The company was relying on pre-shipment performance inspections to prevent these defects from being passed on to the end customer. The firm, therefore, instigated a company-wide QA accreditation scheme to reward excellence in the field of quality. Their aim was to build quality into the product through their processes, and the initiative was very successful.
Here, we look in detail at how this was applied to the assembly line, and what results from it achieved. To develop its program for recognizing and rewarding excellence, the company drew up an evaluation table based on forecasting the occurrence of defects and assessing the QA rate of the assembly process.
They then made an overall judgment about each item and what assurance rate it had actually achieved see Table 8. The QA figure of Although this reduced quality fluctuations, the QA level was still low in many cases, so the company embarked on an improvement cycle while sustaining the current situation.
The company undertook a detailed investigation of the work procedures and methods currently used, looking at the areas where the assurance level was not good enough. By studying the likelihood of a defect occurring in each of the work procedures, and the assurance level for each work operation, the team was able to identify the precise mechanisms behind defects.
In practical terms, what they did was to work with the operators to investigate the situations in which defects arose, and then analyze the differences between the standard work procedures and the work actually carried out. This allowed them to discover exactly why conditions were not being observed.
Having established the potential defects and the mechanisms behind them, the company then devised improvement proposals aimed at nipping these in the bud. With help from technical staff and maintenance personnel, a total of twenty improvements were implemented on the line.
These improvements helped to raise the quality assurance rate for the assembly process to The system had been shown to be effective — by identifying potential defects and nipping them in the bud, the company was able to improve the QA rate of the process. Making improvements meant changing the operational benchmarks, and therefore the team revised all of the task guidelines and other work standards appropriately.
These changes affected, for example, the order in which components were assembled, the way components were arranged, and the way jigs and tools were used. The company wanted to make sure that the new situation was faithfully sustained after the accreditation for excellence had been achieved, so they instituted a system of daily checks to ensure that the employees were maintaining the equipment and work area in the proper condition and organizing and observing the job site control forms and standards properly.
They also wanted to confirm that the work standards had been established and were being obeyed and that if any defects occurred, they would be dealt with painstakingly, and reliably prevented from happening again. Factors such as the arrangement of the components, the difficulties of using a particular jig or tool, or the inclusion of strenuous operations that require twisting or stretching, may not directly cause defects, but they can be a contributing factor.
In doing so, the doctor might be seen as efficient but can easily lose effectiveness. Diagnostics are too quick, prescriptions are generic, interactions are dismissive, and learning stalls completely.
What does highest quality mean in practice? This is often very tricky because products and services can be seen as:. Quality is 1 perfect accuracy on what every one has in common, since a failure there is perceived as an annoyance by the customer and 2 offering something special; hard to quantify, but that makes customers smile — and weds them to your brand.
I was on the gemba a few days ago looking at the lean engineering efforts of a company that makes skylights for cars — inserting the glass in the roof with all the machinery to open and close, shutters and so on.
We were looking at a new concept paper and the engineer has identified that the mechanism had to:. Quality and Kanban. And he felt good about polluting less. By the way, the competitive pressure this puts on the market is real, as the recent VW scandal shows. Other automakers have chosen style, power, or comfort. What is the unique lean approach to doing so? The trick lies in understanding that quality is both accuracy and availability.
By shortening lead-times, Toyota puts pressure on exact delivery of only quality parts at all levels. From the gemba, here is an example above of one such matrix for a train service center.
On the left-hand side, you find the customer benefits, and on the top the processes delivering these benefits. Filled circles are the high interactions; red circles are the ones where kaizen is currently going on:. No inventories mean that the single part oh, okay, five parts that we have on hand are all good.
An obsession for few parts all good in each process that delivers performance to customers has deep impacts on engineering either the product or service.
Yes, product must evolve and innovate, but not at a risk to quality. The Chief Engineer wants to put all the most innovative features in the new car but has to care for standards — this will lead us to define very early on what moves and what does not. Second, the emphasis on constant training now becomes obvious. The key being, of course, kaizen. For a new line, at start of production, takt time is a key aim and the question is how fast can we reach takt time:.
Toyota has very clearly taught us that in order to achieve customers satisfaction highest quality, lowest cost, shortest lead-time we need to master simultaneously the twin pillars of just-in-time takt time, pull, and one-piece-flow and jidoka stop at defect and make machines autonomous on quality to separate machine work from human work. These twin intents increased just-in-time, increased jidoka drive the real work of kaizen and evolving and maintaining standards, which will deliver quality in terms of accuracy, availability, attitude and, in the end, advice.
I like it. Anything to minimize the bureaucracy of a typical ISO system. In my experience most people think of ISO as a documentation system. August 11th, at am. I am glad you like my approach to eliminating the traditional quality manual and EMS Manual. It does work for certification. Every one of our clients uses it and we have never had a single nonconformance or observation written against it.
If fact, it has only received praise from third party auditors. August 13th, at am. He has now read your article and sent me the link. August 2nd, at pm. If you or your boss want to see a three page quality manual in action, give me a call. I will be glad to show both of you how to take the Lean QMS approach to the next level. Im going to start up a blog on the same theme in the near future, that is why Im so interested in your posting.
Would you mind if I used some of your thoughts for my personal weblog? Ill certainly refer to you as the original source and set up the link pointing back to your web blog. Appreciate it! October 2nd, at am. I am flattered that you would like to use some our content.
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