T
Toefuzz - 2006
Greetings all! I'm not sure where I'm going with this post, so please bear with me as I try to organize a few of the jumbled thought bouncing around in my noodle.
I work for a small, family owned (my family), job shop that finishes metal product supplied by our customers. Much of our process involves manual labor and manual inspection, most of which is performed by relatively uneducated individuals, though they do know their job. Because this is a family business comprised of people who have been here for 15 years plus the resistance to change is outstanding. Some aspects of our quality system have been nagging me for some time now so I'm trying to organize a plan of action... What do I need to do, how should I go about it, prioritizing, etc but would like to know what other people are doing as a sort of benchmark before I present my ideas.
We do produce a high quality product and in general our customers are very happy with us. I guess what's bothering me is the reactive nature of our quality system. It seems that when a problem does arise with a customer we typically have very little empirical evidence proving we are not at fault for the issue at hand. The world of business is changing and as unfortunate as it is, the deal and a handshake days are pretty much gone, especially when dealing with the automotive companies. To protect ourselves we do monitor several aspects of our process multiple times per day and randomly sample parts from each production run for long term durability testing (salt spray, humidity, etc). What bothers me is that customers will often complain that our finish operation reduced the diameter of a hole to below spec. All too often this hole will be below spec before we began processing it, but we do not track this and have no proof other than our word (and as I said, that just doesn’t cut it nowadays).
I guess my question for you is this: Where in the world do I begin? I know, nice and specific there, ‘eh? My thought is that we need to have some sort of inspection on incoming customer product. To save time this should be on some sort of sliding scale, the most common offenders receiving the heaviest inspection, the fewest receiving little to no inspection (unless a problem arises, then inspection is stepped up). The problem is that many of the defects aren’t visible to the human eye until we finish the part. Still, it seems it might be worthwhile to measure any critical characteristics/dimensions as called out on the print. We would then need to inspect finished goods for the same criteria.
Also, I would like to look at implementing some sort of SPC program… Any recommendations on how to go about it? My thought was to sit down with the appropriate personnel and determine the variables critical to our process. We would then track the variable for awhile, determine high and low ranges, and continue tracking using statistical tools. Does this sound like the correct way to go about thigns?
Again, I apologize for the long and vague nature of this post… I’m hoping that as I discuss this with you things will begin to clarify in my mind and I can ask more specific questions.
I work for a small, family owned (my family), job shop that finishes metal product supplied by our customers. Much of our process involves manual labor and manual inspection, most of which is performed by relatively uneducated individuals, though they do know their job. Because this is a family business comprised of people who have been here for 15 years plus the resistance to change is outstanding. Some aspects of our quality system have been nagging me for some time now so I'm trying to organize a plan of action... What do I need to do, how should I go about it, prioritizing, etc but would like to know what other people are doing as a sort of benchmark before I present my ideas.
We do produce a high quality product and in general our customers are very happy with us. I guess what's bothering me is the reactive nature of our quality system. It seems that when a problem does arise with a customer we typically have very little empirical evidence proving we are not at fault for the issue at hand. The world of business is changing and as unfortunate as it is, the deal and a handshake days are pretty much gone, especially when dealing with the automotive companies. To protect ourselves we do monitor several aspects of our process multiple times per day and randomly sample parts from each production run for long term durability testing (salt spray, humidity, etc). What bothers me is that customers will often complain that our finish operation reduced the diameter of a hole to below spec. All too often this hole will be below spec before we began processing it, but we do not track this and have no proof other than our word (and as I said, that just doesn’t cut it nowadays).
I guess my question for you is this: Where in the world do I begin? I know, nice and specific there, ‘eh? My thought is that we need to have some sort of inspection on incoming customer product. To save time this should be on some sort of sliding scale, the most common offenders receiving the heaviest inspection, the fewest receiving little to no inspection (unless a problem arises, then inspection is stepped up). The problem is that many of the defects aren’t visible to the human eye until we finish the part. Still, it seems it might be worthwhile to measure any critical characteristics/dimensions as called out on the print. We would then need to inspect finished goods for the same criteria.
Also, I would like to look at implementing some sort of SPC program… Any recommendations on how to go about it? My thought was to sit down with the appropriate personnel and determine the variables critical to our process. We would then track the variable for awhile, determine high and low ranges, and continue tracking using statistical tools. Does this sound like the correct way to go about thigns?
Again, I apologize for the long and vague nature of this post… I’m hoping that as I discuss this with you things will begin to clarify in my mind and I can ask more specific questions.
. While it might take time to do research and accumulate this knowledge, it will be well worth it. I have seen "Gotta have it right away" projects and also "planned & organized" projects. Guess which ones were more successful and lasted longer? (If you picked the latter you receive a gold star for the day.)