Clearly there has been serious amounts of Data Capture and Classification of areas of importance. Through plotting performance against priority (Importance / Performance Matrix) areas have been highlighted for urgent action. Also allows for easier comparison against competitors. See coursework for more information.
Clearly this can be linked to the outcome of the Importance / Performance Matrix.
2 EXECUTIVE HOLLOWARE: NOTES FROM CASE STUDY
Info:
Quality Issue addressed in June 2002.
£12,000 p/m costs due to reworking and customer returns
Quality prioritised as important at EH since products aimed top end/high prices.
Hand made items.
Went from a wide range of cutlery; to narrowing its range to top-quality holloware.
Turnover in 2001 exceed 18 million, pre tax profits only 160,000.
Chairman reported as: “production inefficiencies, transferring traditional craft methods to batch production , light engineering type system”. “necessary competitive edge to exceed previous levels of profitability”.
Quality Assurance Manager, Paul Stone: undertook, quality survey on sampling basis – assessing scale.
also spoke to people in the company, directly and indirectly concerned with quality.
QA Department: responsible for quality; deals with customer complaints.
QA Department: Sometimes involved in investigations during production with bought in components
Internal Quality Assurance performed 10% of items
High value items 100% checked
Last year: 5% returned by retailers; bruises, scratches, misshapen pots.
Last 100: 5 had scratches, 1 bruise.
Paul did survey and found large number of scratches from word go.
Buffing and polishing reduced scratches by 10%.
Realisation that so many got through system to buffing and polishing in first place.
Senior Shop Foreman, Jim Dyer: questions consistency of what is and isn’t a scratch; if they worried about every scratch low production.
Buffing Shop, Alan Jones: complaints that nearly half of them bruised, some deep scratches. Seemed that assembly workers didn’t care. Fact that its expanding and now buffing is separated; problems never arose in past when buffing and assembly were together. Attitude now seems to be that as long as they’re out and on the worksheet its okay.
Sales Director, John Wells: Costs are expensive as items need to go back to buffing and then replating. Little complaints over new range and perhaps they’re in over demand. Big backlog of work in factory delaying delivery times.
Finance Director, Jean Lipton: People don’t know whats going on. Impossible to sort out reworking from normal work, guesswork as to costs of reworking. Lots of overtime in Buffing Shop due to reworking.
2 EXECUTIVE HOLLOWARE: APPLIED NOTES
Quality perceived by customers here is hidden, as demand for some products is very high, customers appear to be reluctant to return goods. Additionally the reporting of returns from shops is hidden so the data from here is missing. However items with bruises and scratches will aide expectations exceed perceptions and as a result quality decreasing. There are issues with the product development; and the internal specification isn’t conforming to the internally specified quality level (operational); which could be very detrimental for high quality items, as the promises made to consumers about the quality won’t be delivered (marketing).
Functionality – Products will have near perfect functionality regardless of the appearance issues, unless consumers purchase the item because of its design and its handmade elegance, where there will be returns. Additionally if the items cannot be used as their durability is weakened; this will affect functionality of the product.
Appearance – Clearly appearance is the biggest issue here with EH; as bruises and cracks are not aesthetically pleasing.
Reliability – EH is incredibly unreliable; with no real knowledge of how many items produced are of poor quality; except of the recent sample of 100 items; where approximately 20% were below the quality standard; however this was a very small sample, and there is data missing of returns from shops.
Durability – The products with cracks will have reduced durability.
Recovery – The recovery with EH is incredibly hard to determine as there appear to be faults with products all along the production line from start to finish. To minimise these errors it may be necessary for restructure of the production line and to re-evaluate the operational processes within the production. This will be costly in money and time; reducing the recovery element.
Contact – The nature of the person-2-person contact within EH is mixed. There are mixed relations as different managers have different targets which prioritise quality differently. Some prioritise quantity of production, whereas others prioritise quality. This can cause friction and tension. There also doesn’t seem to be much communication between departments other than when ‘things go wrong’.
There is a Quality Assurance department specifically responsible for quality; deals with customer complaints and is sometimes involved in investigations during production with bought in components. There seems to be lacking inspection of purchased components and materials; and sufficient sampling. There perhaps needs to be more quality assurance on the management procedures and management structure as different managers have different prioritisations for quality and work instructions/company quality manuals could be issued (ISO 9000 Approach). Also there is no traceability as to when and where the item appears to have received scratches and bruises from.
