Final Project
Ashely Bigley
OL-324-J5879 Managing Quality 22EW5
June 16, 2022
Stephen Schroeder
2
Background and History
Ducommun began as a hardware store in Los Angeles. Founded in 1849 during the Gold
Rush, the company evolved and even provided aircraft aluminum to early aviation pioneers like
Lindbergh and Lockheed (Ducommun, 2022). Today Ducommun boasts eighteen locations
spread across seven states and three countries. The issue I have identified is applicable to the
Parsons, KS and Coxsackie, NY locations. Currently, the company is comprised of two major
product lines for the aerospace industry: electronic systems and structural systems. They offer
engineering, design, and manufacturing services within these product lines. The structural
systems product line is where the focus of my project will lie. Within the structural product line.
the company offers processes such as stretch forming, thermal forming, chemical milling.
machining, fabrication, and assembly.
Ducommun is organized into manufacturing units comprised of two to five locations that
have many common processes. Coxsackie and Parsons are the two locations which make up this
unit. As business unit, although they function separately from a financial perspective, the two
locations share many resources such as program management, accounting, and supply chain
staff.
Description of Quality Issue
As a Senior Buyer at the Parsons facility, I have been hired to help resolve material
availability issues that are being attributed to the procurement staff and/or process. your purpose
in hiring someone with experience in aerospace metals is to solve this issue. The material
primarily purchased is aerospace grade titanium. The lead time on this material was fifty-two
weeks. This type of long lead time makes it critically important to have scheduling and planning
as accurate as possible. In addition to that, aerospace titanium is a very expensive commodity.
3
While there are contracts in place guaranteeing pricing, these are subject to lead time. When
there are abrupt shortages, such as these, you are forced to pay market price which eats into your
profit margin on the parts.
Quality Culture
A "true culture of quality" is defined as a culture where employees not only follow
quality practices, but also are quality minded as a personal value (Srinivasan & Kurey, 2014).
environment in which employees not only follow quality guidelines but also consistently see
others taking quality-focused actions, hear others talking about quality, and feel quality all
around them. This requires everyone in the organization to commit to quality thinking and
behaviors on a personal level, not just a set of actions required by leadership. This type of culture
is one that focuses on both external and internal customer service. Ducommun falls short in this
category. Although there is a show made of commitment to quality, it is very shallow. Quality is
treated as a checklist to be followed rather than a mindset.
Voice of the Customer
"The expressed requirements and expectations of customers relative to products or
services, as documented and disseminated to the providing organization's members is the voice
of the customer (VOC)" (Ezumba, 2017). At