How to review a procedure which covers different production lines efficiently

[andreww]

Hi, we have a in-process inspection procedure covers 3 production lines. Each production line has got different in-process inspection process. I would say 20-30% activities are different between each production lines. The rest of 70-80% of process is same/common. (I want to write one in-process procedure to cover this 3 production lines, not sure it is best option)

Current procedure only works for one production line. I am going to update this procedure. What is the better way to update this procedure? Shall I review with each individual production line supervisor individually or have a group meeting includes all 3 production line supersiors together to review this procedure at once a time, any other methods?

Please advise.

 

[insect warfare]

Re: How to review a procedure which covers different production lines efficiently?

I too deal with a similar setup at my workplace, where there are different business units which deal with the same product. For the most part, the processes are the same (on the surface) but in each BU the parameters have been known to be different.

I knew this going in, so what we did was instead of trying to create one universal instruction that could change at the drop of a dime by any BU, we implemented separate instructions for each line, even though they were 70-80% similar. The biggest differences to me were when we factored in the inputs and outputs of each station - that is what made them unique enough for us to separate them out.

The benefit of this was that each process owner could actually review, approve and own their documents and not have to share them with other process owners whom they did not interact with on a daily basis. I did not care that duplication existed in some of these areas, and it turns out it was a good trade-off. Our CAPA process facilitates improvements across the board anyway, so it's something I hardly even think about now.

That is our way of doing it. Maybe it will help you out here...maybe not - just throwing it out there...

Brian

 

[sreenu927]

My understanding is as follows:
1. You have one production facility, where you manufacture different products. Each product has it's own production line, where you set-up the instruments/work instructions/assembly setup etc.. (or what ever it is).
2. To govern this, you want to create a SINGLE SOP.

As per this understanding, you can combine all production line's procedures into one SOP. Create an SOP in general indicating the process steps; eg.:
raw material inspection;assembly setup; sub-assembly set-up; label printing; testing; final check;packaging; QA final check; storage/shipping.

Create an appendix (excel sheet) to this SOP to include the products/production lines (columns) and applicable Work instructions or forms(rows) for each product/production line. For some they could be common or sharing same work instructions or forms and some may have their own.
If you have any new product/production line, you can add to the appendix doc (excel sheet).

Hope this helps!

Regards,
Sreenu