Internal Quality Assurance performed on 10% of items; inspection procedures.
High value items 100% checked
There is always small data capture but little classification and consistency of what constitutes as a poor quality product that is unsuitable for retail. The easiest way to improve quality would be to reduce the frequency of scratches and bruises from early in the production line; saving staff time and costs. The cause of these poor quality items; means that more re-buffering work causing backlogs and delays and extra incurred costs.
3 BOYS AND BODEN: NOTES FROM CASE STUDY
Info:
Dean Hammond, General Manager
Men do excellent jobs
Big backlog of work
Difficulties in prioritising work
Know the work content prior to start with estimates
Department disappointingly unprofitable, high than anticipated cost with late deliveries
Used to be privately Owned Timber and Building materials merchant.
Established a Joinery Department over the years making items to exact special requiremeents of the customers.
Various departments; estimating and quotations department; joinery manager;
Process of work: sketches to central estimating and quotations department; in conjunction with joinery manager calculate costs and prepare quotation, faax and post to customer 2/3 days. On receipt of an order orgiianl sketches and estimating details passed back to joinery manager, who schedules into manufacturing plan, allocating to individual craftsmen. Joiners can do most work.
Joinery department; congesed and untidy; verybody believe acceptable and normal for job shops. Now single flow route for material. Whatever project normal for joiner to select required bulk timber from storage building across yard.
Timber then prepared using planer thicknesser machine; variety of processes after that depending on product. – could be machined, or cut using radial arm saw, or form joints, or use a morticing machine and so one.
Products finally glued and assembled with screws and nails, sanded, treated with preservatives, stains or varnishes if requested.
All large and more expensive floor standing machines grouped together by type – (eg: saws), or were single pieces of quipemtne shaerd by all 10 joiners. Every joiner owns a complte set of hand tools.
Everything resting everything; disorganised. Offcuts and wood shavings scattered around; but not hazardous. Joiners work together to use equipment efficiently ‘working on several part finished items at once’. Varnishing or staining has to be done when its quiet – end of the working day / weekends / outside – to avoid sawdust contamination.
Long offcuts stored around workshop; however usually easier to take new length of timber for each job; so offcuts tend to build up over time. Getting worse as busier – and sales increasing so system more congested.
Even though more orders department still unprofitable.
Actual times booked by joiners exceeded estimated times by up to 50%. Due to inexperience of newly employed joiners; despite fully trained and qualified still lacking experience needed to complete complx job estimator would expect – but no feedback to and from. However they then put one of these people on doors only and now become enthusiastic door expert, and gets involved in quotations too so always does work within the time estiamtes. However main time losses caused by congrestion, interference, double handling and rework to rectify inprocess damage. Joiner walked an avg. 5km per day carrying around heavy wood.
Descriptions of celluar manufacturing and JIT – idea to get better flow, reducing the times and distances in the process – achieves quicker throughput times. (JIT is normally used for high-volume, repetitive production, where as in this case in EH they are one-off products). However even though a lot of varied staircases are made; the process is similar to make them.
Cutting timber to width and length; sanding; machining; tenoning; manual assembly.
Lots of unused factory floor space; easy to setup self-cntained staircase cell. Huge demand for specially made stairs in this region, but lots of competing small joinery businesses with low oerheads who can beat on price and lead time.
Lots of trouble quoting for stairs – but only winning 20% of business. Cell idea working = more competitive on price and delivery.
Need more volume to justify establishing the cell.
Preference to a capacity leads demand strategy.
3 BOYS AND BODEN: APPLIED NOTES
As Boys and Boden manufactures stairs and items for builders and primarily acts as a building materials merchant with a joinery department it is considered to have service process types.
B&B has a long thin layout; due to the process steps made to make staircases (from cutting to manual assembly)
4 HOLLY FARM: NOTES FROM CASE STUDY
Info:
1993 Mixed Dairy Farm Opened Up to Public
Response to diminishing profits from milk and cereals.
Invested a 40 space car park and six space car park for 40 seater coaches.
Milking parlour viewing area, Special trailers to transport guests, rare breeds paddock, children’s adventure playground, picnic area, farm shop.
Also a factory making ice-cream.
Number of visitors rose; due to advertising.
