Tracking savings - Long term projects and the day to day decisions

qcman

Registered Visitor
Not sure if this is the best forum for this so please move if not. Those in the quality field know that actions we take whether long term projects or the day to day decisions save the company money. With bigger projects its pretty easy to calculate cost savings but I need some ideas on calculating the following. Lets say a customer rejects a batch of parts for being out of spec. Because you have built a good relationship with them and have thorough knowledge of their product you are able to convince them to issue a deviation to use the material in question. Another one I deal a lot with is the customer has an issue with another vendors part that assembles to ours. They review our part and the first thing they "perceive" wrong is automatically deemed the root cause of the assembly issue and they reject the parts. I then do my due diligence and prove to them the issue is not our part but the other vendors mating component. Are these cost savings or just part of the job? Feedback would be greatly appreciated.
 

Ninja

Looking for Reality
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From my viewpoint, it sounds like just part of the job...with one exception:

Lets say a customer rejects a batch of parts for being out of spec. Because you have built a good relationship with them and have thorough knowledge of their product you are able to convince them to issue a deviation to use the material in question.

If those parts were out of spec, and their rejection is valid...and you had to talk them into using them anyway...

It means that you shipped out of spec parts...

That's not part of the job, that's a job you still need to do.
 

Golfman25

Trusted Information Resource
Not sure if this is the best forum for this so please move if not. Those in the quality field know that actions we take whether long term projects or the day to day decisions save the company money. With bigger projects its pretty easy to calculate cost savings but I need some ideas on calculating the following. Lets say a customer rejects a batch of parts for being out of spec. Because you have built a good relationship with them and have thorough knowledge of their product you are able to convince them to issue a deviation to use the material in question. Another one I deal a lot with is the customer has an issue with another vendors part that assembles to ours. They review our part and the first thing they "perceive" wrong is automatically deemed the root cause of the assembly issue and they reject the parts. I then do my due diligence and prove to them the issue is not our part but the other vendors mating component. Are these cost savings or just part of the job? Feedback would be greatly appreciated.

I suppose if you're really interested in tracking it, you could track the cost of not having to rework or replace the parts.
 

qcman

Registered Visitor
As Ninja kindly pointed out there is the corrective action side that IS part of the job. That part is not in question but rather I am looking for suggestions to the question posed.
 

Ninja

Looking for Reality
Trusted Information Resource
...then I must have missed...

Everything you state, I would consider part of the job and would not consider them "cost savings".
Are you trying to track stuff to justify hiring, or a raise? Or are you looking for some other metric?

For the day to day stuff, methinks you might spend more time trying to track the "savings" than you would creating them...the examples you give seem more like damage control than cost savings efforts.
Cost savings is when the first run parts cost less...

Perspective: I'm looking at things from a top management point of view, not from the trenches.
 

qcman

Registered Visitor
The value or lack there of damage control is just an example. I am curious whether others in Quality Departments even track cost savings. My employers view of the department is just a necessary evil :bonk: and likes to see how we are saving money beyond the normal course of duty.
 
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