Case 28 Micom Caribe

1
Case 28Micom Caribe

• Jacqui DeeganChris Corey
• March 28, 2002

2
Micom Communications Comapany

• Based in Simi Valley, CA
• Founded in 1973
• World pioneer in the data communications industry
• One manufacturing facility Micom Caribe
• 1981 First pubic stock offering was made
• 1988 MCC was bought out by a private investment
  firm
• MCC has over 400 customers
• 60 of sales from customers 40 from OEMs

3
Micom Caribe

• The only manufacturing facility of MCC
• Began operations in April, 1981 in Puerto Rico
• Original facility was 11,000 square feet, but by
  1990, they had moved into a facility that was
  75,000 square feet
• Plant employed 214 people
• Operation Bootstrap
• Section 936

4
Microm Box

• Microm Box manufacturing differed from what
  Caribe had been used to doing
• Based on a novel modular electronic design
• Advertised it as a quality product to
  differentiate if from competitors, but they
  didnt have a solid definition of what quality
  was.

5
Quality Crash of 1989

• Poor manufacturing process
• Lack of proper management
• Employees werent allowed to make their own
  decisions
• No quality improvement tools
• Zen and The Art of Operations Strategy
• Managing middle managers
• Tools for quality improvement
• Cross-training and flexibilty

6
Reconfiguring Manufacturing Operations

• Process Improvement Teams
• Knowledge, Negotiation, Experimentation
• The Feature Pack Cell
• Marathon

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Charting a Course

• World class quality
• Flexibility
• Improvements to MCC not just Micom Caribe
• More Employee Empowerment