Levelled at 15,000 visitors per year.
Farm Opened at 11:00 am Closed 7:00pm
90% arrived 12:30, picnic 2pm, tour until 4pm; 20% visit farm shop and leave, remainder view milking, visit shop, then leave.
£4 entry fee.
Opened April – October inclusive. Demand too low otherwise. Midweek demand too low; Friday – Monday commercially viable, with almost twice as many visitors on Sat’s and Sundays.
Attempted 50% increase in visitors in 1999
Extra sales of ice cream would keep factory at full output.
Considering tie-ups with schools – although use of staff on week days means can’t do ‘farming work’.
Farm workers are happy to work extra for extra income.
Milking Parlour
150 cows, 4:30 – 7:30pm, visitors can view from gallery and space for 12 people.
Sometimes busy on Sat’s and Suns and queues develop before 4pm so people can see then go home.
Cows don’t want to – however most are patent.
Roughly 80 people per hour pass through the gallery.
Ice-cream Factory
48 wks/yr, 4 days/wk, 8hrs/day.
Employees work during opening months and by negotiation otherwise.
Output – one litre boxes (350 made daily) – max mixing and fast freezing capacity.
Extra mixing hours create more unfrozen ice-cream, but present equipment cannot fast freeze more than 350 litres over 24 hours, and texture ruined if not fully frozen.
Takes an hour to clean to change flavour so only one flavour per day.
Finished goods freezer has capacity of 10000 litres; but to allow stock rotation shouldn’t be stacked over 7000 litres.
Shouldn’t be held more than six weeks as storage time is only twelve weeks prior to retail sale.
Finished goods end of Dec 199 – 3600 litres.
Costs £1.00 per litre to produce.
Operated as batch process; with process layout.
Sales
Retail Shops: Speciality shops, discount of 25% so they can mark up 33% to RRP of £2.00 per litre.
Minimum Order Quantity is 100; delivered by owner on Tuesday.
Visitors at the farm: Containers keep it from melting for up to 2 hours. 1 in 2 buys 1 litre box. 2x1 litre boxes per carload of four. Farm shop retails at £2.00 per box (better margin)
Farm Shop Only Visitors: Local customers, householders make infrequent visits to stock up freezer, local hotels buy this way, no access to farm facilities.
Probably only make small return on capital employed in 1998, so must increase profitability.
Increasing natural flavours to 10; to try to eliminate or get ahead of some competition.
Whether to promote to coach firms; or intensify local advertising to attract more families in cars.
4 HOLLY FARM: APPLIED NOTES
There are two scales of capacity decisions; some short-term capacity planning and control measure; daily visitor numbers, ice-cream inventory; car parking spaces – and some mid-term capacity planning and control measures; ice-cream recommended retail, summer month busy times.
Variations in demand; seasonality – will help increase visitor numbers trying to tackle new markets to combat seasonality issues. Social (educational link ups), Climatic (winter themed tours), Financial (Father Christmas Tours) etc.
New ice-cream flavours would result in availability losses, as the extra hour would prevent additional stock to reach the maximum freezing daily amount. There is very little quality loss, speed loss, or breakdown failiure.
At moment there is a level capacity plan in operation: where spare ice cream is stocked and inventory is built up and if demand exceeds this, stock from the finished goods freezer should be used to satisfy extra demand.
They will want to push into more of a demand management capacity plan; either through new pricing structures, new markets (as suggested – educational visits – school link ups) or by developing alternative products (such as new ice cream flavours).
Planning demand: Opening stock + Production – Demand = Closing Stock
What would be seen as appropriate in this case? Is there sufficient ice cream in stock during the busier months, and enough surplus to supply the shop’s demand in the quieter months, noting the storage time of only 12 weeks before recommended retail. Can farm tour capacity meet demand?
Car parking average daily demand is half of full capacity however at peak; during august they are 25 over capacity.
The Milking Parlour peak demand is 12 every five minutes which calculates to 136 an hour, but capacity is 72 an hour, with average 64 an hour.
Ice Cream Factory
Fast Freezing: 350 litres/day
Finished Goods Freezer: 7,000 – 10,000 litres
Maximum Storage Time: 6 weeks
For production, assume that maximum daily output is 350 litres per day, as this is the daily maximum for the fast freezer (and for an efficient operation the pace of mixing and fast freezing should approximate to that of ice cream mixing). At present, the factory is working a four day week providing a weekly output of 1400 litres per week or 5600 litres per month. Has this fixed production policy been effective during 1998? Would it have been effective during 1999?
