Fender1
Involved In Discussions
I’m a quality coordinator for a custom welding/fabrication company. We have been trying to develop/improve our quality system for the past few years. Company size is 70-100 employees. Ownership’s target isn’t ISO cert, but they do want a sound system. We produce hundreds of different products weekly per drawings by various customers; we are not design responsible. Our largest and longest history customer expect us to save their drawings at our site and they are sometimes slow to provide drawing updates, and yes, it has caused shipments of wrong part version. Typically our other customers are good at providing latest product info/drawings with each quote request or purchase order. We don’t ship a lot of NC; most NC that does ship is typically due to failure to complete process.
Almost all of the products we provide is operator set/created/intensive (persistent opportunity for operator error,) so results of each production process are to be verified by an approved person (typically supervisor or lead-person,) before product release to next process. All of our production process results are to be checked by 2-set of eyes.
This company doesn’t have a history of firm discipline for not complying with process/policies, and some (typically veterans,) staff in production doesn’t believe stated verification of their work is needed, so they often allow product forwarding without planned verification. When discussed, the veterans state that they “know what they’re doing, don’t need their work checked”; even when shown that they are producer of a product NC. To date, process changes we’ve deployed to stop forwarding of non-verified work, haven’t been robust enough to ensure proper verification. Supervisors haven’t been helpful, very little promoting or monitoring.
I believe, to continue improving our quality system, company needs to be stronger on procedure/police enforcement. I like a challenge, but further system improve looks dire from where I sit. As enforcement is out of my control, I’m hoping that someone in the Cove community has experienced a similar scenario and will provide suggestions for us to consider. Something to help operator buy-in. I’m not yet ready to give up.
I truly appreciate the Elsmar Cove resource. For inexperienced folks like me… pure gold!
Almost all of the products we provide is operator set/created/intensive (persistent opportunity for operator error,) so results of each production process are to be verified by an approved person (typically supervisor or lead-person,) before product release to next process. All of our production process results are to be checked by 2-set of eyes.
This company doesn’t have a history of firm discipline for not complying with process/policies, and some (typically veterans,) staff in production doesn’t believe stated verification of their work is needed, so they often allow product forwarding without planned verification. When discussed, the veterans state that they “know what they’re doing, don’t need their work checked”; even when shown that they are producer of a product NC. To date, process changes we’ve deployed to stop forwarding of non-verified work, haven’t been robust enough to ensure proper verification. Supervisors haven’t been helpful, very little promoting or monitoring.
I believe, to continue improving our quality system, company needs to be stronger on procedure/police enforcement. I like a challenge, but further system improve looks dire from where I sit. As enforcement is out of my control, I’m hoping that someone in the Cove community has experienced a similar scenario and will provide suggestions for us to consider. Something to help operator buy-in. I’m not yet ready to give up.
I truly appreciate the Elsmar Cove resource. For inexperienced folks like me… pure gold!