We will use the Rewards and Punishment/Consequences concept to look at what may have
gone wrong in this
case of a faulty part being able to pass with not much recognition to a higher up or quality
control. The issue
was noticed in two different cases and neither time was the issue addressed to public
knowledge with an
executive level member of the company.
We will look at the Rewards concept that awards those who meet goals and have higher
output and production
within a st time-frame. Any slow downs such as a faulty product that should have minimal
issues and is pushed
to production. Rewards systems inevitably when in a large scale company lead to a few
broken rules or full
safety checks.
Consequences of not meeting goals or slowing production or frowned upon and lead to
discipline up to
termination in some cases. This case breathes that hard, cold air feeling that the initial
finding was pushed aside
in the name of money being lost due to slowed production they could not afford and it
ultimately led to a
corporate nightmare and a crushing blow to their financial books and a hard road to trust
recovery.
Questions to help build on the concept:
When was the issue first noticed?
What information was the product’s main engineer aware of?
Why was no one alerted at a higher level?
When the company did notice, why did they not act quicker?
What is the overall loss due to the flaw?
How do we improve this system to eliminate this from happening?
