4f4633041054e8689bb6c98be84c22e/c.html

BBC. (2017, January, 23). Samsung confirms battery faults as cause of Note 7 fires. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/business-38714461

Consumeraffairs. (n.d.). Make big decisions no big deal. Retrieved from https://www.consumeraffairs.com/