Value Chain Engineering - Analysis and Recommendations

This assignment analyzes the problems faced by a large electrical company and provides recommendations to improve their products and services. The analysis is based on data obtained from the company's ERP system. The top three problems identified are related to delivery, wrong quantity, and lost in transit. The most problematic product families and customers are also identified. The solutions suggested include recruiting more trained personnel, improving delivery time, and checking the equipment producing the problematic products.

Running Head: VALUE CHAIN ENGINEERING
Value Chain Engineering
Name of the Student
Namre of the University
Student ID

1VALUE CHAIN ENGINEERING
Executive Summary
This assignment is related to identifying the problems faced with the products of a large
electrical company and to recommend some solutions to the company. The company has been
receiving a lot of complaints regarding its products and services. Thus analysis has been
performed with the data on complaints obtained from the ERP system of the company. Based on
the results of the analysis, suggestions have been provided to the company.

2VALUE CHAIN ENGINEERING
Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Problem Definition..........................................................................................................................3
Solutions and Suggestions...............................................................................................................7
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................8
References........................................................................................................................................9

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Introduction
The electronic company is a large company with 20,000 sq. m. large distribution center.
Their clients are both local as well as international. The suppliers of the company send products
to the company from the local market as well as from the international market. The company
sells its products to a variety of customers including, retailers, whole sellers and end-users. This
analysis is conducted on the electronic company.
Recently, the company has been observing that the number of complaints from the
customers on the products of the company has been on the rise. The customer service
representatives (CSR) has been tired of receiving calls from customers who are angry and thus,
the manager of the company has asked to identify the problem that is leading to these complaints
and suggest a solution to this problem. They have provided the data on complaints recorded on
their products and services. The company has an ERP system, from which the data on the
complaints has been collected.
Problem Definition
Analysis has been conducted on the data and it has been observed from the analysis that
the top three problems in terms of the complaint types are Delivery, Wrong Quantity and Lost in
Transit. Among these three problems, Delivery has been found to be having most of the
complaints. The number of complaints with delivery issues are 233, the number of complaints
with Wrong Quantity is 136 and the number of complaints with Lost in Transit are 127.

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Delivery
Wrong Quantity
Lost In Transit
Wrong Product
Packaging
Poor Response
Damaged
Quality of workmanship
Invoice Error
Other
0
50
100
150
200
250
Total Complaint Type
Complaint Type
Frequency
In terms of product family, the top three product families that has been found to be most
problematic and has received the most complaints are PF12, PF10 and PF54. PF12 has received
60 complaints, PF10 has received 55 complaints and PF2 has received 54 complaints.
PF12 PF10 PF2 PF8 PF7 PF14 PF3 PF1 PF4 PF15 PF11 PF5 PF9 PF13 PF6
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
Customer Complaints Raised by Product Family
Product Family
Frequency

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The top three most problematic customers who have the most number of complaints on
buying any product are C4, C3 and C31. It has been observed that C4 has been the most
problematic customer as his complaints were registered 19 times followed by C3 and C31 with 8
and 7 registered complaints respectively.
C4 C30 C45 C44 C90 C58 C134 C67 C89 C5 C60 C71 C82 C139C175C180C186C262C196C244C206C211
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
20
Total Complaints by Customer
Customer Name
Frequency
On the other hand, the CSR staffs who have been receiving the most number of angry phone
calls from customers are respectively P4, P2 and P6. The customer service representative P4 has
been receiving 96 angry calls, P2 has been receiving 81 angry calls and P6 has been receiving 78
angry phone calls. These three CSR are the top three irritated representatives who have been
receiving the most number of phone calls.

