ANALYSIS OF A BUSINESS RESEARCH ISSUE [ASSEMBLY QUALITY ASSURANCE] AT NEW UNITED MOTOR MANUFACTURING, INC.
New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc. [NUMMI] is a joint-venture automobile manufacturing company located in Fremont, California. The joint owners of NUMMI are General Motors Corporation [United States] and Toyota Motor Company [Japan].
The purpose of this research is to analyze data pertaining to a business research issue at NUMMI. NUMMI is noted for the quality of the vehicles manufactured at the Fremont manufacturing facility (Automotive Intelligence, News, 2002). The decision to introduce the manufacture of new models at the Fremont facility, however, led NUMMI management to review quality assurance processes to preclude any quality deterioration subsequent to the introduction of the new models into the manufacturing product mix (NUMMI, 1999).
The conduct of the review involved, in part, the collection of data related to three alternative procedures for quality assurance in automotive assembly operations. This current research analyzes these data through the application of analysis of variance (ANOVA) procedures to the data. The ANOVA was performed using the data analysis tools in the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet application.
NUMMI manufactures the Toyota Tacoma pickup truck and the Toyota Corolla sedan at the Fremont facility. The Fremont facility is the only global location where the Toyota Tacoma is manufactured. NUMMI manufactures the Vibe sports wagon for the Pontiac Division of General Motors. The Fremont facility also manufactures the Voltz right-hand-drive sedan for Toyota. The Voltz is exported by Toyota to Japan for sale in Japan. The NUMMI management is investigating the possibility of manufacturing hybrid vehicles at the Fremont facility. Prior to 2003, the Prizm also was manufactured for Toyota at the Fremont facility (Hoover's, Inc., 2004b).
The Fremont facility has an annual production...