Inspecting Quality into Product - How to react?

Y

Yeong

#1
Hope I using the correct thread to post my daily fuss I am having in my company.
Background:-We have a Quality Dept who does visual inspection. Defects found are removed & recorded. Inspector are told what to check as per Customer requirement.
However, as this human visual inpsection, sometime inspector miss out.
The next process is the Customer Quality Assurance. They will do sampling according to AQL standard.
On an average, we have about 5 to 7 cases of lot failure & return back to Quality Dept for re-inspection again.
The Frustration Part:-
We have daily Quality meeting, and each day we will talk about what was the field return from the Customer Quality Assurance to Quality Dept.
My Boss will always jump (high) ... with all the "?%#@*" words coming out from his mouth ... like ...
" F*%K ..Why are the Customer Quality Assurance able to catch the defects & not the Quality Dept ..... is the inspector sleeping .... F$%K "

What I am looking at is, the Quality Dept is inspecting at Lot basis ... while the Customer Quality Dept are doing sampling using very tight AQL level ... so am I right to say ... the chances for the Customer Quality Assurance to catch defect is easier. My boss ZERO return. Is this a Mission Imposible task?

I hope someone can help me to analyse & give some guidance, so that I can be contented & perhaps ... using some "gurus talk" to him so that my daily meeting crisis .. which is becoming a war zone with my boss repeating the same statement .... can be more productive.

Thks
 
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Jim Wynne

Staff member
Admin
#2
Re: How to react ?

Inspection isn't the problem. Certainly, if the customer is finding defectives that your inspection isn't, then the customer is doing a better job of inspection than you are. But the question is, why aren't you and your boss irate about all the " F*%K .." bad product being produced?
If you want ZERO return, you need to produce ZERO defects. That's probably not going to happen. What you need is a plan.
 
C

Craig H.

#3
Re: How to react ?

Jim is exactly right. Don't plan on inspecting quality into the product. You will never succeed.

Instead, why not record the type of defect, do a pareto analysis, and attack the biggest problems first? In other words, define what the problems are, plan how to eliminate them, implement the plan, then monitor the process(es) to make sure that problems "solved" don't return, and so that you can identify other areas that have now become the main offenders.

Repeat the process with the next problems.
 
K

Kim Headley

#4
Re: How to react ?

Why are you not doing the same type of inspection in house as your customer is doing?

If you want to catch the defects before they reach your customer, then you must tighten your inspection first. (Of course this will only work if your quality department is looking for the same type of defects.) Then you can concentrate on why production is making the defects and ways to correct.

Its like putting the cart before the horse when quality is responsible for producing zero defects instead of manufacturing zero defects.
 

CarolX

Super Moderator
Super Moderator
#5
Re: How to react ? Inspecting Quality into Product

Hi Yeong,

I moved your thread to this board and added to your title.

Jim Wynne is right on the money here, your process must produce zero defects to attaind zero defects.

Your current process is known as "inspecting quality into the product".. In other words, your process makes known defects, and your trying to sort them out before shipping to the customer. the "Boss" is putting all the efforts in the wrong place. How much time and money is wasted on this 100% inspection? Is it possible to assign a monetary amount to this, then propose using that resource to eliminate the manufacturing of defective product?
 

atitheya

Quite Involved in Discussions
#6
Re: How to react ? Inspecting Quality into Product

I suggest a combination of what Jim and Kim have already said.

A corrective action for the non-conforming product identified at Customer Quality Assurance must include include addressing the plan at the production level / processes or if need be earlier. This may actually depend on wether you are having similar non-conformance frequently and if there is a need for a corrective action, which, it seems is needed as per your statements. (Ofcourse this goes for non-conformance identified at the Quality Department as well and is apart from the action/correction on the non-conforming product)

However, the checking process at the Quality Department have to be brought more in sync with that at Customer Quality Assurance so that the differences are minimised in future and the product is taken care of at the Quality Department itself.
 

RoxaneB

Super Moderator
Super Moderator
#7
Re: How to react ? Inspecting Quality into Product

Inspecting for Quality is more reactive than proactive...however, if you have unhappy Customers, you will need to reactive to their concerns. If you spend all of your time focusing on the symptoms (unhappy Customers), you will unfortunately continue to have product with defects.

