Should manufacturing efficiency be a quality function? Yes or No?

[shadowjack]

Two separate areas with, hopefully, two separate goals. To unite them would weaken the system of checks and balances. Before you can satisfy the customer, you have to turn the lights on in the morning.

(That's why I like the balanced scorecard. Production is in the bin for financials and quality is in the customer's.)

How can I disagree more! Two separate goals?!? Isn't the goal to give the customer what they want, when they want it? Continuity should be the BIG picture. I'm blue collar through and through, just trying to get the job done. If QA has their own agenda, (separate goals) it can lead to animosity and diresion. Sorry about the spelling. RSVP.

 

[Jen Kirley]

Yes, this is an interesting thread.

Here's my position. Quality is a support function, assisting in the tuning and mechanics of improving what goes on in production. We can't claim to do well unless our product/service succeeds and arguably unless our company thrives. We're all in the business of making great widgets or offering great services.

Thus it is that we are indeed inextricably linked with production, though some still view the two functions as adversarial to some degree.

While it's possible to show different metrics for a balanced scorecard, in my view there won't reasonably be more than one or two. Wherever Quality assists with streamlining operations, reducing defects or time to deal with them, improves customer happiness (both internal and external) we are after the same goal: robust and responsible profitablility.

And therein is the rub, isn't it? If there are people whose quest for profitability is not responsible or robust (Enron comes to mind) then the adversarial mindset is difficult to shed and our measurements of success might not be homogeneous. In my long range observation, companies who operate this way do not last or thrive competetively over long periods.

 

[Madfox]

$ vs. quality

During a public Six Sigma course one of the attendees (a quality manager) was apoplectic. He had approached mgt for $65k to improve the "quality" of a machining operation and got shot down. We asked, "has output been within customer specs?" "Yes!" "Any returns or complaints?" "No."
We were looking at a deadman walking!

 

[Jen Kirley]

During a public Six Sigma course one of the attendees (a quality manager) was apoplectic. He had approached mgt for $65k to improve the "quality" of a machining operation and got shot down. We asked, "has output been within customer specs?" "Yes!" "Any returns or complaints?" "No."
We were looking at a deadman walking!

Here was apparently a fellow who has not learned to communicate value with his managment. And it's true that some management communicate among themselves just fine, but not with quality or production professionals. Among many there has been a feeling of divisional separation for a long time.

It can take a good deal of time and effort to break out of a mental logjam like that. To do it, the person would need to bring something with him/her to communicate: a set of figures such as cost savings in a given period if XYZ was done. The cost savings could go into making a new product or service, or hit the bottom line, which would make management look very good to shareholders!

Until a person can make the idea look like it benefits those with the resources, that person will not gain the trust enough to invest them in an improvement project.

 

[apestate]

Is the dark side stronger?

I've stayed away from this thread because I'm not very good at talking about manufacturing efficiency without becoming apoplectic myself. It's also notable that I haven't read the entire thread to see if I even warrant a say, however there is something on the subject that seems on the horizon.

The growth of quality has been marvelous, and confusing. The growth process itself has been chaotic and confused, leaving us with tiring standards that try to bridge a gap of tradition and a frightening, almost limitless advancement. If you're like me, you've often wondered when quality would get slapped in the face and put back in the inspection office on the shop floor.

We've often asked ourselves what the next evolution of quality will be. We've seen our initiatives and systems morph, grow in size and scope. The scope of quality today has grown across entire organizations, encroaching into and covering areas that it used to compete with, when quality was a traditional department.

The next evolution is into financials, then quality assurance will disappear.

Hah! I say that to be dramatic, but I believe it to be so. Let me explain.

Quality has a great parallel in truth. Truth can't be bought or sold. You cannot demand truth emerge or force it to comply with your will. Truth must be pursued with the whole mind and spirit. Truth reveals itself to you on its terms.

