Designing a Nonconformance Management Process

A

ab001

#31
Following what Pancho and Qcace have said - you can't determine the root cause up front.
The reporter can only be sure about the symptoms, so just report the symptoms.

for example:
I can't do my job because something is wrong:
Bad parts - wrong size, wrong material, no material, ...
Bad information - order missing critical information (cut length, colour, quantity, steel grade, ...)
Bad process - tools out of calibration, machine not capable of +/-0.x
Bad planning - can't meet a delivery date of yesterday

The list you mentioned earlier is probably right.
And your gut feeling - about bad communication - might be right as well. That's the conclusion I came to with the data i collected.

If you can figure out a way of telling that to management without them getting personally offended, let me know. (I think Demming had a way)

Thank you for the reply pancho.

I actually do have a root cause area but this is derived during the investigation.

My main form within my database where investigators of a nonconformance work is broken down in to the following pages:


nonconformance overview = all information submitted initially by the reporter

costs = allowing multiple costs to be assigned to the nonconformance as they are realised, this is broken down to be able to add in estimated/actual and assign them a category and department who has incurred them.

Investigation = This allows for notes of who has been involved, methods used and then an area to report each root cause (as there can be multiple). Root causes are also categorised for example, not following procedure, out of date documentation etc. A start date for the investigation and an end date. Finally the outcome of the investigation which for now is two options of "Use as is" or "correction required". This has a reasoning box next to it so they can describe why the conclusion has been reached and who has signed it off.

Corrections = Corrective actions which are broken down in to seperate actions/start dates/proposed end date/actual end date who is the owner/who is carrying the action out and what the action is. Then finally a section to mark the nonconformance for closure and recommendations.


So as you can see, there is categorisation right through the sytem which is great for analysis however, I do not want to have to use qualitative analysis to understand what is actually being reported initialy. I would prefer the initial reporter to suggest what category their nonconformance event description falls in to. This would then allow me to do trend analysis on a department and business perspective associating costs and root causes along the way. I can then help to steer the business in the right direction not just the departments.

But as we have both said, it is hard to make choices on what the initial categorisation is without driving down in to a root cause. By all means I do not mind users stating what they "think" but I have always said you should let the data tell the story and not be driven by "gut feelings". However, with that being said if I can categorise nonconformance events coming in, I can use data to drive priorities and do the right things first.

To put it in perspective, our business is looking at 1,300 internal nonconformances this year, amounting to profit loss in the millions (wasted time, rework hours mainly) :nopity:. We have chosen to use the categorisation of events to show us what our biggest issues are (pareto analysis easiest way) and then do thorough investigations on these and bring their occurence rate down thus reducing costs until we are at a manageable level to investigate everything coming in to the system thoroughly.


p.s before anyone says it, we do actually have a nonconformance system which is concerned with customer delivery however my system will be lookin at internal nonconformance, at the same time the first system is becoming very out dated and support for it is set to end soon so our quality department are looking for a replacement which may end up being this one once it has been fully tested/refined/audited.
 
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M

munkee

#32
I have found a couple of very small examples of lists used in other systems:







Nonconformance type:
  • Component
  • In process material
  • Finished product
  • Buildings/fabric
  • Equipment
  • Document
  • Record
  • Process error
  • Training
  • Service
  • Other
Second example:
  • Performance
  • Component function
  • Interface
  • Assembly
  • Documentation
Third example:
  • Planning
  • Process/Setup
  • Inspection
  • Tooling
  • Machining
  • People
  • Environment
  • Materials
  • Unknown
Fourth example:
  • Process
  • Product quality
  • Customer complaint
  • Supplier
  • Environmental
  • Safety
  • Other
Fifth example:
  • Transportation
  • Performance
  • Packaging
  • Contamination
Sixth example:

  • Human error
  • Equipment problem
  • Process issue

My first attempt:
  • Breakdown
  • Incorrect Work
  • Late Work
  • Incomplete Work
  • Rework
  • Unscheduled event
  • Missing Work
  • Additional Work
  • Cost overrun
  • Poor communication
Second attempt:
  • Document
  • Equipment
  • Product
  • People
  • Process
After all of the above research and couple of attempts. I think realisticly I will have to pick something broad to start off with. Eventually as the system develops I should tailor the categories more, or atleast have them in some form of tree style list for example:

  • Document
    • Incomplete information
    • Incorrect information / Errors
    • Missing
    • Wrong version used
Etc

Edit:

I took a random sample of our current log and decided to run my proposed categories against the reported "events" and produced the following graph (see attachment). I have to say it was not too taxing to categorise however the graph does show that it looks as though I will need to break my categories down somewhat to be able to get any meaningful information out of this as the current categories are too broad. With that being said, on the upside it does show these categories manage to pick up most of our reported events.
 

