How to ensure our employees don’t grab and use the wrong materials

[NikkiQSM]

I am looking for ideas on how to ensure our employees don’t grab and use the wrong materials.

We have some customer supplied materials here. There is a big chance, we have the same grade of materials sitting here that we own. There have been issues with employees grabbing our own stuff, vs the customer owned stuff.

We have a Customer Supplied sticker on the side – but it is the same color and size as our Move to Stock stickers. The guys just don’t seem to pay attention.

Other issues – if a grade of material is discontinued or produced in a new location – we want to ensure it doesn’t get accidently used – so people are putting these materials in our non-conforming area and labeling them with “see So-n-So for permission”.

My boss has challenged me to figure out a way to keep these “good” materials down in inventory (or in the customer supplied area), but make it so they don’t get used accidently.

I figured big bright flashy labels on all sides of the materials may help. Besides that, I am a loss.

We have an inventory specialist – but he doesn’t always pull ALL of the materials. Sometimes the guys have to do it at night.

Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

 

[Al Rosen]

Segregate the customer supplied material in another place and, if necessary, lock it up.

 

[Golfman25]

Shock treatment. Good luck.

 

[NikkiQSM]

We already have a customer supplied area.

And this isn't just about customer supplied materials - it could be owned by ourselves too and we need to ensure it isn't used.

 

[Sidney Vianna]

We have an inventory specialist – but he doesn’t always pull ALL of the materials. Sometimes the guys have to do it at night.

If there are no mix ups with the material pulled by this "inventory specialist", just have this individual pulling all the material during the day for the night shift work. Have the material staged for the night shift and prohibit production workers from pulling material without authorization/supervision, or....

Make the night shift supervisor competent for the function of retrieving the right material.

 

[somashekar]

Looks like its not that they don't know. Its that they don't care.
Next is the BOLD identification so that they are careful when picking, after the care culture is inculcated.

 

[Stijloor]

Looks like its not that they don't know. Its that they don't care.
Next is the BOLD identification so that they are careful when picking, after the care culture is inculcated.

I doubt that people “don’t care.” Maybe it was never explained to them. Maybe they work in an environment where prodedures are often ignored by the leadership. Explaining why and the possible impact on the organization and its customers will make a difference.

 

[Mike S.]

Some good ideas have already been presented above.

Management should whenever possible make it easy to do the right thing and hard to do the wrong thing (think poke yoke) . "We have a Customer Supplied sticker on the side – but it is the same color and size as our Move to Stock stickers" does not seem to meet that ideal.

A fishbone diagram or brainstorming session completed with the help of all of the people involved might help steer you.

 

[RoxaneB]

Some great ideas have been shared already and I'm probably going repeat (ummmm...summarize?) them here.

1. Folks probably know what they should/shouldn't do. No one wakes up with the intention to deliberately mess up (I hope!). Explaining why it's important to use only the correct parts is important...explain the consequences/impact when they don't (loss of business, loss of customer, loss of job, loss of profit).
2. I'll be facilitating some focus groups in the near future with staff who operationally "get" why things need to be done, yet we continue to lose money in this area. The idea is to have them drill down to why the errors are happening and have them come up with solutions. I'll then have them put the solutions on an effort/impact matrix before showing them which solutions fall into quick wins, major projects, fill-in-jobs, and thankless tasks. Quick wins will be our top priority to consider for implementation. Thankless tasks will need to be stopped. The remaining two will be looked at only once the quick wins are implemented.
3. Segregate the components in such a way that the only ones they can access are the ones that should be used at that point in time. This presumes, however, you have a batch manufacturing process in place and blocks of product being made are either for that customer (or not for that customer).
4. Visual management. Colours. Tags. Stickers. Paint. You could even go to the extreme measure of, if the part is large enough, tagging the ones that belong to you so that when they're used, the tag has to follow the product down the line and someone verifies that the part was used appropriately. No tag could imply that a customer part was used on the product when it shouldn't have been. Or, if it's the customer's product, the presence of a tag could mean that your part was used when it should not have been. Extra cost and rather "police mentality", but sometimes we need to go this route as a first step towards establishing a culture.

 

[JeantheBigone]

Re: How to ensure our employees don’t grab and use the wrong materials

Can you put tape over the goods like this?

Message Marking and Warning Tapes - Safety Tapes and Applicators - Grainger Industrial Supply