Manufacturing and quality control process in furniture production company

[luksha]

Hello, everyone!

I am currently a ISO 9001:2000 implementation consultant in timber furniture production company.

But as I am little experienced in ISO, I have ran into some problems

I can't figure out how to plan and control the work as well as identify material & semifinished product flow.

The problem is that company is producting about 200 product types, of which about 50 have different production process. And those products are changing from time to time ofcourse.
These are the production processes: geting timber (storing it) -> planing the timber -> bending and gluing -> drilling -> assembling of products

There are three facilities
1) plane (shaving) facility
2) bending / gluing / drilling facility
3) assembling facility

So, the bought materials go through the shaving facility and they are divided into other packages, which are going to diferent proceses - bending, assembling e.t.c, every procuct has it's own way and order how it is going through all these proceses. And the machine operators are also changing (2 shifts), does that mean that we have to identify (mark) every workers job - product that he has made, so that he would be reliable for it, so that used material could be identified?

So, I want to know how particulary does ISO 9001 ask to plan and control all these proceses and material & semifinished products flow?

Maybe someone could send me some examples of typical furniture production company planning, manufacturing and control flowcharts?

That would help me alot!

If there is someone willing to help, I can sed over or post detailed descriptions with flowcharts I have made until now.

HELP I'M Stuck!

Have a good day!

Normunds

 

[howste]

Normunds, unless I misunderstand you it sounds to me like you are making this a bigger job than is required. Planning and control of work can typically be handled through some combination of work instructions, training, and monitoring/measuring. You may already have many these controls in place.

Identification of material is required where you need to control it. More than likely you don't really need to identify which people worked on the product - you just need to be able to tell what each part/product is. This can be done fairly simply, such as placing a part number on a container of material. Traceability is only required if you need it for some business reason or your customers require it.

 

[Wes Bucey]

Normunds, unless I misunderstand you it sounds to me like you are making this a bigger job than is required. Planning and control of work can typically be handled through some combination of work instructions, training, and monitoring/measuring. You may already have many these controls in place.

Identification of material is required where you need to control it. More than likely you don't really need to identify which people worked on the product - you just need to be able to tell what each part/product is. This can be done fairly simply, such as placing a part number on a container of material. Traceability is only required if you need it for some business reason or your customers require it.

I tend to agree with howtse on this.
Working with natural wood (compared to engineered wood products) is dependent on dealing with the natural variation in wood and performing additional processes on the various pieces to produce a relatively uniform product.

If it were my operation, I would look at this organization as

1. a system that has 200 products
2. each product has a Control Plan, (new Control Plan for new product)
3. The Control plan dictates which of the available processes in the organization the product will undergo

(A Control Plan can be laid out as a simple flow chart for each product, listing the order in which the workpiece goes through each process with the amount of process controlled by the blueprint or other design for the workpiece.)

If you think of your product in terms of each unit, you will be following a pattern laid down by contract machine shops. They deal with bar stock or ingots as raw material (ferrous or nonferrous alloys instead of wood) and have a multitude of available processes to perform on that material (lathe, milling machine, grinders, polishers, heat treating, plating of a variety of options, etc.), but rarely is every possible machine and process used on every product. A traveler follows each workorder, with checkoffs for

• material from inventory,
• processes performed by whom and when,
• inspected when and by whom,
• location and time finished product is in inventory

If this doesn't start you on the road back to confidence, send me a private message or email and we can go into more detail about your particular situation.

 

[bpritts]

I would support the earlier comments, especially Wes' suggestion that you
use a 'traveler' -- a written work order that defines the process steps to
be taken for each job. Depending on the work flow the traveler document
might even serve as the material tag (if the materials all stay together somehow).

Since you have a small number of processes, you can define most of the
general operations for each process - mill, plane, cut to length, etc.
Your detailed work instructions for how to do each process are here.
You could also include general inspection instructions - for example, after
cutting a board to length, check its length using a tape measure and accept it
based on a general tolerance.


Then you only write up the critical details on the work order/traveler for a specific
job. At that point you assume that the operator is competent at the
operation and only needs to know the details.


Best of luck

Brad

 

[luksha]

Thanks, everyone for the guidances!

After like 10 hours I'm going to this facility, and I will discuss these new ideas with people there.

Actually we already were discusing this "work order/traveler" thing, but we got stuck at the thing that each material pack taken lately divides into several other packs for different products.

Maybe I should make system with two step travelers:
1st traveler is sticked to the material, with amount of input material and after proceses there is writen amount of parts produced
2st is work order where is writen - what for is this material pack, who does what with this material (proceses), chekbox for inspection and date/location where the produced procut (outcome) must be placed.

In all this I would like to put in each products "control plan", I liked this idea.

By the way, the operators know how to perform proceses, they just need to know the details.

So anyways, I have to go to sleep right now (after 16 hours of work ), so tomorrow I will have some new thoughts on all this.

Once again, thanks for replies, they are helpful

Normunds

 

[Wes Bucey]

Thanks, everyone for the guidances!
. . .
Actually we already were discusing this "work order/traveler" thing, but we got stuck at the thing that each material pack taken lately divides into several other packs for different products.

Maybe I should make system with two step travelers:
1st traveler is sticked to the material, with amount of input material and after proceses there is writen amount of parts produced
2st is work order where is writen - what for is this material pack, who does what with this material (proceses), chekbox for inspection and date/location where the produced procut (outcome) must be placed.

In all this I would like to put in each products "control plan", I liked this idea.

Once again, thanks for replies, they are helpful

Normunds

It occurs to me to ask, luksha/Normunds, if you are familiar with the concept of "Bill of Materials" (frequently abbreviated BOM) which is often attached to a design for a product? If not, say so, and we can help you understand using a BOM as a way to make an assembly process more efficient.

I'm a little confused about the actual process in your organization.

I presume any given product is comprised of more than one unique material, such as

• wood (varieties [oak, maple, etc.] and types [lumber, plywood, etc.] )
• fasteners
• glue
• finish (paint, varnish, etc.)
• fabric
• padding
• trim pieces (buttons, fringe, ?)
• thread (to sew fabric, trim, and padding)

My main confusion comes in understanding what you mean by the phrase "getting timber (storing it) -> planing the timber " in your first post.

1. Are you actually starting out with raw logs (bark still on)? (This is my understanding of "timber")
2. Are you starting off with rough size lumber (sawed by a mill to standard sizes) which you plane to exact sizes to conform to your designs?
3. Does a material pack after planing consist of ALL one variety of lumber (oak, maple) or all one size (25 centimeters X 25 centimeters X 250 centimeters long, for example) or is it a mixture of wood varieties and sizes?
4. What determines which products or how many will be produced from a bundle of timber which comes into your facility?
   ( Do you order timber to fill orders for finished products or do you make finished products depending on available timber?)

Are you familar with the concept of "kitting" (making up material bundles into kits to assemble ONE unit)? If so, it might be advantageous to include a kitting step in your process so the workers will have all available materials at hand when they begin final assembly.