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Hi. First post here!
Okay, very quick history.....I work for an automotive supplier. I'm in Engineering but did a stint as the Quality Manager here for about 2 years. (it has been less than a year since I've been *thankfully* out of that position).
Our current owner due to slow sales had reduced the number of people allotted to handle containment activities, which was fine for a time. Now we have new product launches occurring for which we have to GP12/early contain (whatever Chrysler calls it) and we are seriously struggling to get it all completed (and frankly are doing a poor job of it...bad product has left the building!).
Being the one who can't keep my trap shut I sent an email to the owner expressing my concern about what is happening. It is ridiculous that the Quality Manager is spending hours containing because we don't have the resoures for it (essentially it is the job of the inspectors to contain any current production as needed in addition to their other duties, one person that is strictly containment only on 1st shift, and then the Quality Engineer does it as needed which seems to be all the time lately). The QM was leaving what is supposedly an 8-5 job at 11PM! I'm basically looking for "creative" ways we could get GP12 completed on parts without adding cost!!! Now keep in mind the owner is a former bean counter. Am I so lacking in imagination or is this an impossible task? This is the email he sent to me and then my response (identifying info removed of course!)
Email thread.....
My original email to Owner: I feel the need to express my concern on the recent issues that are plaguing us at (Customer). We recently cut back on the people doing containment and now we are very quickly seeing the repercussions of this. I'm know there have been other issues in addition to this but just today I have become aware of a whole container of XXXX getting to (plant) without (component) and then XXXX informed me that he personally saw multiple boxes of XXXXXX where some of the parts were not reworked. If this is discovered it won't be pretty I'm sure. I've informed (Quality Manager) about both items and now of course she will be stretched even thinner to firefight these issue.
These are both early production jobs that are to be 100%ed and it sounds like it isn't happening, most likely due to lack of containment resources. I understand the intent of eliminating containment because it isn't fixing the problem and because money is indeed tight, but before eliminating it you need to actually fix something first. And by all means you contain new product 100% or you risk paying someone else to do so which means it may not save money, especially when you consider the damage to a reputation that took years to develop.
I really think we need to rethink our current containment setup because from my vantage point it doesn't appear to be working very well.
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Email response from Owner:
This was when our current sales / # of pieces being shipped are less than 50% of what they use to be.
Could you spend a few minutes with (Quality Manager) to see if you can help with the root cause problems?
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Email from me to Owner:
I did speak with (Quality Manager) and basically we both agree that while the containment labor reduction was difficult but doable for a while, things have changed because of all the new product that HAS to be contained. So we both feel that more labor is needed for containment purposes.
I'm not sure if this is what you intended by determining the root cause, but we both believe labor (or lack thereof) to be the issue here.
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Email from Owner to Me:
We need to ship quailty parts to the customer on time at the standards quoted.
i am not disagreening with ensure that only quality parts are delivered BUT lets not compromise any allowable standards.
I would challenge you/engineering to take a fresh approach to this with (Quality Manager) and find a way to solve this problem with out incurring more costs.
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My last email to owner:
This might be a lack of creativity on my part, but the only "problem" as I can see it is that we have new program launches that require additional support. Unless I'm missing something there isn't necessary anything broken to root cause. We haven't even begun to ramp up the (new part) yet and I really worry how that will get GP12ed.
In my opinion we should have a temporary plan in place to address new launch containment (i.e. XXX amount of labor assigned until GP12/early containment is completed). This assumes of course that we don't experience problems that require the parts to continue in containment beyond the customer dictated time.
As for not incurring added costs, I believe if we don't allocate labor to handle this then we WILL incur costs by 3rd party containment providers and then of course there is the hard to measure cost of customer dissatisfaction. My gut reaction, which I acknowledge may be way off base, is that this will cost us more in the long run.
That said, I don't want to be perceived as a "negative Nelly" so I will visit a Quality Online forum I know of and see if anyone has posted about creative GP12 ideas.
If you've made it this far thanks for reading! When I was thrown into the Quality Management position this site really helped me out so thanks for that!
