At General Motors, employees work in teams of four to six people. Each team has a union team later. If a salaried group leader overlooks groups of four or five teams. The union team leader is responsible for any stoppage in the line. At the same time, any individual team member has the authority to stop the line. Notes General Motors Grand River Assembly Plant Manager Ken Knight, "Our first responsibility is not to stop the line and to make sure that we do things right, so we don't have to. But if a problem occurs, the team leader takes responsibility for the defect. If they can fix it immediately, they do" (cited in Destefani, 2003). In this hypothetical scenario, in the past month, one work team stopped the assembly line at a rate of five times greater than in previous months. This problem with the work team has translated into decreased efficiency and ultimately cost the company money. As such, the problem must be rectified as soon as possible. Several problem-solving techniques may be useful in solving this
             problem. In order to solve any problem, the problem must be identified, described, analyzed, and dissolution must be planned, implemented, and evaluated. In this case, the problem has already been identified as an increased stoppage on the assembly line. The four critical problem-solving tools used in this scenario are a tally sheet, a flow chart, brainstorming, and force field analysis.
             The first problem-solving technique used in analyzing this problem will be the flow chart. A flow chart is simply a graphic tool that lists the steps of a process or steps that users must take. It is used by both a manager and the team and is effective in describing the number of steps required and the time for each step, and thus can help identify repetition, bottlenecks, and other factors. It is an effective tool to help identify problems, the root causes of problems, and describe specific activities (Managing for Quality, 1998).
             To cr...