Tracking Materials and Tooling - Evolving to Real Life

[Mre3824]

I just recently finished an associates deg. in mathematics, and on my way to a bachelors. This being said, recently at the company i work for a shop foreman stole several thousand dollars in carbide and sold it for scrap over the course of 3 years. This incited a bit of a panic, now the owner of the company decided we need a financial assistant/loss prevention officer / productivity manager all in one. With my background in mathematics I am being considered. Now the actual question, I need resources, information, and anything anyone would consider helpful in deciding whether I could handle the position, even more so then that it is an ISO 9001:2008 company pulling roughly 11 million a year and dealing with mostly government military contracts so i just need some direction on what i should be reading up on.

Please help, and any help would be appreciated.

P.S. please ignore spelling and context limited time and a math major

 

[Stijloor]

Re: Evolving to real life

Welcome to The Cove Forums

Well, brushing up on your spelling would help...

Stijloor.

 

[Marc]

Re: Evolving to real life

With a math focus, if you're good it shouldn't be a problem. My own bias is that someone who is good in math can get into many fields and do well. Someone's kid that I know finished up his masters last spring and ended up working for some medical researchers at a large local hospital (he has *no* biology or other related background). He wasn't looking for a job in the medical field, but they wanted a math person, he found out about the opening and he applied for the job, and he got it (starting at US$65K+ a year).

I'd start looking at methods of tracking scrap and inventory (materials and tooling), and cost of quality aspects. As always, you should look at the specific problem that happened (theft) and (in addition to asking how the fellow who stole the carbide did it) ask yourself if there were any existing systems which *should* have identified it. If there isn't an existing system design one which will. For example, if the company uses carbide tooling how is it tracked from receiving to disposal/recycling? Especially considering you are in defense work, be sure that any customer supplied tooling and/or material is tracked.

As you know it's New Years eve so the forum will be slow until next week, but I'm sure some folks here can help out with some better specifics than I can give you.

BTW - Since you're working for a company I'm moving this thread out of the student questions forum.

 

[Wes Bucey]

Re: Evolving to real life

I agree with Stijloor. Any person in charge of such a project must be meticulous and pay close attention to getting ALL details correct.

It is no joke when we say "you don't get a second chance to make a good impression."

If you can't take the time and effort to spell and phrase an important question like this, how can anyone believe things would be different if you had the job?

 

[BradM]

I just recently finished an associates deg. in mathematics, and on my way to a bachelors. This being said, recently at the company i work for a shop foreman stole several thousand dollars in carbide and sold it for scrap over the course of 3 years. This incited a bit of a panic, now the owner of the company decided we need a financial assistant/loss prevention officer / productivity manager all in one. With my background in mathematics I am being considered. Now the actual question, I need resources, information, and anything anyone would consider helpful in deciding whether I could handle the position, even more so then that it is an ISO 9001:2008 company pulling roughly 11 million a year and dealing with mostly government military contracts so i just need some direction on what i should be reading up on.

Please help, and any help would be appreciated.

Hello there! Welcome to the Cove!

I am a bit interested in the subject matter. I mean, waste is one thing; theft is another.

Here are some simple suggestions. Not sure any of them will pan out or be of any assistance.

1. Starting tracking how much material you should be using/ wasting. Control charts might be of assistance. Know when something is up, based on the numbers.

2. Sit everyone down, and map out the processes. Pick 3-5 of the top areas that could use your efforts.

3. Of those 3-4, use a cause/effect/ Fishbone diagram, and map out all the different possibilities and solutions. This should give you the roadmap to achieve #4.

4. Use the Plan Do Check Act approach to addressing the top 3 or 4 areas to be corrected.

5. Keep track of your progress. Be prepared to submit improvement amounts (in dollars) that you have contributed.

Now... all these are very basic and simple. Thing is, they work. I know I threw out some "buzzwords" in this post that you may not be familiar with. However, you can look them all up here, and learn everything you need.

Good luck in your endeavors. Just be realistic; and keep your upper management informed on a regular basis where they know what you are doing; and when you need their assistance.

 

[Claes Gefvenberg]

In addition to Brad's points: As he said, waste is one thing; theft is another, but I suppose the incident has shown the value of keeping scrap down, and then dealing efficiently with what you still get.

now the owner of the company decided we need a financial assistant/loss prevention officer / productivity manager all in one.

Interesting. I suppose the result of the first one (finances) would depend largely on the outcome of the latter two (loss prevention and productivity)?

i just need some direction on what i should be reading up on.

Continuing along the line of thought I started above, I would consider

• Yield (what you put into the process vs what you get out of it),
• Right First Time (straight through the process without rework or scrap), and
• OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness)

important. Find out what you can about those, and do not be surprised if you run into several rather big unknown factors.

/Claes

 

[MIREGMGR]

Re: Evolving to real life

...ask yourself if there were any existing systems which *should* have identified it.

Whoever is responsible for your contracts and standards compliance and whoever does your internal process auditing need to be involved with you on this.

The company's DOD work may includes provisions that specifically require the company to be able to document which purchased raw materials are in which outgoing products, with a gapless tracking process through every step of your internal processes.

If no one actually reads those contracts for that kind of requirement in the "legalese", and the company has an old-school approach of just working with the drawings and making the parts...well, someone needs to fix that. If the company ever was supplied faulty material, and that was discovered after parts were in the DOD system and they had to be tracked and recovered, and the company didn't have tracking records... well, bad things would happen.

If such requirements are in those contracts, it doesn't sound as if the company is meeting them in an effective manner, because an effective system--both procedures for how to do it, and internal audits to make sure it's being done per the procedures--probably would have revealed that incoming material and outgoing products didn't match up.

 

[Mre3824]

Firstly thanks’ to all who have replied it’s been a huge help. I was not expecting near the response that I received, and it has helped a ton.

I have been looking into SPC as a good means to reduce the waste, looking into a better system in tracking the tooling all the way through even post use until it makes it to the scrap yard. (Btw the man who was stealing was taking the used tooling out of buckets around the machines, that’s how bad the tracking was after it was used)
I am now feeling a lot more confident in my abilities to perform at the opportunity granted to me, and it’s all thanks to you guys, and this website.
The financial stuff I’m still reading up on, but like with anything keep studying till you die and you will still not know everything about anything

Thanks again

 

[Mre3824]

Re: Evolving to real life

If such requirements are in those contracts, it doesn't sound as if the company is meeting them in an effective manner, because an effective system--both procedures for how to do it, and internal audits to make sure it's being done per the procedures--probably would have revealed that incoming material and outgoing products didn't match up.

We document all the stock from door through the proses up to and including receipt by the customer, the major problem was the tooling that would be tracked by computer until it was used at the machine. After that it would get get put into a bucket where once a month it would be emptied and sold for scrap. all the tooling used was self bought by the company used in house then either reground (if possible) scraped if not.

I'm considering suggesting a proses where after the tools that can not be reground would be turned in and logged by weight then stored in a secure location until transfer to the scrapyard. But i would like to come up with a better method that would also allow me to graph the amount of waste tools so that over the coarse of a few months ii could develop a range. That way i could also look at the weight of scrap at any point in time find out the range there should be at that point and be able to tell if something is amiss.