A
Andy Bassett
'The Real World'
Could I ask all the quality gurus to take of their ISO caps for a moment and step into a real-life situation.
Thripps limited is a small Electronics company employing 8 people based in Nurnberg. The company was successfully built by the owner as a electronics trading company over the last 25 years. In the last 12 months the owners son has designed and built a specialised computer, and to be able to bring it to market a Business Management System was implemented in the company (ISO with bells).
Now the owner wishes to assemble and sell a CD Rom players.
For the new product a plan was put together that would involve checking the suppliers to make sure that that they can deliver quality products, and with some of the critical components evaluating what the suppliers are doing to make sure only defect free ones are being delivered. Furthermore it was planned to evaluate what Goods-in Inspection is necessary and what Final Test are necessary.
The development was being done by the end customer, but Thripps never really obtained a completed set of specs, even the Parts List was built by Thripps themselves. It was planned that before production began a complete set of specifications including a Parts List should be 'released' to Thripps.
Assembly was sub-contracted to Von Schmidt, (a company of 6 people) who had absolutely no form of QM System, and didn’t feel one was necessary as they had 12 years experience in the business of assembling electronics components.
It was planned that a local expert would help them to do a Production Process FME Analysis to predict problems.
In the end, the components were bought from whoever could supply them at the cheapest price in time. A correct set of updated specifications never arrived from Development, a hand written A4 parts list was the base document. No form of Goods-Inspection was implemented, and a final inspection was done exactly according to the end customers wish.
The product itself has no form of traceability, beyond linking the serial number to production week.
The FMEA never occurred, and neither did any other form of analysis or prediction of production problems. After a long discussion Von Schmidt requested a price increase for having an employee put a 'Tested OK' sticker on the product.
During discussion this is what the owner of Thripps said;
'Andy - ISO and BMS's are alright but you cant substitute these for experience. We are competing with companies in Asia and China for these products, are you really willing to see us lose working places to these organisations that are obviously cheaper because they don’t have the overheads that something like ISO brings.
Paperwork is OK, but you cant beat the quality thinking and experience of the employees themselves. Don’t you think that when they start to follow procedures and systems they will abdicate responsibility for problems to the process itself?
Andy, this is the real world, and in here we have to be flexible, reactive and cost effective to meet the customers demands, if we don’t do it somebody else will'.
Would anybody like to have a go at answering this for me.?
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Andy B
Could I ask all the quality gurus to take of their ISO caps for a moment and step into a real-life situation.
Thripps limited is a small Electronics company employing 8 people based in Nurnberg. The company was successfully built by the owner as a electronics trading company over the last 25 years. In the last 12 months the owners son has designed and built a specialised computer, and to be able to bring it to market a Business Management System was implemented in the company (ISO with bells).
Now the owner wishes to assemble and sell a CD Rom players.
For the new product a plan was put together that would involve checking the suppliers to make sure that that they can deliver quality products, and with some of the critical components evaluating what the suppliers are doing to make sure only defect free ones are being delivered. Furthermore it was planned to evaluate what Goods-in Inspection is necessary and what Final Test are necessary.
The development was being done by the end customer, but Thripps never really obtained a completed set of specs, even the Parts List was built by Thripps themselves. It was planned that before production began a complete set of specifications including a Parts List should be 'released' to Thripps.
Assembly was sub-contracted to Von Schmidt, (a company of 6 people) who had absolutely no form of QM System, and didn’t feel one was necessary as they had 12 years experience in the business of assembling electronics components.
It was planned that a local expert would help them to do a Production Process FME Analysis to predict problems.
In the end, the components were bought from whoever could supply them at the cheapest price in time. A correct set of updated specifications never arrived from Development, a hand written A4 parts list was the base document. No form of Goods-Inspection was implemented, and a final inspection was done exactly according to the end customers wish.
The product itself has no form of traceability, beyond linking the serial number to production week.
The FMEA never occurred, and neither did any other form of analysis or prediction of production problems. After a long discussion Von Schmidt requested a price increase for having an employee put a 'Tested OK' sticker on the product.
During discussion this is what the owner of Thripps said;
'Andy - ISO and BMS's are alright but you cant substitute these for experience. We are competing with companies in Asia and China for these products, are you really willing to see us lose working places to these organisations that are obviously cheaper because they don’t have the overheads that something like ISO brings.
Paperwork is OK, but you cant beat the quality thinking and experience of the employees themselves. Don’t you think that when they start to follow procedures and systems they will abdicate responsibility for problems to the process itself?
Andy, this is the real world, and in here we have to be flexible, reactive and cost effective to meet the customers demands, if we don’t do it somebody else will'.
Would anybody like to have a go at answering this for me.?
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Andy B