At present only one flavour per day is mixed, and the equipment takes one hour to clean. As the factory works a daily 8 hour shift, 7 hours are consequently used for production. A daily output of 350 litres consequently suggests an hourly output of 50 litres.
If the number of flavours per day is increased from one, additional cleaning time will be required during changeover, and daily mixing capacity will consequently be decreased. For example, if two flavours per day are produced, two hours of cleaning would be required, thereby reducing daily production to 300 litres per day (1200 litres per week or 4800 litres per month), unless an extra hour is worked each day to increase production to the fast freezer daily capacity of 350 litres. Alternative ways (probably through careful daily scheduling) should therefore be used to increase flavours without reducing capacity.
5 ILL PHONE YOU BACK: NOTES FROM CASE STUDY
Info:
Dave McDonald – Owner Oilpartz Ltd
All orders completed before holiday – only new work, would be that that had come in whilst away.
30 regular customers; excepetional quality and reliability – unique capabilities producing small quanitites complex components.
Oilpartz specialised in producing some of the larger pipeline components use on rigs etc.
Few customers in chemicals and heavy engineering.
Customers happy to accept Oilpartz normal quotes lead time of six weeks.
Dave able to do things quicker but ensure that other customers never suffered as a result.
Never accepted orders for repetitive high volume work.
System known as ‘free issue’ used so customers arranged for all raw materials to be delivered asap when order placed.
Mike Rowlands
Emailed re: 20 parts needed urgently that Oilpartz previously manufactured.
Willing to pay extra costs, emphasis critical, could send materials down immediately.
Dave replied with response that indicates schedule unfinished, will try to accommodate although last time took six weeks to do, and full order book after shutdown, but understands urgency and still has drawings and machining times, so will call back.
Existing orders are familiar work ordered regularly.
Small batch quantities, operations undertaken by highly skilled machinists, setup time insignificant compared to the long machining times.
During machining, each emp only uses one machine, so max quality – critical due to high cost of materials and high value added at each stage.
Dave four machinists worked 8 hours a day, mon-fri, usually willing to work evenings and weekends, but agreed no more than 10 hours of overtime.
Too much overtime and expensive mistakes being made.
All machinists multiskilled and can operate all machinery.
5 ILL PHONE YOU BACK: APPLIED NOTES
Oilpartz clearly use a scheduling system, and convert all placed and confirmed orders into a detailed timetable of what should be done, when and where, allocated resources (staff) as required.
Oilpartz use this method of planning and control, by setting out a sequence, scheduling the orders and consequently sequences and then deciding whether to load more or not based on current load, which is monitoring and control.
Oilpartz can benefit from both types of scheduling. Forward scheduling will give Dave the flexibility, when clients request urgent or quick manufactured orders, there is a greater chance he will be able to take on the work. Whereas with backward scheduling Dave further ensures that he meets deadlines and maintains the appearance of superior reliability and quality. Keep material costs down will maximise profits, when using high value and high cost materials, this will be hugely beneficial.
Infinite Loading as machinery is very specialised unable to expand capacity. Also workers are already working long hours and stretched and there are over time restraints.
Push Control as instructions on what to make and where to send it from Dave and then at every point this is observed until supplied to vendor.
6 TRANS EUROPEAN PLASTICS: NOTES FROM CASE STUDY
Info:
TEP one of Europes largest manufacturers of plastic household items.
Despatches within 24 hours using an international carrier.
Customers expect to receive within one week their requirements in full.
Batch production; 24 large injection moulding machines.
Production schedules produced by planning and control – qty required and anticipated timing of each run.
Mould changes take an avg. 3 hours setup – 500e per setup.
Review of Ops after concerns about declining deliverey reliability, increased levels of finished goods inventory, and falling productivity.
Full inventory check taken
Because of high demand – backlog planned to replenish stock averages 2 weeks; so all orders must be planned that far in advance.
Reorder quantities based on marketings estimates of likely demand.
To minimise tht total cost of setups and to maximuse capacity utilization all products are planned for a minimum production run of 20 hours.
20% of goods are very seasonal.
