Quality Improvements

Setting up a sound quality system

Many small and midsize manufacturers in China don’t have a quality system! It is imperative to put one in place. A good system includes, among others:

• Reviewing designs and validating that they are fit for production;
• Ensuring that standard work instructions are relevant and are followed by workers;
• Identifying and segregating non-conforming components and products;
• Implementing preventive and corrective actions

Other factories have a system in place, but don’t respect it fully. The problem might be:

• The inadequacy of that system – it needs some adaptation or simplification.
• A lack of discipline from the staff – see the next point.

Coaching managers to maintain staff discipline

Managers need to get out of their office and walk the production floor, ideally every day. Coupled with visual management tools (performance boards filled out at every shift, for example), it allows them to have an idea of what is going on. It is an occasion to reinforce the importance of discipline and to put pressure on supervisors and team leaders when necessary. Among others, the following rules must be followed by everybody:

• We do not accept bad work
• We do not do bad work
• We do not pass on bad work

Formalizing “standard work” and training the staff

For each task, a simple and visual guide should be available to the staff. It should show the current best way to perform that task and should emphasize critical points (for quality and safety).

Read this post for 12 employee engagement ideas which work in China.

Mistake proofing processes against human errors

Humans make mistakes … But the most frequent human mistakes can be identified and addressed with three mistake proofing processes:

• Prevented right where they appeared. Example: a part that can only be inserted one way into a fixture.
• Detected right when they appear. Example: a sensor detects that only 2 out of 3 holes were drilled, and shows a red blinking light.
• Detected after they appear. Example: the next operator inspecting each part.

Analyzing processes for other types of problems

When mistake proofing is not enough or not possible, we favor two other types of approaches.

• Root cause analysis, followed by corrective actions and followup. It is important to trigger this action as early as possible. See 4 quality improvement tools that we use to that effect.
• DOE (design of experiments), when many variables may impact the final result and the cause of the problems is not clear.