atetsade said:
We depend on our hard-*** Army Reservist inspector for all of quality control. She is good. I want to utilize her as a quality manager and I want to utilize the culture of accountability and excellence that is becoming powerful with our machinists.
How's this for coincidence - for two years (1991 & 1992) I was an inspector at a screw machine shop. I also did a lot of the secondary bench operations and ran their chuckers. They had two buildings, they ran New Britains(sp?) at one facility and Davenports at the other.
During this period I was an Army Reservist. SGT. Trombley - E5, Carpentry & Masonry SGT for the Repair & Utility Section of the 301st MP EPW (Enemy Prisoner of War Camp) out of Inkster MI. We held Iraqi prisoners during Desert Storm. This screw machine shop is where I started working right after I got home from Saudi Arabia. (I've since married and become Spears, I used my maiden name throughout my military service.) I did not re-enlist after my six years as I had started a family and a lot of my priorities changed. I ended my military service in 1995.
Anyway, FWIW, this is how they did it back then. They ran mass production quantities in batches. When a machinist set up for the job, he went to the tool crib and got all of the job specific tooling - every job number had a bin in the tool crib - the tool crib attendant was responsible for maintaining the job bins.
An inspector gave first piece approval - 6 pcs 100% inspected. These were kept in a tiny pan with a FPA tag at the machine. The machinist usually kept it on his bench. The FPA is signed off by the inspector.
As the machinist fills up bins, he would place another tiny pan with a product id tag and 6 pcs in it for the inspector for in-process inspection. He numbered the bins in the order that they were run (on the tag). This is how they eliminated having to sort a whole run, they only had to sort where the problem began and later.
The machinist is responsible for checking his own work in accordance with the engineering drawing (the only real work instruction necessary due to the fact that they were all skilled tradesmen - rookies go through an apprenticeship with experienced machinists). Since the machinist has to do this in order to determine tool wear anyway, we did not feel that the machinists in-process inspection results needed to be documented, he initialed the tag in the little pan and also put the machine number. The 6 pcs in the pan were inspected in accordance with the drawing as well. This was also not documented - what I mean to say is that the actual dimensions were not written down on some in-process inspection sheet, the inspector simply signed off on the bin on the tag. Secondary operations were FPA'd and inprocess inspected in the same manner.
At the end of the run, and after parts washing and any outside processes (thread sealant, heat treat, plating), a 100% final inspection report was documented utilizing the sampling requirements dictated by the customer. In the absence of customer dictated sampling plans, we pulled 1-2 random pcs from each bin of the run. All the bins are the same size, but not all the parts, so some jobs we pulled 1 pc from each bin and others we pulled 2 pcs. (This also satisfied the QS9000 dock audit requirements at the time).
Once that run was completed, the job tooling bin went back to the tool crib until the next time it was scheduled to run, and the machinist pulled the next job scheduled for his machine and started all over again.
Does this resemble the way your company does it? We only did the control plan once for each job, when we first got the contract and prepared PPAP's. Then we ran the job for years under blanket PO's with release schedules. Do you run repeat orders, or do you run the job and its done and on to the next? If the latter is more the case, then I would suggest "part family"
FMEA's and control plans.
Wow, I shouldn't have had that third cuppa - I'm more longwinded than usual!!