It's time to focus on WHY you have defects and improve your process to reduce the number of defects.

A Pareto Analysis done on several levels will assist you in this area. Get your operators and all employees involved, too! Everyone needs to understand that this is a situation which is no longer acceptable in order for you company to be successful. :cool:

Pareto Analysis #1 : Categorize all the Customer Complaints coming in by defect type.

Pareto Analysis #2 : Focusing on the top 1-3 items (your decision), break it down to root cause (i.e., did it happen on particular pieces of equipment/tooling, did it happen at a particular stage of the process, etc.)

Pareto Analysis #3 : Focusing on the top 1-3 items of the analyses coming out of #2, break it down the root causes (i.e, fish bone diagram) on why it was a particular piece of equipment/tooling, stage of the process, etc.

From their, you can develop an action plan to address the root causes for specific issues, rather than the issue overall (which can be a bit daunting to do).

Improvement will then occur in small steps, but if you successfully do this, you will get aspects of your process under control and can then refocus on other problematic areas.
 
#8
Re: How to react ? Inspecting Quality into Product

I hope someone can help me to analyse & give some guidance, so that I can be contented & perhaps ... using some "gurus talk" to him so that my daily meeting crisis .. which is becoming a war zone with my boss repeating the same statement .... can be more productive.
You could use this old thread in general: How effective is 100% inspection, and the enclosed picture in particular. The world is full of people who just cannot understand that 100% inspection (or as in your case, several hundred) will never achieve 100% products acc. to spec. It would please me if we could get the message across to at least a few of them..

Picture: http://elsmar.com/Forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=3807&d=1121703573

/Claes
 
G

gszekely

#9
Re: How to react? Inspecting Quality into Product

Just my opinion. I would split the actions in two categories:
1) Short term, stop customer complaints
Questions from my point of view:
-is your Qa department and customer quality assurance on same quality level, or understanding
- what are the sampling plans in these two locations, are they the same, or the second is tighter
- is the inspected lot homogeneous, uniform ? I mean produced by one shift, inspected by one operator and so on ( as I mentioned in one other post, for example I don't inspect lots in my process, instead every 100% quality inspector is sorting parts separetly, and I do the outgoing inspection by names, then the parts go to one palette.
- are all the operators performing on same level ? Attribute gage R&R, and this is only showing the operator capability not the performance, in real process, the other 50% is attitude and supervision and many other.
- what is your scrap level on returned products ? Is it the %-tage built in the sampling level, or higher ?
- in these kind of situation I usually go trough the above questions, fix them, and then implement a tighter inspoection level. To avoid an extra increase in my internal scrap, sorting will be done for good parts, bad parts, and 'I don't know" or waiting for approval.
2) Step two you already got the answers, don't produce defective parts.
Just my opinion.
BR
György
 
P

potdar

#10
Re: How to react? Inspecting Quality into Product

What I am looking at is, the Quality Dept is inspecting at Lot basis ... while the Customer Quality Dept are doing sampling using very tight AQL level ... so am I right to say ... the chances for the Customer Quality Assurance to catch defect is easier. My boss ZERO return. Is this a Mission Imposible task.
Yeong,

Excellent advice you have got till now. I will only try and solve what I think may be your practical problem.

Your Boss is a production guy? No point in asking him why he is making **** ing bad pieces that customer can find. You'll get nowhere.

In such a case, you can only tighten your inspection. Make it tighter than your customer. Any rejects should get held inhouse. Reject complete lots like your customer does. Dont reject pieces. Let a few deliveries be missed.

Let the guy answer a few questions from his Boss and his customer about rejections and schedules and deliveries. If he asks you say that you are doing it on his orders and this problem will continue till bad pieces get made. Someone will reject them. Then he will understand that he also has to do something about it. When he does, offer to help.

As you say, it is a warlike situation for you. Boss not happy, customer not happy. You can as well try the bitter pill to cure the disease. Everything is fair in war.

Well, I can only advise sitting on the net. Don't jump into it before you think fuly about it. I can only send further advises whether you succeed or not.

Best of luck.
 
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