Corrective Action - Assigning KPIs to Non-Guilty Processes

[QAMTY]

Hello all

How do you manage CA's assignement, like this:

In an external audit the delivery process resulted with on NC, because delivered product to client lately and didnt complied with goal.

Goal was set to max 5 late deliveries at month.
But this process complied very well, the problem was that previous process
who sent the product very late.

Who should resolve the nc ( surely an CA) the delivery process or the previous process? the NC was risen to Delivery.

Should the delivery process keep this KPI, because normally other processes are the cause of the late deliveries?

Thanks for your inputs

 

[charanjit singh]

As for as the external auditor is concerned the non-conformity is against the Delivery Department. The cause of the NC however was the delay by the Production department. This is a common problem in many manufacturing organisations. Internally therefore KPIs for Production should include meeting the delivery commitment within the fixed target unless not included already.

Similarly the KPIs for the Delivery department should also include an upper limit (hours/days etc.) within which the shipment should actually be made once they receive the material from Production.

It will however be interesting to investigate and discover the root cause of delay and resolve the problem, because that is what resulted in the NC being raised in the first place.

 

[charanjit singh]

I am sure you must be having an internal procedure/process for Corrective Actions. Usually this will involve a multi-function group. Responsibility for the NC, as far as the organisation is concerned, is not necessarily that of the department to whom it is issued. It is the result of investigation that will bring this out.

So the key is investigation and determination of what CA should be taken and take action as appropriate.

 

[somashekar]

Planning, Payments to suppliers, supply chain derailment, leadtime going out of control, production capacity ... several factors can be the reason. Do not target a process or person. Analyse and find out which is the weakest link in your chain, and work to build strength there.

 

[howste]

Who should resolve the nc ( surely an CA) the delivery process or the previous process? the NC was risen to Delivery.

It depends on what causes were determined. After the causes have been determined, people with the ability to eliminate the causes should take the actions. Then (ideally) someone who is independent of the actions should verify that the actions taken were effective in eliminating the causes and preventing recurrence.

Should the delivery process keep this KPI, because normally other processes are the cause of the late deliveries?

The KPI is relevant to multiple processes, so it can apply to all of them. In addition, as Charanjit Singh pointed out, you can have KPIs that are more specific to each process.

Production should be held accountable to a production schedule that will complete the product before it is due to ship. They could have a KPI for this. Delivery should be held accountable to ship product in a set amount of time. They could have a KPI for this. As Somashekar pointed out, Purchasing/Supply Chain should also be held accountable to get product to Production on time. They could have a KPI for this. Together, all processes are responsible for the overall KPI for on-time delivery.

 

[Bev D]

As Deming would remind us: it's a system. neither physics nor 'transactional' systems respect organization charts. the 'owner' should be the person who is responsible for investigating and implementing solutions for the problem. it doesn't mean they 'caused' the problem.