Case Analysis: Predicting Defects in Disk Drive Manufacturing: A Case Study in High-Dimensional Classification Case Solution And Analysis, HBR Case Study Solution & Analysis of Harvard Case Studies

Case Analysis: Predicting Defects in Disk Drive Manufacturing: A Case Study in High-Dimensional Classification Case Solution

Introduction

IBM was making hard disk drives and the company was working on this product for past several years. Moreover, it can be said that the learning and experience curve of the company in hard drive manufacturing was significant. Furthermore, the company was working on this product in a very effective and efficient manner.

The company used to manufacture their hard drives by using high quality raw material and conducted crucial test before launching and sending the product to end consumer. The process of the company consisted of three major stages. In the first stage, the company checked the initial performance of the hard drive and later on, the company tested the features of hard drive that whether they are according to the design or not.

These two testing processes were less expensive and not time consuming. The last process was known as the RunIn Test. In this test, the hard drive had been tested for the longest time and this test confirms that whether the hard drive is capable enough to meet the requirements of the market or should it be sent for improvement.

In addition, in this test, the company tests the hard drive for a long time and thousands of bytes of data ran on the hard drive and finally, the hard drive is then sent to the final customer. However, this test was not expensive in terms of direct cost but due to the indirect cost of inventory pile ups, the cost of the test became high and the company made several efforts to reduce this cost because of this. Finally, there are two options in front of the management that either the RunIn process has to be eliminated completely while maintaining the high quality through put or to make this process more efficient by improving the process and reducing the associated cost.

Problems Statement

The company was working well and was very competitive in making these hard drives. But due to the last stage of testing, there were several issues that were creating problems for the company; since, due to the long process, the company had to make a huge bulk of inventory. (ISBDC, 2012)

Due to that huge bulk of inventory, the company had to face intense cost of inventory carrying and holding. Moreover, this cost was also making negative impact on the cost of capital and ultimately reducing profits for the company.

Furthermore, the company had to hire more professionals to deal with such long procedure of testing, which also burdened the cost structure of the company. Afterwards, the company had to face a bottleneck problem of the inventory pile ups, which were occurring due to the RunIn test.

All these issues were creating inefficiencies in the manufacturing process of the company and increasing the cost of the company, due to which the company had to suffer margins.

Finally, two options are in front of the management; either the RunIn process has to be eliminated completely while maintaining the high quality through put or the company should make this process more efficient by improving the process and reducing the associated cost.

Elimination of Expensive Testing: An efficient move or distraction

The process is very long and time consuming,the cost associated with it is very high. The process is not putting a higher direct cost butthe indirect costs are very high. On the other hand, the process ensures higher quality and effective output. However,the cost is also very high. The company now hasto decide whether it should make a trade off between the quality and cost or maintain the standard. (Strategist, 2012)......................

This is just a sample partial case solution. Please place the order on the website to order your own originally done case solution.