Archive for category: All

A wise man once said “Inspection is Evil”; …actually it was me and I didn’t say it just once, I say it every chance I get. Inspection is a non value-add activity and companies tend to use it to hide many sins. Traditionally, leaders of American industry have had a one-size fits all solution to just about any manufacturing problem they encounter; throw more inspectors at it. Customer returns increase and/or internal yields decrease; “Let’s hire more inspectors to make sure our customers do not receive the results of our inefficient process.” Whether you find bad parts internally or ship them, the customer is paying for your process inefficiencies either by defects, or the cost of your inspection, rework and repair. I am here to tell you that this approach simply does not work, and I will prove it to you shortly.

1. From a functional standpoint, there are three types of inspection: Judgment/Standard Inspection
2. Informative Inspection
3. Point of Origin Inspection

The first two are widely used and considered traditional methods of quality control. Point of Origin Inspection is the only method that actually eliminates defects by putting the responsibility for quality back at the manufacturing source, quality assurance.

Not only is inspection non value-add, it is ineffective as well! How effective would you think visual inspection is? Would you be surprised if I said that 100% visual inspection is only 80-85% effective! Don’t believe me? Consider this: I have administered an exercise I like to call “Steve’s F Test”. Using a minimum of 30 people (for statistical significance) that are my “F Inspectors”, I have them read a paragraph inspecting it for the presence of the letter “F”. In over 100 exercises the results are eerily consistent: the mean inspection accuracy is only around 55%, with a range typically of 33% – 75% that follows a normal bell-shaped distribution. And this is after only 60 seconds; imagine the drop in effectiveness after 7 hours due to distractions and fatigue!

Saving pennies at the expense of dollars by employing excessive inspection, I would argue, is one of the more hidden destroyers of profits in any organization. Indeed, inspection is evil.

“We strive to decide our own fate. We act with self-reliance, trusting in our own abilities. We accept responsibility for our conduct and for maintaining and improving the skills that enable us to produce added value.” –Excerpt from Toyota Motor Corporation’s internal document titled “Toyota Way”.

Wrong Headed Thinking

The opening quote captures the values and ideals of Taiichi Ohno, one of the inventors of the Toyota Way that were tasked with transforming Toyota into the world-class manufacturing enterprise that it is today. Some of my columns may sound like a broken record to my readers regarding best practices / lean as a “be-all, end all” to every problem a company can have. It may surprise you that I strongly disagree with that; as lean certainly has limitations and does not play particularly well in high-mix, low volume (HMLV) operations like PCB manufacturing. That being said, what I do believe is that there are very few problems that cannot be helped with a thoughtful, selective application of best practice tools appropriate to the situation.

Unfortunately, one of the first reactions to a process problem with many companies, especially in a very complicated operation like PCB manufacturing, is to throw more inspectors at it. This knee-jerk reaction has a triple impact on profits:

1. Inspection by definition is a non value-add reactive process
2. It doesn’t address the root cause of the issue and assures it will resurface at some point
3. Inspection is not effective

Identifying and fixing problems instead of foolishly trying to “inspect in quality” by sorting will have a greater impact on profit than raising prices your product, hammering your suppliers for lower costs or most any other traditional profit enhancement initiatives an organization can implement.

Give me a call to help you stop throwing profits out the door!

920-841-3478

Steve@TheRightApproachConsulting.com

I am excited to inform you that my interview, “Defining Customer-Supplier Relationships and Customer Satisfaction,” has now been published in SMT007 Magazine. I invite you to read the full story here,
http://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/935136-smt-feb2018/32

PRESS RELEASE

The Right Approach Consulting

February 13, 2018

West Bend, WI

Moraine Plastics Receives ISO 9001: 2015 Certification

I am proud to announce that client Moraine Plastics has received certification to ISO 9001: 2015 from registrar Intertek. The company had a strong quality foundation going in from many years of certification to prior revisions of the standard, and the transition was fairly straight forward. Quality Manager Jeff Weinert and the Moraine Plastics team were a delight to work with, and got the job done without a hitch in an expedited timeframe.

About Moraine Plastics

Moraine Plastics is a manufacturer of High Volume Custom Plastic Injection Molded parts and products for customers around the world.  They are one of 3 manufacturing companies in the PM Plastics family, along with PM Plastics Co. and Nitschke Mold & Manufacturing. The group has been a family-owned and operated full-service plastic injection molding U.S. contract manufacturer since 1946. They are a solid partner to businesses and industries who manufacture their products in the United States. With over 70 years of experience in manufacturing, they provide a wide range of services from concept to the consumers hands through quality control, engineering and project management.

For more information, they can be reached at (262) 335-0601 or through their website http://www.pmplastic.com

Formal improvement teams are arguably the most effective continuous improvement vehicle available to an organization. When resources are scarce, many companies are using their TRB (technical review board) as a CI team. Providing group dynamics and team building training to teams increase their effectiveness exponentially. Companies have come up with some very creative names for their teams, and creativity does help sell the concept to employees (PIT Crews, OpX, Tiger Teams, etc.).

The modern continuous improvement team got its roots back in the 1960’s when my former professor Dr. Ishikawa invented “quality circles”. Teams generally are permanent entities assigned to specific processes, with a cross-functional membership empowered to make organizational decisions. It may also be advisable to rotate some members to provide fresh perspective and prevent team burnout. No matter how you approach it, the old adage has never been more true: two heads are always better than one.

Give me a call to start operational excellence in your company!

920-841-3478

Steve@TheRightApproachConsulting.com