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P4 P2 P6 P5 P8 P3 P1 P7 P10 P9
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
Total Complaints raised by CSR Staffs
CSR Staffs
Frequency
It can be seen that most of the customers are complaining about problems related to the
delivery of the product. Thus, it can be said that there are issues regarding the delivery time of
the products. The products must be delivered after the proposed time and hence complaints are
launched by the customers. Moreover, a significantly large number of customers have been
complaining about the problems in quantity and the products being lost in the transit. Thus, it can
also be said that the products are getting lost while being delivered or are undelivered. The
quantity of the products ordered also might not be matching the products delivered and hence the
complaints in that area as well.
Taking into consideration the complaints in terms of the product family, PF12, PF10 and
PF2 has received the maximum number of complaints. Thus, it can be assumed that there must
be some problems with the products from these families and hence the complaints.
Again, from the point of view of the customers, it has been observed that the most
complaints have been obtained from customer C4 followed by C3 and C31. Thus, the products
bought by these customers are not satisfactory to them and hence these complaints. The CSR

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staffs are also receiving a lot of calls each day and hence, if the number of angry callers are high,
the customer service representatives can get irritated. That is quite normal. These problems must
be kept in mind and necessary measures must be taken to reduce these problems.
Solutions and Suggestions
At first, considering the most vital problem that the company is facing, that is, the issues
the company is facing for complaints such as delivery, product quantity and lost in transit. The
customers do not have much complaint about the quality of the products. This indicates that the
qualities of the products are satisfactory to the customers (Tyagi et al. 2015). The customers are
having problems with delivery. Thus, more delivery vans and trained delivery personnel must be
recruited to meet this demand of the customers (Mitra 2016). The company must have a demand
for their products which are higher than the capability of the company. This results in the delay
in delivery as the products must not be prepared in time as they say (Tukker and Tischner 2017).
Lack of proper trained personnel must be the cause of the products to be lost in transit. Thus,
recruitment is important for the company at this stage (Visnjic, Wiengarten and Neely 2016).
For the problem regarding the product families, the products which are receiving the most
complaints must be checked. The equipments that are producing these products needs to be
checked once as they have been producing defective or unsatisfactory products (Hair Jr et al.
2015). The customers’ complaints are the most important matter that needs to be taken care by
the company. The issues over which the customers are complaining mostly needs to be taken
care of (Sharma, Misra and Misra 2014). The customers who have been complaining the most
must have received a product which is not at all satisfactory. Thus, that particular product has to
be checked properly (Hill and Brierley 2017). The CSR staffs will be less irritated if the number
of calls received by them can be reduced. This can be reduced only if more trained CSR staffs

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are recruited by the company (Ferrell and Fraedrich 2015). This will reduce the work load from
the CSR staffs and thus they will be able to work in a much fresher mind.
Conclusion
From all the analysis conducted so far, it can be concluded that the company needs to
develop their delivery employees so as to improve the delivery time. Moreover, more trained
personnel must be recruited to reduce the phone calls received by the CSR staffs and also to
ready the products in time to meet the increased demand of the customers.

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References
Ferrell, O.C. and Fraedrich, J., 2015. Business ethics: Ethical decision making & cases. Nelson
Education.
Hair Jr, J.F., Wolfinbarger, M., Money, A.H., Samouel, P. and Page, M.J., 2015. Essentials of
business research methods. Routledge.
Hill, N. and Brierley, J., 2017. How to measure customer satisfaction. Routledge.
Mitra, A., 2016. Fundamentals of quality control and improvement. John Wiley & Sons.
Sharma, A., Misra, P.K. and Misra, P., 2014. A Security Measure for Electronic Business
Applications. International Journal of Computer Applications, 102(7).
Tukker, A. and Tischner, U. eds., 2017. New business for old Europe: product-service
development, competitiveness and sustainability. Routledge.
Tyagi, S., Choudhary, A., Cai, X. and Yang, K., 2015. Value stream mapping to reduce the lead-
time of a product development process. International Journal of Production Economics, 160,
pp.202-212.
Visnjic, I., Wiengarten, F. and Neely, A., 2016. Only the brave: Product innovation, service
business model innovation, and their impact on performance. Journal of Product Innovation
Management, 33(1), pp.36-52.