Okay, very quick history.....I work for an automotive supplier. I'm in Engineering but did a stint as the Quality Manager here for about 2 years. (it has been less than a year since I've been *thankfully* out of that position).
Our current owner due to slow sales had reduced the number of people allotted to handle containment activities, which was fine for a time. Now we have new product launches occurring for which we have to GP12/early contain (whatever Chrysler calls it) and we are seriously struggling to get it all completed (and frankly are doing a poor job of it...bad product has left the building!).
Being the one who can't keep my trap shut I sent an email to the owner expressing my concern about what is happening. It is ridiculous that the Quality Manager is spending hours containing because we don't have the resoures for it (essentially it is the job of the inspectors to contain any current production as needed in addition to their other duties, one person that is strictly containment only on 1st shift, and then the Quality Engineer does it as needed which seems to be all the time lately). The QM was leaving what is supposedly an 8-5 job at 11PM! I'm basically looking for "creative" ways we could get GP12 completed on parts without adding cost!!! Now keep in mind the owner is a former bean counter. Am I so lacking in imagination or is this an impossible task? This is the email he sent to me and then my response (identifying info removed of course!)
Email thread.....
My original email to Owner: I feel the need to express my concern on the recent issues that are plaguing us at (Customer). We recently cut back on the people doing containment and now we are very quickly seeing the repercussions of this. I'm know there have been other issues in addition to this but just today I have become aware of a whole container of XXXX getting to (plant) without (component) and then XXXX informed me that he personally saw multiple boxes of XXXXXX where some of the parts were not reworked. If this is discovered it won't be pretty I'm sure. I've informed (Quality Manager) about both items and now of course she will be stretched even thinner to firefight these issue.
These are both early production jobs that are to be 100%ed and it sounds like it isn't happening, most likely due to lack of containment resources. I understand the intent of eliminating containment because it isn't fixing the problem and because money is indeed tight, but before eliminating it you need to actually fix something first. And by all means you contain new product 100% or you risk paying someone else to do so which means it may not save money, especially when you consider the damage to a reputation that took years to develop.
I really think we need to rethink our current containment setup because from my vantage point it doesn't appear to be working very well.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Email response from Owner:
This was when our current sales / # of pieces being shipped are less than 50% of what they use to be.
Could you spend a few minutes with (Quality Manager) to see if you can help with the root cause problems?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Email from me to Owner:
I did speak with (Quality Manager) and basically we both agree that while the containment labor reduction was difficult but doable for a while, things have changed because of all the new product that HAS to be contained. So we both feel that more labor is needed for containment purposes.
I'm not sure if this is what you intended by determining the root cause, but we both believe labor (or lack thereof) to be the issue here.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Email from Owner to Me:
We need to ship quailty parts to the customer on time at the standards quoted.
i am not disagreening with ensure that only quality parts are delivered BUT lets not compromise any allowable standards.
I would challenge you/engineering to take a fresh approach to this with (Quality Manager) and find a way to solve this problem with out incurring more costs.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
My last email to owner:
This might be a lack of creativity on my part, but the only "problem" as I can see it is that we have new program launches that require additional support. Unless I'm missing something there isn't necessary anything broken to root cause. We haven't even begun to ramp up the (new part) yet and I really worry how that will get GP12ed.
In my opinion we should have a temporary plan in place to address new launch containment (i.e. XXX amount of labor assigned until GP12/early containment is completed). This assumes of course that we don't experience problems that require the parts to continue in containment beyond the customer dictated time.
As for not incurring added costs, I believe if we don't allocate labor to handle this then we WILL incur costs by 3rd party containment providers and then of course there is the hard to measure cost of customer dissatisfaction. My gut reaction, which I acknowledge may be way off base, is that this will cost us more in the long run.
That said, I don't want to be perceived as a "negative Nelly" so I will visit a Quality Online forum I know of and see if anyone has posted about creative GP12 ideas.
If you've made it this far thanks for reading! When I was thrown into the Quality Management position this site really helped me out so thanks for that!