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M

munkee

#33
Just done a bit of work over the weekend =] and I have come up with preliminary groupings.

Please feel free to critique these as it would be very easy I expect for me to be doubling up on something or missing out something obvious:

Document
-Missing
-Late
-Incomplete
-Incorrect/Errors
-Inconsistence

Equipment
-Malfunction/Faulty
-Inadequate
-Unavailable
-Misused
-Calibration

People
-Late
-Unscheduled
-Communication
-Error
-Training
-Performance


Product
-Defect
-Out of scope
-Deficiency or Incomplete
-Incompatibility


Process
-Inadequate
-Failure
-Incorrect
-Missing
 
A

ab001

#34
From memory - the general categories on a fishbone are:

  • Manpower = People
  • Machine = Equipment
  • Method = Documents, Process
  • Materials = Product
  • Money = [missing] problems with costs, efficiencies (could also be covered elsewhere, even though money would be a symptom)
  • Environment = [missing] external factors (do you paint or glue? bend soft metal?)
Just done a bit of work over the weekend =] and I have come up with preliminary groupings.

Please feel free to critique these as it would be very easy I expect for me to be doubling up on something or missing out something obvious:

Document
-Missing
-Late
-Incomplete
-Incorrect/Errors
-Inconsistence

Equipment
-Malfunction/Faulty
-Inadequate
-Unavailable
-Misused
-Calibration

People
-Late
-Unscheduled
-Communication
-Error
-Training
-Performance


Product
-Defect
-Out of scope
-Deficiency or Incomplete
-Incompatibility


Process
-Inadequate
-Failure
-Incorrect
-Missing
 
M

munkee

#35
Thank you for the reply ab001. I think I manage to cover external factors for the most part. I know not technically correct but I have "External" under department responsible, which would mean a Product defect/deficiency could go under that and be due to an external product such as a glue etc. However, also the fishbone diagram I believe is used when deriving the root cause to the problem, something which I am not currently trying to do, I am just categorising incoming events as easily as possible.

With that being said it is funny how I have inadvertently come up with very similar categories to that of the fish bone, you can really see how analytical tools are very organic and just fall out of a requirement during analysis.

I have used the same data as my previous graph to categorise the events based on my new subcategories. There are a few points to note.

Firstly I was able to categories an extra 4 events that previously I left out as I was unsure which main category they would fall under.


I then decided to group all of my sub categories back in to their main categories to see how the overall picture looked against my initial run where I had not made the sub categories.

Process remained the minimum which I think is promising as the new categorisation can clearly identify big differences and may have brought the categories that were closer to be more representative of their true main category. The order of the main 4 categories moved around somewhat but this is to be expected due to the approach and mindset you have when categorising, not forgetting the extra 4 events will give some sway.

Graphing the sub categories really provides more useful information showing some quite big hits in documentation, equipment failures and product defects. I would expect that the adverse affects of documentation/equipment failures would be ultimately aiding in our product defect/failures. It would not suprise me however that the small amount of process issues were causing the large proportion of documentation / equipment failures.

Interestingly as one would expect in any company, "People - Late" is a waste to everyone.
 

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M

munkee

#36
All,

As I promised throughout all of this I would show the finished product. It has taken 2 months to get everything to the stage it is and we are now in the initial stages of testing.

The system will be rolled out in two sections. Firstly reporting through the web form only (so we are in the exact same position as last year except users are not wasting time editing excel spread sheets) Then there will be a push towards actually doing something with what is reported, which will primarily be using the actual access database.

Please find attached pictures of (near enough) every page of the database. I am not one to give out specific code or running programs, but hopefully this will give everyone an idea of what is possible. I joined the business with very very very basic knowledge of microsoft access. I had studied it for around 6 hours during university as part of a module titled "Information technology in the construction industry" about 3 years ago, but as you can see if you stick with it and do a lot of searching around for code and examples you will come up with something good. There are plenty of examples of nonconformance databases out there I have about 11 different ones where I have grabbed screenshots from google images. This is often all you need to get you pointed in the right direction!.

Also very important to understand the process, I got stuck midway through designing as it dawned on me that it is all well and good having a program but how will this fit in with the business?! I set about designing a process from scratch and suddenly my work progressed massively in a couple of days as I had a clear goal to achieve.

However with that being said, with my very basic lean six sigma knowledge I went about hearing the voice of the customer. Picking 60 possible users of the system, right from those who report up to those who will receive final financial figures and our MD. This really drove forward certain aspects of the design and at the end of the day..as stated by one of the managers "by doing it this way, if people complain it is ****.. we know this is their ****".
Thanks for all the help!
 

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