Informational Problem Solving for Effective Corrective Actions

[Barahir]

At our last surveillance audit, one of the nonconformities we received had to do with the ineffectiveness of our Corrective Action system.

No big suprise, that. CARs (Corrective Action Requests) were routinely ignored or pencil-whipped by supervisors because they had so many of them to deal with. They had so many of them to deal with because they weren't doing them effectively, because they didn't have time since there were so many to do because they weren't effective because....well, you get the point.

So we've made several changes, one of them being that instead of issuing the CAR to the responsible department with a due date we are having daily meetings (half hour or so, usually) where several of us meet to do the problem solving parts of our 8D corrective action (usually get us up through 4D or 5D if we're lucky). We implemented using the Fishbones and the Five Why methodology. It seems to have been very effective thus far - at least in determining root cause and figuring out which actions need to be taken to correct the issues. (Whether they'll follow through with the actions to make that effective as well remains to be seen.)

We were doing the ishikawas and five why's on a white board which got to be a pain in the rear afterwords when we had to retype everything. I looked around online for some usable templates and didn't really like any of them, so I made one myself in Publisher (I picked Publisher because of the auto-sizing of text to fit in text boxes). Now we can project against the white boards and not have to handwrite on the board followed by handwriting on a piece of paper followed by putting it on the Corrective Action form.

Since all of you fine folk here at Elsmar have been helpful to me over the last few years I figured I'd share the file for anyone who may be interested in it.

 

[Jen Kirley]

I am always interested in tools to help in problem solving--it is always a fun subject!

Can you provide that attachment in a Word document or maybe jpeg?

 

[Doug]

Thanks for your comments concerning root cause analysis for corrective actions. I too had almost identical experiences. This is probably common.

Our corrective action system is web based as it includes both foreign and domestic operations. We are forcing ourselves to add electronic attachments for problem solving. It was a struggle initially. But now its starting to become much more effective.

Can you attach a problem solving document to your CARs? This process has removed a great burden from my position. Virtually all CAR documentation paperwork has gone away!

 

[Barahir]

Can you provide that attachment in a Word document or maybe jpeg?

Doesn't seem to like translating to a Word file, so the best I can do is a PDF.

 

[Doug]

PDF files work great. Anytime I have objective evident for the CAR that is not in electronic format, I save the evidence as a pdf file and attach this to the CAR.

 

[Barahir]

I agree. On the ones that I handle I tend to scan (our fancy new photocopiers scan to pdf or tif) it to an image file and then embed it in the Word document that is our Corrective Action form. For most else, we scan and attach, or use Acrobat's feature to create 1 pdf file from multiple pdf files, which I've found over the years to be a godsend.

I think that this will definitely help as evidence to our auditor that we are making big strides towards a more effective corrective action system.

In the long run though, and more importantly, I think our overall Cost of Poor Quality will see some positive impact from an effective corrective action system. That's the more important kpi there, I think.

 

[Doug]

I most certainly agree with the last statement.
There should be value added positive results.

 

[Raffy]

Hi Brahir,
Thank you for sharing the attachment.
Speaking of Cost of Poor Quality, what are the proper ways of implementing the the process? How am i gonna relate COQ to rewards?
Thank you very much in advance for the usual prompt attention you will give i this request.
Raffy

 

[Barahir]

I guess that depends on if you're looking at Cost of Quality (COQ) or Cost of Poor Quality (CPQ). IMHO, the latter is much more important than the former as a day-to-day indicator of quality performance. Maybe my definitions are not identical to industry standards (and feel free to correct me if that is the case), but I tend to view them this way:

Cost of Quality = What it costs the company to have a Quality Management System (includes salaries, what we pay the registrar, etc.). If you want to maintain any type of QMS registration, there will always be a COQ. This number also includes the Cost of Poor Quality.

Cost of Poor Quality = What it costs the company to not do it right the first time (Lost sales dollars due to internal or external defects/rejects). It is feasible (though I doubt likely to ever happen) that this number could eventually be zero while still having a QMS.

The former is more relevant I believe to the bigwigs (senior management) for budgeting, etc. The latter is more important as an indicator that the quality system is effective and yielding results.

As for implementing and tying to rewards (bonuses?), we do that here. The dollar amount that is our CPQ is compared as a percentage of overall sales dollars for a given time period (we do it quarterly and annually) with a set goal based on improving over previous quarters' performances. For example, 1% or 0.5% of sales. If the meet that goal, bonuses get paid.

I track CPQ on a spreadsheet and what is referred to as the CPQ hit or final loss for an entry is a formula that we've developed which I believe is pretty accurate:

Total CPQ Loss = ((Sales $$ value of product) + (labor cost of time spent dispositioning product)) - ((recouped sales $$ of product reworked and sent back to prime inventory) + (recouped value of product dispositioned as secondary) + (scrap value of material dispositioned as scrap))

 

[Sandra Gauvin]

Thanks for your comments concerning root cause analysis for corrective actions. I too had almost identical experiences. This is probably common.

Our corrective action system is web based as it includes both foreign and domestic operations. We are forcing ourselves to add electronic attachments for problem solving. It was a struggle initially. But now its starting to become much more effective.

Can you attach a problem solving document to your CARs? This process has removed a great burden from my position. Virtually all CAR documentation paperwork has gone away!

Doug,
You can attach a problem solving document to your CARs as long as you number the pages (1 of x) and have the corresponding CAR number on each page. I would also reference the attachment in the CAR itself.