We must remember that we know this about quality. Quality is much like truth. It is not a department in a company, it cannot best be pursued by Six Sigma or ISO 9000. Quality is a degree of excellence, fitness for use. Quality, as we all know, and as we all really see it, is the result of the best of our minds, of our skills, of our cooperation and of our efforts.

However, quality has retreated into the QC department. It's been chased into this corner by a swell in the importance of something else. Profit, laziness and greed have pursued their aims and quality was destroyed in their path. This dark force of poor quality resulted in non-sustainable ventures, products, and practices, everything we build became a disposable commodity and quality was forgotten and even came to be hated--but most of all, completely misunderstood.

We see now the application and spread of quality as it is now re-emerging. Difficult times approach, and the dark force of unsustainable avarice and laziness is becoming brightened by the application of quality to all of its workings. Quality is re-emerging as the basis of business and organizations and efforts in all sectors.

Financials are the next realm of business that quality professionals will be asked to work on. Why? Because we haven't been there yet.

Quality is catching on. The success of quality's application in inspection, manufacturing, provision of services and process management is becoming hard to ignore, and it's no surprise. Business is slowly waking to this growing phenomena. They are doing something about it by utilizing quality professionals, tasking these people to take their tools and positive results and apply them in all areas of business.

I know little about Japan after WWII. However, it seems obvious that the Japanese approach after World War II is the quintessential example of the application of quality. An entire nation of hard working, serious people took to industry and put quality ahead of them on their path. The results speak for themselves. I don't know much about this subject, but I'm willing to bet the formalization of quality management in Japan was long not necessary.

Jack Stack led an employee buyout of an International Harvester plant and they called it Springfield Remanufacturing Corporation. They purchased this business back in 1978 for something like $100,000 of mortgaged homes and education funds and savings, and stood to lose it all for the first year. The company was in the worst of dire straits. Financials had to be reported to the bank weekly.

The approach was to open the books, empower the people, and give them a stake in the outcome. The result of this approach destroyed the concept of quality by quality assurance. Quality was built into the organization in a big way. SRC Holdings had a focus on customer satisfaction and continual improvement of the process long before ISO 9001:2000 adopted these basics.

These examples show what happens to quality when times get tough. Quality becomes vital to our efforts when we're in a race to survive. That struggle is getting harder in the world today.

The quality of everything we do in organizations and in our lives is being slowly advanced, because difficult times are upon us. Eventually, if things go a certain way, it is likely that the quality function in factories will be small. Quality assurance will have taken qualiity back into the functions where it was so lacking, where it is needed.

Therefore, whenever there is question of where next quality will expand into and evolve, wonder instead where we haven't been. Where is help needed the most? Where next will we do good?

 

[apestate]

sleep deprived jackanapes with delusions of eloquence

Ugh why did I try to write an article



Either way I think quality should stay on the march through manufacturing, through business finance, through politics and government and everywhere else it is needed.

The world needs more quality improvement than my writing does.

 

[ScottK]

In a everyone-is-responsible-for-quality-sense, should it be a quality function? Yes. Absolutely.

I just don't think the QA/QC function should shoulder the burden if measuring and tracking manufacturing efficiency

 

[ralphsulser]

Quality departments don't make a parts

Who develops the calculations to obtain OEE?
Who sets the targets for OEE?
Who tracks each piece of equipment, on each shift for OEE?
Is Quality is responsible for making good parts iat the desired rate


Quality should not be responsible for OEE.
This is like saying Quality is responsible for scrap.
Quality doesn't manufacture parts.
Quality helps production make good parts efficiently.

 

[Crusader]

In my organization, it is right where it should be...with Manufacturing as sole responsibility.

 

[atitheya]

What is the discussion about?

Is it about manufacturing people producing the items and quality people responsible for the quality of these products and processes????

Or is it about efficiency in manufacturing to ensure quality of the processes and products which involves all the people - TOGETHER.

I believe that manufacturing efficiency is an inherent characterstic of the manufacturing process answering the requirement of other processes and interested parties and hence is definitely a quality function.

Who is responsible? - ALL