I work in a chemical plant, we make some number of hundreds of products. Usually they would fall into one of something like 50 strictly defined categories. Each product would average something like 20 process steps.
We currently run a NPI (New Product Introduction) when we put a new product into a vessel, or change vessel for an old product. It's been designed by engineers, so the NPI is focussed on the engineering - pumps, valves, heating, cooling, you name it.
I've been arguing for some time that we should be going the FMEA route. The problem is that if we ran a FMEA for every product, we'd never catch up. If we ran one example from each category it may be possible. Then I could attach a group of products to each category.
Does this sound like what we should be doing?
We currently run a NPI (New Product Introduction) when we put a new product into a vessel, or change vessel for an old product. It's been designed by engineers, so the NPI is focussed on the engineering - pumps, valves, heating, cooling, you name it.
I've been arguing for some time that we should be going the FMEA route. The problem is that if we ran a FMEA for every product, we'd never catch up. If we ran one example from each category it may be possible. Then I could attach a group of products to each category.
Does this sound like what we should be doing?