“give distributors onfidence that we will supply all their orders within one week”.
atm: receive severaaal deliveries for each order, spread over many weeks.
which: icreases admin, handling costs and our haulage costs.#
Factory operates 105 hrs p/w. 50 weeks p/a.
Machines laid out in groups so operator can be kepy highly utilized, attending to at least four machines.
Storage space: warehouse full with products stacked on the floor in every available corner; vulnerable to damage from passing forklifts and from double handling.
Replaceing contract warehousing and associated transport costing 5% of manufactions costs of stored items.
Costs 20% of manufacturing variable costs to store such items for a year.
6 TRANS EUROPEAN PLASTICS: APPLIED NOTES
Tangible goods: TEP produced products, the materials of the products
Summary and overall recommendations
Inventory is currently badly planned and managed
Needs to have better systems and to remove large excesses of inventory, whilst improving service levels
Suggestions:
• Pareto analysis to provide highly visible categorization (ABC)
• Different re-ordering and forecasting requirements for each category
• Use of EBQ for high usage value items, establishing new ROQs
• Remove slow-moving and obsolete stock from warehouse
• Monitor service levels by product category
• Delay warehouse extension decision
7 PSYCHO SPORTS LTD: NOTES FROM CASE STUDY
Info:
Peter Townsend, Sports Goods Manufacturing Business; Grown rapidly over last two years.
Now the need for systematic procedures and routines to manage business.
Biggest problem was manufacturing control.
Started with specialist table tennis balls but now wide range of sports products.
Customers used to be specialist sports stores now major retail chains.
Been told he needs a MRP system.
Confused at principles of MRP and jargon.
Table tennis bat (See case study book for product structure).
Two main areas of assembly handle, face.
Launched at Week 13.
Sales forecasts:
Weeks 13-21: 100 per week
Weeks 22-29: 150 per week
Weeks 30-35: 200 per week.
Peter managed to obtain information on the current inventory levels of each of the parts which made up the finished bat, together with cost data and lead times.
Took him nearly two days to get all the information. Nowhere was it conveniently put together and sometimes wasn’t even written down. Actually had to go down to the stores and count how many parts in boxes to do inventory check.
7 PSYCHO SPORTS LTD: APPLIED NOTES
The majority of transforming items that Psycho Sports will stock are very small in size and such space required for storage is minimal reducing costs. However there are large quantities of stock required for storage. Personnel needed to manage the operation can be kept small and management with the use of stock recording software. Most inventory will not deteriorate and the proportion of working capital tied up is negligible in comparison to the whole operation.
Unfortunately each item that Peter produces contains multiple components which will provide high variety. This can be hard to manage current inventory, when to reorder and so forth. Ordering stock is difficult as all the components of each product are from multiple sources. Order quantities vary per product and have a large range of lead time which will make the frequency of orders hard to determine. With long lead times, it is vital that there is enough safety stock to prevent stock out costs and to retain a satisfactory level of customer service.
8 AYLESBURY PRESSINGS: NOTES FROM CASE STUDY
Info:
Automotive metal components supplier that employs ~ 280 people.
Variety of components and sub assemblies for car manufacturers intentionally.
Around 80 main products made; several in multiple versions.
Manufacturing
Raw material: Steel; sourced steel service centres. Other components bought in from other suppliers.
Blanking
Uncoil steel, cut into flat sheets, pressing. Blanking.
Pressing
Flat blanks to be pressed into shaped parts.
10 presses; one progression press.
Arranged in line for operations requiring several subsequent operations.
Gives profession press possibilities but requires manual movement between presses.
Cycle time 2 seconds per part.
Two changeovers per shift
Downtime at 5%
Some presses only work at 80% of rated speed.
Press shop common use facility – some dedicated more or less full time to production of specific parts.
Press shop and blanking cell situated in a separate area away from assembly; noise and common facilities.
Large warehouse, all parts moved and stored between one day and four months – before being moved into cell supermarket prior to assembly.
Assembly
13 assembly cells.
Each dedicated to production of family of parts for specific customer.
Pressed parts assembled using spot welding stations.
Change over time between batches is 5 mins.
5 process in each cell; staffed between 1-4 operators.
Paint
Two paint plants
All products go through one of two lines.
Products hung on hooks and unhooked after cycle of 90 minutes.
