Inspection: the profit-sucking fix
“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:
- Inspection by definition is a non value-add reactive process
- It doesn’t address the root cause of the issue and assures it will resurface at some point
- 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