Choosing Nonconformities to Report

[Bev D]

Many organizations I have been in also have a ‘’low cost scrap container”. Screws, wires, tubes adn the like that are damaged are just thrown into the low cost scrap containers. We also have bio containers for scrapping our low cost biologicals in my current org. We don’t write up a NC report. These meet the requirements for identifying and controlling non conforming material. We can figure out the cost if we wanted to but these things are so low on the Pareto we don’t waste our time trying to track the cost.

 

[QualiTEE]

We technically declare NC "non-fulfillment of a requirement". Generally speaking, any part being manufactured that is not to print spec. Examples: Part damaged when tooling breaks, customer-supplied product arrives out of spec, product machined incorrectly; these all get formal documented rejections. Any instances where the part being manufactured becomes out of the specified tolerance and needs to be corrected/reworked/re-made/scrapped. If tooling breaks but the part is still good, then no NC.

Nonconformities by department (customer, supplier, mfg, etc.) are listed separately when reported to management and some (customer errors) are removed from our metric all together as to not inflate our own reject rate.

And good question, Ninja. We do not NC yield loss. We do also have certain non-inventoried components that do not need to be reported (nuts, bolts, screws, wire).

We're a small shop that averages completing 18 orders per week and shipping 150 parts per week, so we aren't talking 50+ nonconformities here. Probably 15 per month on average.

 

[Ninja]

A curious metric to look at...

Part damaged when tooling breaks, customer-supplied product arrives out of spec,

We do not NC yield loss.

If you remove "accidents" (like tool break) and "we didn't cause it" (like customer sending bad stuff) from the NC list for the last year, what would your average be then?
Perhaps stuff like that is why Mgmt is trying to whittle down the list.

I've been top management, and am again currently...if I got reports every month telling me about tool breaks I'd wonder why I'm paying the quality guy...
If 90% of tool breaks for the last 6mnths, costing a total of $50K in scrap and repairs, all happened by the same person ...but no one else has that issue on the same parts...that's what you report to me. That's something I can action.

Calling a NC when the customer ships the wrong part...that's just a waste of my time...make sense?

...and FWIW, a random tool break ruining a part in machining...that IS yield loss in my eyes...unless by negligence or intent.

 

[qualprod]

A curiosity...I don't think it's "playing word games" ...

How are you declaring the NC on product? Is it really a NC, or is it a process that simply doesn't run at 100% (none of them do)?
0.5% scrap from a process can simply be "yield loss"...I wouldn't call it a NC in the first place...

It was normal for us to trash the first 50' and last 75' of the process...it was not an NC, it's just the process...

A process with yield loss costs over a certain amount...call it what you want, but fix it before picking a name...

Just thinking out loud...

Supporting what is said by Ninja
There are processes that for starting a production produce scrap.
At starting, it is needed some tuning, scrapping an amount of raw material, but this works in this way.
After scrap is produced and tuning is finished, the production starts.
If afterwards, bad product is produced, ok, this is a non conforming product.
In this case is good practice to monitor amount of scrap, sometimes is higher than planned.
My two cents.

 

[QualiTEE]

A curious metric to look at...




If you remove "accidents" (like tool break) and "we didn't cause it" (like customer sending bad stuff) from the NC list for the last year, what would your average be then?
Perhaps stuff like that is why Mgmt is trying to whittle down the list.

I've been top management, and am again currently...if I got reports every month telling me about tool breaks I'd wonder why I'm paying the quality guy...
If 90% of tool breaks for the last 6mnths, costing a total of $50K in scrap and repairs, all happened by the same person ...but no one else has that issue on the same parts...that's what you report to me. That's something I can action.

Calling a NC when the customer ships the wrong part...that's just a waste of my time...make sense?

...and FWIW, a random tool break ruining a part in machining...that IS yield loss in my eyes...unless by negligence or intent.

I'll go check that metric. We do break the NCs into categories.

And what you say makes sense... minus the part of if you don't record it, how can you track it to ever report the trend to management? You can't track that 90% of tool breaks in the last 6 months costing $50k in scrap is from one guy if you never once document that it happened. It's all from memory at that point. There would be no proof if reprimand were required. I had, however, recommended revising our NC form to indicate things like negligence or intent so we could only write those up, but no bites on that yet.

