I had a recent conversation with an Industrial Engineer from a US-based HVAC company. He said that they had just completed an analysis of manufacturing errors. The result: 40% of errors came from design or manufacturing documentation problems. Let me repeat that:
The root cause of 40% of manufacturing errors was design or manufacturing/design documentation.
Many manufacturers are making significant investments in lean, continuous improvement, and quality programs to remain competitive. But what if those investments are returning only a portion of their potential because critical production activities and inputs, such as manufacturing documentation, are ignored? This situation is especially critical in high-variety manufacturing (HVM), such as build-to-order, engineer-to-order, configure-to-order, mass customization, job shop, and HMLV (high-mix low-volume).
I discussed this situation before in my post, Inputs, Process Control and High-Variety Manufacturing, from 3/31/08. This conversation brought it all to mind again, and, in truth, it is a recurring soapbox issue for me.
To maximize investment in lean, continuous improvement, and quality programs, an HVM company must recognize and include its full operations value chain in those efforts.
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1 comment:
Great post again, kind of stunning to see those facts though. They appear pretty high and I'd love to see the data behind them as I had thought that capability and resource constraints would be the main issue.
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