posted 03 March 2000 01:08 PM               

Knowledge of the inputs to the system is necessary. What variables exist to the poor response time to issued CARs or PARs?

Regards,

posted 05 March 2000 07:11 PM            

I think the problem exist in that we require a CAR for every critical defect found during QA inspection, and 'critical' is any defect which may not be screened out (escapee) during processing, may pass QA inspection and is a potential customer complaint. Since we are a semiconductor company, there are a lot of defects we consider 'critical'. With this scenario, engineers tend to give a part of their attention to this problem and a some part to that and so on.
We sort of integrated the 'control of non-conforming products' with 'corrective/ preventive actions'. Are we really required to do such by QS9000 or are we given the prerogative to choose problems which needs corrective actions?

You're right, Marc. Our escalation process here is not working as it should. We are being overwhelmed with too much problems that we (more often than not) forget that there are parts in our quality system which may be able to help us. Point is, we have a CAR system which doesn't seem to be effective in reducing the DPPM level. Thanks for highlighting this to me. This only proves that this forum is indeed very helpful.
BTW, are there any other CAR/PAR system aside from the Ford G8D?

posted 06 March 2000 09:24 AM               

OOPS foot in mouth ...reading back, i see you already were touching on these...so YES i agree...LOL

posted 06 March 2000 05:42 PM               

It sounds like engineering is getting spread pretty thin, making them less than effective. This is a classic example Deming speaks about in Out of the Crisis. In his words, an approach like this "gaurantees that things will only get worse." In his example, he speaks about how management has the engineering department looking at every defect produced, to evaluate it to find what is wrong and how to fix it. His point was that without knowledge of the system, the efforts of engineering were being wasted, when they should be focusing on other things. They were treating every cause as a Special Cause when in fact, most were Common Cause. Systems will produce some level of nonconformance. But when should you react?

Before reacting, you need to evaluate the inputs and the outputs. Is your process stable, but producing some level of nonconformance? What causes a product to be considered nonconforming (perhaps the criteria is incorrect)? Before adjusting the process, you need to understand all you can. Making an adjustment without this knowledge will probably make things worse. Additionally, if an adjustment were made and improvements were noticed, there would be no gaurantee that a relationship exists (things got better by chance and would have without the adjustment).

Still, what can be done to the CAR/PAR systems to make them more effective? I would suggest using the PDSA/PDCA approach to refine the CAR/PAR process. By observation and perhaps by audit (both Check/Study activities), the process is less than effective. Was the plan good to start with (was the procedure any good)? Did it have the proper authorities defined to monitor activities(as Marc pointed out, authoriy may not have been properly delegated)? What caused the failure (was it special or common)? Should the plan be rewriten (Act)? Create the new plan and deploy to begin the cycle again. This is a never ending cycle. It is a continuous improvement cycle.

I fear that your engineering department maybe overadjusting, one way, then the other. They are treating common cause as special cause. This would account for the many CARs in your system, receiving poor attention. It would be better in my opinion to follow Barbs advice and sort the vital few from the trivial many and concentrate efforts on improving the process. Make the time invested by the Engineers a value added operation. Otherwise, they will be wasting alot of time and effort, not to mention getting very frustrated.

Regards,