I can only speculate on why the company requires an NC when customer supplied product is out of tolerance because I inherited this system. We don't NC if they send the wrong part, but do if the part is defective and requires repair. We got ourselves into an expensive situation last year because our customer was consistently sending product that was not to spec, and our old mfg manager claimed he had a verbal okay to go ahead and repair the parts so we could machine them. Never documented any of this. Customer claimed the opposite and charged us for the scrap parts. Our machinists were reprimanded for going ahead with the machining and for applying the extra hours to the end order. I can only assume that happened in the past, which is why the person who designed the system wanted something more formal than an email to document the situation.

Supporting what is said by Ninja
There are processes that for starting a production produce scrap.
At starting, it is needed some tuning, scrapping an amount of raw material, but this works in this way.
After scrap is produced and tuning is finished, the production starts.
If afterwards, bad product is produced, ok, this is a non conforming product.
In this case is good practice to monitor amount of scrap, sometimes is higher than planned.
My two cents.

We do not NC the setup/starting processes or materials. We NC once actual production has started.

 

[Ninja]

Looks like we're headed the right way (IMO)...

We do break the NCs into categories.

the part of if you don't record it, how can you track it to ever report the trend to management?

Recording it, and calling it NC are two different things.
Absolutely DO record a tool break, especially if it is a common thing that ruins a part.
Absolutely DO NOT call it an NC...
Not everything that goes wrong in the world has to be called NC...NC is a special term in ISO that comes with baggage...recording stuff to find trends and improve how you do business is "continuous improvement".
Don't get me wrong...if the tool broke because the machinist refused to follow proper procedure, it is totally NC...but tools break when everything is done right, too...they aren't both NC.

We don't NC if they send the wrong part, but do if the part is defective and requires repair.

I submit for your consideration that if the customer sends a defective part, when they should have sent an in-spec part...they sent the wrong part. This is not an NC on your end (it is one on THEIR end).

You noting that the part is defective prior to starting work on it is an example of your system working correctly...don't NC it.

 

[QualiTEE]

Mfg Management doesn't want to RECORD the event at all. No record of it ever happening.

We currently do consider any occurence of broken tooling an NC as we do not yet classify neglect or intent. I'll push for the new classifications so we can factor those out, yet still have a record of what happened.

Also, I think maybe our confusion comes in because we only have the NC form to document any product errors. The completion of the NC form is in the customer supplied material cases is more for tracking purposes, and those do not factor into our NC count. I'm sure an email to the customer about it would suffice as a formal record of the bad product, but there's no tracking the frequency of occurrence and no way to monitor in case we need corrective action. I do agree, it's not our NC. It's just the only form we have (again, minus email correspondences).

 

[RoxaneB]

In my previous life, we had "triggers" - all nonconformances (product and process) were recorded, but defined triggers were how we prioritized our resources on resolving. As an example, a 2 minute unscheduled electrical maintenance downtime would be documented so that we had the data, but it would likely stop there. If that unscheduled downtime was, say, 30 minutes, it would generate a nonconformance - documenting the correction taken. If that unscheduled downtime was over 2 hours, we'd likely be looking a full-blown corrective action. Every year, as part of our planning process, we would analyze all nonconformances to see if we could tighten our triggers.

And, yes, there were some cases where $ was a trigger. Customer complaints was one...if the $ to fix was less than than the $ to investigate, we'd pay out, but it was still documented so that come planning time, we could see if there were patterns (frequent complainers, complaint subjects, etc.).

 

[Ninja]

Mfg Management doesn't want to RECORD the event at all. No record of it ever happening.

If that decision was based on data, I'd sign off on it...
Two data situations that come to mind immediately:
1. I've seen the data or the last two years, and it doesn't happen often enough to bother with anymore...so stop bothering with it.
2. The cost to "fix", or "replace and move on" is less than the cost to document it and track it.

If it is instead "We don't want others to know about it", it does put you in an awkward situation...help the company or help yourself.
Ideally these are aligned...but when mgmt tries to hide something, all accomplices see these two paths part.

Which do you think it is?

 

[QualiTEE]

If that decision was based on data, I'd sign off on it...
Two data situations that come to mind immediately:
1. I've seen the data or the last two years, and it doesn't happen often enough to bother with anymore...so stop bothering with it.
2. The cost to "fix", or "replace and move on" is less than the cost to document it and track it.

If it is instead "We don't want others to know about it", it does put you in an awkward situation...help the company or help yourself.
Ideally these are aligned...but when mgmt tries to hide something, all accomplices see these two paths part.

Which do you think it is?

It's the second option as the guy doesn't review the data and the cost (though sometimes minor) is nowhere near less than the cost to document and track it.

But it is what it is, I guess. I do understand, but I don't think they want this for the right reasons.