Quality Control and Improvement

1. What quality control methods do they currently use?
Walmart currently uses the attribute control in order to find out if an item is either good or defective. Their objective is to find the percentage of flaws occurring in a sample as the attribute measure. The attribute measure they focus on most is the percentage of items that are defective from their supplier. Walmart suppliers have supplier certification because products can be used directly by the customer without incoming inspection. Walmart has an agreement with its suppliers that they are responsible for the safety and security of walmart’s purchased merchandise. Walmart’s suppliers have a high quality control agreement. Walmart has set critical control points for their suppliers. First, suppliers must disclose all their manufactories. They must have transportation security inspection. Walmart also demand a third party inspection by the company of their choosing. The suppliers are expected to have a self assessment audit and they must then undergo a validation by a walmart representative. Walmart also has factory security standards for their suppliers.

2. Do they use QC charts?
Walmart uses the attribute control chart in order to estimate the percentage of items that are defective from a supplier. Sample percentage must stay within limits to keep the process going. Once there is a sample percentage outside those limits the process is stopped and they look for an assignable cause. Most frequently this can be cause by a change in material that they use to make an item.

3. What type of inspection is used?
Walmart demand its suppliers to allow them to get inspected by a third party. Suppliers are also expected to have operator inspection and undergo a validation by a walmart representative. The suppliers must have transportation inspection as well.

4. Is continuous improvement used? If so , do they use Pareto analysis or fishbone diagrams?
Walmart does use continuous improvement. They use the fishbone diagram because the problems that they find are usually separate, in other words they are loose connections. Walmart representatives might find several different problems that do not have nothing to do with each other. For instance, it can be the supplier's inexperience workers, materials, inspectional skills, or technology. The problems are separated by major causes and then are broken down in the diagram.

5. What about Six Sigma practices?
Six Sigma is a meticulous methodology that make use of information management by facts and statistical analysis to define, measure and improve a company's operational performance,practices and systems. It identifies and prevents "defects" in manufacturing and service-related processes to anticipate, and achieve or exceed total customer satisfaction.
Six Sigma is a systematic method for process improvement that uses five steps defined by the acronym: DMAIC1. Define 2. Measure 3. Analyze 4. Improve 5. Control. Wal-mart uses the Six Sigma practices for their improvement and that is the one of the main reasons it the most successful departmental store in the world today. Wal-mart does use six sigma procedures in every aspect of the store. The supervisors are taught what to look for what they need to do to analyze and measure them and also show what to do to improve and keep improving.

6. Recommend some new ideas they should consider?

Walmart can consider to use the pareto analysis because they can make down the failure of the products. It is important to know what are the frequent failures so they can adress them quickly and prevent future problems