Paint line not scheduled and operators hang parts in stillage quantities on a FIFO basis.
Final Assembly
After painting – some require final assembly
Parts added that can't be painted, rubber bushes, nuts, bolts.
Final quality checks. One minute cycle time.
Dispatch
Dispatch bay; vehicles loads parts dispatched; several times a day depending on volume and distance.
Buffer stock ranging between two hours and two weeks is held.
Timed delivery schedule received overnight; exact quantities and times required next day.
Team
Each section has own supervisor.
In assembly four supervisors who manage 15 cells.
Sections organised into teams.
Team leaders per team.
Annualised hours scheme.
Scheduling
MRPII
Raw material orders – and for daily scheduling of blanking and press shops
Weekly scheduling of all other areas and cells.
Implementing an ERP system from SAP, which will unify all information flows – but extend MRPII to include quality control, maintenance and personnel. Also has a finite scheduling module that is being considered for detailed scheduling.
Volume of 150-500 parts per day – over two shifts.
Although weekly schedules are issues to each cell, detailed scheduling at cell level is the responsibility of assembly supervisors.
All automotive customers provide rolling forecasts. (six months forecast, monthly forecast, weekly requirements and daily call offs.
Some parts pulled in under kanban control.
Press and blanking shops, batch sizing using EOQ abandoned six years ago. Sharp drop in work in progress. Reorder point system was simpler and more effective provided that demand was fairly constant. Today schedulers look at the MRP records but monitor inventory levels before deciding on batch quantities.
Also decided by the loading in press shop.
Schedulers use MRP to coordinate delivery of bought in components.
Blanking and press operations
Changeover means operations take place in batches.
First, parts inspected and sometimes using SPC methods.
1% scrap rate as result of changeover.
Lubrication and minor stoppages account for 10 mins per batch.
Somedies used in pressed are old resulting in defective parts.
Once a press set up motivation to make more parts than are strictly required by schedule.
This encouraged by stillage qtys that do not match schedule quantity’s.
Assembly cell operations
Cell supervisors achieve daily targets with good consistency if parts available.
Schedules issued weekly through MRP.
Daily production meeting finalises schedule.
Transport from warehouse to supermarket by forklift (take place under kanban control)
Forklift drivers pressured as congestion means moving stillages to gain access so that late parts are delivered delaying the cell.
A catch up is required but buffer stocks held in subsequent operations ensure that customer deliveries are near perfect.
Cells are rebalanced when output rate changes by more than a given amount. Operators now do balancing themselves, working with the supervisor, on what Ford and the Japanses call a yamazumi board.
This contains magnetic strips of length proportional to the work elements that have to be arranged to fit in with the new output requirements.
Quality
Has to meet standards from customers. Total quality programme started 8 years ago had slow steady impact on defect rates. Over past 8 years defect rates measured by the customer have reduced from 4% to 0.16%.
Today 4 staff in quality section serving the whole plant.
One spends lots of tie in metrology room – samples taken exacting measurement.
Another consults engineers to improve machine capability.
Third works with suppliers and customers.
Big factors were: introduction of SPC, introduction of pokayoke devices, supplier development programme.
Delivery
Customers expect defect free products – exactly on time in exact required quantity.
Measure performance by individual delivery; any shortage = zero performance on that element.
8 years ago performance was 20%, now its high 90% range.
Problem now are quantities where despite large downstream buffer inventories, part shortages still persist.
Problem customers don’t stick to their own schedule forecasts but expect perfect delivery performance.
Inventory
Inventory is stocked at very intermediate stage.
Kaizen
Company established Kaizen Promotion Office 3 years ago.
Aim to reduce waste and promote lean initiatives.
Kaizen promotion manager also responsibility for the MRPII system production control office..
All operators up through education programme. Covering SOPs.
5S campaign was quite successful where attempts made to locate everything in the correct place.
Changeover times addressed.
Benchmarking revealed that current levels are still excessive.
Current Situation
Under pressure to reduce costs and improve quality.
Most customers expect price reductions of between 2% and 6% demand perfect delivery performance and expect defect rates to be reduced below 0.01%.
Volumes, which grew steadily during most of the 1990s.
Meeting
Company now in danger of big decline in business. This was due not just to the economic climate but also to the relatively slow rate of improvement in company performance. Without improvements in delivery performance the company would not win new business.
.