Production Accountability - Instilling Quality Values in the Production Workers

[domingue]

This is my first time posting, but I’ve been hanging around for a good while now. Before I get to the problem, I first should thank you all for being such an incredible resource for an inexperienced guy like me. I’ve found this place to be my most used reference by a long shot in trying to wrap my head around this QA stuff.

Here’s my situation:

I graduated in June ‘06 with a degree in Mech/Aero Engineering and started working for a small aerospace manufacturing company that September as a designer/engineer. After about 5 months of floating and not being sure what I was supposed to be doing, I was pushed temporarily into the QA position. At the time, I was pretty upset about it because I had kind of adopted my boss's view that QA was like the police and the only reason they exist is because people don't do their jobs right in the first place. I've since changed my view and I really like the QA Management - actually, the lack of involvement has forced me to learn a lot much faster, so it's not all bad. Also, as I get more into it and explain what it's REALLY about and continue to show results, the owner has become much more willing to help me out and give me what I need. By some act of God, I managed to pull the company through an AS9100 audit last month (no prior registration) with zero formal training and about 6 months of prep. Needless to say, it looks like I’m in this position to stay at this point – I’m definitely ok with that.

Because the company had no focus on quality in the past, I'm having a difficult time instilling some of the quality values in the production workers, and I was looking for some advice. Right now, I'm working on better accountability for task completion and NC material. A lot of practices that are standard for aerospace (Material Rejection Reports and documented dispositions, split lots, strictly controlled quantities, etc) simply were never practiced the way they should have been. When I bring this up to the Production Manager, he sees it as “slowing him down” and isn’t really willing to cooperate. He’s a great guy and generally very willing to help out, but he comes from a background where quantity controls and accountability weren’t so important. His feeling is that as long as he gets the number of parts he needs, and all of them are good, then it doesn’t really matter if you rejected 5 at task 1 and 7 at task 2, as long as 5 and 7 are acceptable numbers.

Is there some kind of compromise we can strike that will get me the accountability I need without slowing him down too much? How do other people handle this? Am I demanding more than is necessary?

Wow, this ended up being a novel – sorry for the long first post. Thanks in advance for any help you can give!

-Nate

 

[BadgerMan]

Re: Production Accountability

Great topic for a first post........welcome.

Are you able to quantify the related costs of poor quality?

 

[Sidney Vianna]

Re: Production Accountability

Since accountability for all products during manufacture is an AS9100 requirement, you can tell your Production Manager, if he does not have a system for keeping tabs of the parts, you will institute one, which he might not like it. Nevertheless, in principle, since he is the production manager he "owns" the manufacturing processes, thus he should be responsible for controlling the processes, which includes product accountability. Product accountability in the Aerospace Supply Chain is a VERY serious issue. You MUST minimize the risk of bogus parts being created. There are a number of cases of FBI agents showing up at aerospace suppliers, if suspicion exists about bogus parts being entered in the aviation distribution channels. This issue is not to be taken lightly.

The main issue for product accountability, besides having the means such as travellers, routers, etc... is the DISCIPLINE, by the workers, to capture the information. And the DISCIPLINE will only come if the department manager(s)/process owner(s) send a clear message that they will monitor it very carefully.

 

[domingue]

Re: Production Accountability

Are you able to quantify the related costs of poor quality?

I'm not, sadly. This is partly because I don't know the first thing about cost of quality calculations - next on my list of things to push for is formal training. Intuitively though, I’m not sure there’s an inherent cost associated with it. No doubt my naivety is coming into play here, but it seems like it’s a matter of record keeping rather than cost reduction. Could I present it as a cost saving measure? That's certainly something understood by everyone here - lots of penny pinching going on (although often in an effort to pinch said pennies, people tend to miss the $100 bills falling out of the hole in their pockets).

Since accountability for all products during manufacture is an AS9100 requirement, you can tell your Production Manager, if he does not have a system for keeping tabs of the parts, you will institute one, which he might not like it. Nevertheless, in principle, since he is the production manager he "owns" the manufacturing processes, thus he should be responsible for controlling the processes, which includes product accountability. Product accountability in the Aerospace Supply Chain is a VERY serious issue. You MUST minimize the risk of bogus parts being created. There are a number of cases of FBI agents showing up at aerospace suppliers, if suspicion exists about bogus parts being entered in the aviation distribution channels. This issue is not to be taken lightly.

The main issue for product accountability, besides having the means such as travellers, routers, etc... is the DISCIPLINE, by the workers, to capture the information. And the DISCIPLINE will only come if the department manager(s)/process owner(s) send a clear message that they will monitor it very carefully.

Thanks Sidney. It sounds like I'm not demanding over and above the requirements. I'm going push a little more to work something out with him that suits both of us. Of course any suggestions on how to do so are more than welcome.

-Nate

 

[tomstwincam]

It may be difficult at times to get production personell to adhere to the QMS because of their "must ship no matter what" mentality. The production manager must understand the the company is now AS9100 certified and your established policies and procedures must be adhered to. Talk to his manager and get the point across that quality control is the most important responsability. If you still don't get a positive response, issue a corrective action and go from there. Side note; nice to see a fellow NJ native on here. The company I work for will be going for AS9100 certification in June.

 

[BadgerMan]

Re: Production Accountability

Could I present it as a cost saving measure? That's certainly something understood by everyone here - lots of penny pinching going on (although often in an effort to pinch said pennies, people tend to miss the $100 bills falling out of the hole in their pockets).

