Importance of Documenting NCP's and CA/PA's

[Ninja]

"That will be too much work" is sometimes true....if it costs more in time than you save for having spent the time.

Cherry pick your first case where you are pretty certain that the waste is avoidable in the future...and dig into the root cause for that one (in the department where the manager is willing to give it a try).

It is tempting to look back and dig in the past to try to avoid the next one. But sometimes convincing people works better if you wait for the NEXT one so that all of the data and memories are fresh.
If this has been going on for over a decade, another month won't hurt too much.

We humans forget what happened last week pretty easily. Make your initial move right at the tail end of the excursion happening. What I'm sensing through your posts is that you don't have enough data to sell the idea. Get some data on the next occurrence.

It is a hard sell to look into the past and discuss what might have been (the term is Monday Morning Quarterback?). It is much easier if you get involved when it's actually happening. The perception of the folks working with you will also be different between these two, and that may be the most important component.

more...

 

[Helmut Jilling]

[FONT=&quot]I?m sorry if I was unclear in my original post. I imagine this topic has been exhausted over time but I am new to the role so any help will be appreciated. Let me be clear, we have met the requirements of the ISO 9001 standard. Here is the situation I am in. We do not have a quality manager to oversee the quality day-to-day functions. Each department handles quality in their own way and still manages to follow the ISO standard. I would like this system to be beneficial for us ? NOT just to please an auditor. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Our company has been around for quite some time and believe it or not we have never tracked our scrap. Nonconforming parts rarely got out the door but we never tracked the cost of quality. Now that we have a reporting method in place and some history of the scrap costs, I would like more details to assess the processes to prevent future issues if possible (or at least present the ideas to upper management)[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]The scrap dollars are captured for reporting purposes but I would like to see more details (who, what, when, where & why) this is what our NCP database is meant to capture.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Early on in our implementation it was decided we would leave it up to the managers to enter NCP?s but only NCP?s that were ?Out of the Norm?. Parameters are very vague. I guess this is more out of curiosity for me. I am an employee that walks in the door every morning wondering how I can save the company money. Maybe it?s naive but I think [/FONT][FONT=&quot]before we say documenting NCP?s is not necessary we should start entering the information to see if the data is beneficial. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Any thoughts? The $40,000 in scrap from 1 department is only a fraction of the total scrap ? we have many departments.[/FONT]

Frankly, if 40,000 in scrap is just a tiny portion of the whole, and the company does not even have a Quality Mgr., I think management is blind. First thing I would do is put you in as acting Q Mgr. And give you some space to see what you could do. You sound like the only one awake over there....

 

[drgnrider]

Aside from the "big cost" items, what about the "repeat" items? These little things sometimes are easily fixed and can amount to a large savings.

Many times it's just attitude... Mother-in-law told me of a machine shop (no longer in business) she worked in where the machine operator took just finished parts out of the machine and tossed them in a 55-gal drum, they couldn't understand why so many of their parts were ovaled and out of tolerance. Since this scrap rate was "normal" management paid no attention to it. Simply changing where/how the parts were handled could have been a major cost reduction.

 

[Kronos147]

I would like this system to be beneficial for us – NOT just to please an auditor.

Commendable. Is upper management on board?

...I'd drop the burden and instead of thinking, "How can I save the company money?" I'd ask, "How can we save our company money?"

...If you get a process approach adopted, one thing you might consider is to amend the quality policy to specifically mention collaborative scrap reduction as an objective, and your quality objectives to include measurement of scrap and targets for its reduction.

That's one way to get buy in.

We humans forget what happened last week pretty easily. Make your initial move right at the tail end of the excursion happening. What I'm sensing through your posts is that you don't have enough data to sell the idea. Get some data on the next occurrence.

That is usually the way I try and do it.

Some very nice reading in this thread.

Eric