Hey Dominick,
You may want to try the old "80/20" rule. What you want to find are the Vital Few in the Trivial Many. As your program becomes more stable, you may elect to reintroduce some of those you may have been on the fence about removing. Your goal is to increase the efficiency, so your steps towards making it more user friendly should work out.
Additionally, when should a CAR be issued? Many folks don't know the answer, so when in doubt, issue a CAR (in reality as Barb B. says; train, train, train!). This is bad practice. It gives the program a bad taste. Pretty soon, no one reports trouble, because CARs they issued, some for good reason, some not, have gone unanswered for months! Why bother? The system bogs down because there are many useless CARs in the system, no hope for improvement. Again, the Vital Few need consideration. I would also say that "System Knowledge" needs to be taught (my own opinion here).
An example: a CAR is issued by an inside sales associate because someone called up, upset that a product they bought was missing a key piece of hardware. The system that produced the problem operates at 99.98% efficient. Was this a bonified reason to issue the CAR? Things to consider: Severity of the problem, Occurrence of the problem, point of Detection. Looks familiar? It is part of the
FMEA risk rating system. Develop an RPN (risk priority number) and address those that require addressing. Again, the 80/20 rule applies. An organization has limited resources, and chasing a shadow won't get it done, only worse!
I inherited a CAR program that had issued 367 CARs in a 6 month period. I went through them all, classified them, and came to the conclusion only about 12 required corrective action. Needless to say, no one was filling out the CARs before, but they fill them out now. They only get them when they are needed.
I'll be out your neck of the woods most of next week, so let's meet at Honey Girls for lunch if you like.
Regards,
Kevin
[This message has been edited by Kevin Mader (edited 10 February 2000).]