Yeah, it would be great if you could demonstrate that doing it right the first time is the least cost option.

 

[domingue]

Re: Production Accountability

Sorry for leaving this alone for a while - I was away for the holiday.

It may be difficult at times to get production personell to adhere to the QMS because of their "must ship no matter what" mentality. The production manager must understand the the company is now AS9100 certified and your established policies and procedures must be adhered to. Talk to his manager and get the point across that quality control is the most important responsability. If you still don't get a positive response, issue a corrective action and go from there. Side note; nice to see a fellow NJ native on here. The company I work for will be going for AS9100 certification in June.

This is sort of the course of action I'm following. I think much of the issue is that old habits die hard, and now all of a sudden I'm making everyone do all this extra work that they never had to do before. Since everything was fine then, why should they do it now?

Going from no real QMS to something as strict as AS9100 is almost viewed as adding problems when there were none before. The philosophy seems to be, “As long as all the parts are good, then what does it matter?”

Yeah, it would be great if you could demonstrate that doing it right the first time is the least cost option.

I would love to be able to do that, but I'm not sure exactly what I should be factoring into that calculation. Because this is a matter of recordkeeping rather than of product performance, I'm not sure how to add everything up. I'm at a loss in terms of what costs are involved with incomplete records. Would it be possible to get a brief summary (or a nudge in the direction where I can find some information)?

 

[RoxaneB]

Easy thing to do is tally up the credits of customer complaints. Add on the cost of investigation/resolution of a complaint (i.e., average hourly salary * time).

Compare to the time to ensure that everything is up to snuff before shipping out the door.

Then there are the intangibles things to consider. Unhappy customers. Not to mention, for every customer that actually does complain, there are quite a few who haven't. And if the situation is that the customer has no choice but to deal with you, consider the harm done to your organization's reputation if they mention the lack of quality to another potential customer.

I work in the steel industry - including 2 plants in NJ. Perception means a lot, we've learned.

 

[RoxaneB]

I re-read the title of this thread and wonder if we've slightly deviated from theh topic. We've focused on Cost of Quality (or un-Quality as some of us joke) and the Production Manager. But the title says workers. Does this mean the guys on the floor?

Typically, I find they have lots of pride and value quality in their jobs. Middle managers are the ones pushing them to get things out the door.

But still, to get their buy-in, ask them some pointed questions and get their ideas on how to help things along.

1. On a scale of 1 to 10 (1 being the worst and 10 being the best), how would your rate our company's dedication to quality and the customer?

2. Over the past few years, would you say this dedication has been improving, getting worse or remaining the same? Why?

And my personal fave...my Miss Universe question, as I've dubbed it...

3. If you could do it, what one thing would you do to improve our dedication to quality and the Customer.

The great thing about these questions is that they can be easily tailored to fit any system. I've asked them on quality audits, environmental audits and safety audits. Haven't tried them on the financial ones. But they will be added to a survey to be sent to our internal customers in 2008Q1 on Procurement's processes.

 

[domingue]

Easy thing to do is tally up the credits of customer complaints. Add on the cost of investigation/resolution of a complaint (i.e., average hourly salary * time).

Compare to the time to ensure that everything is up to snuff before shipping out the door.

This seems like the standard approach, and it's definitely what I would do under normal circumstances. The reason I'm having difficulty though, is because we don't get complaints about it really. We are making good parts, and generally speaking, customers are satisfied with our performance (as evidenced by our surveys). This is where the problem lies I think - because no one besides us sees the records, no one else can complain, so why add more work when no one cares? The answer is "because it's required," but I'm unsure how to supplement that response.

I re-read the title of this thread and wonder if we've slightly deviated from theh topic. We've focused on Cost of Quality (or un-Quality as some of us joke) and the Production Manager. But the title says workers. Does this mean the guys on the floor?

Typically, I find they have lots of pride and value quality in their jobs. Middle managers are the ones pushing them to get things out the door.

But still, to get their buy-in, ask them some pointed questions and get their ideas on how to help things along.

1. On a scale of 1 to 10 (1 being the worst and 10 being the best), how would your rate our company's dedication to quality and the customer?

2. Over the past few years, would you say this dedication has been improving, getting worse or remaining the same? Why?

And my personal fave...my Miss Universe question, as I've dubbed it...

3. If you could do it, what one thing would you do to improve our dedication to quality and the Customer.

The great thing about these questions is that they can be easily tailored to fit any system. I've asked them on quality audits, environmental audits and safety audits. Haven't tried them on the financial ones. But they will be added to a survey to be sent to our internal customers in 2008Q1 on Procurement's processes.

Really interesting thoughts! Often it feels like the production line is working for a paycheck rather than a good product. Getting the workers interested in the customer is another topic altogether though (and probably one I'd like to explore - maybe I'll start a thread on that/search for it in the near future).

In terms of the issue at hand, it's both the manager and the workers. Everyone is under such pressure to produce and ship that any additional work is a hindrance to productivity rather than a worthwhile precaution. Most of them will just do what they're told, but if it comes down to my wishes versus their managers' wishes, I'll lose pretty much every time. Even so though, they will resist the change in habit and it's a huge uphill battle to make any significant change, even when I have their manager's support.

It's definitely possible that some of my problems stem from inexperience, so changing my approach is likely the right way to go rather than trying to fight the resistance. I'm just not certain how to do that.