IS WHAT OR HOW MORE IMPORTANT?

Modern manufacturing enterprises seem to think it more important that they use the latest techniques like Lean and Six Sigma to excel in their business.

In fact, what they do is significantly more important than how they do it because if they apply best practices to products or services that have no demand in the marketplace, their business will fail.

Once the optimum mix of products and services has been determined, using our “Insight, Innovation and Implementation” processes, best practices certainly must be used to ensure success.

The “Insight” and “Implement” processes will be covered in subsequent posts.

The “Innovation” processes consist of those used during product development and those used in manufacturing the product or delivering the service.

Some examples of these processes used during the design and development of a product are:

Design for Assembly, Design and Process Feasibility and Project and Program Management techniques and APQP and PPAP processes used in the auto industry to ensure smooth, highest quality at launch products.

Design for Assemble (DFA) is used to provide assembly information and constraints to product designers who may be unaware of these issues during the product design phase. In this era of outside or offshore engineering and manufacturing, this tool provides knowledge unavailable elsewhere. Key personnel are brought together, either via interactive “web” methods or in person, to jointly derive a design capable of efficient manufacture within existing or known plant constraints.

Design and Process Feasibility (DFMEA and PFMEA) is an organized analysis method used to assess the risks that may be designed into the product that could result in sub-optimal products. Essentially, the product development engineer and manufacturing engineer articulate all of the ways the design could fail to achieve the objectives set at inception. Plans are created to minimize these risks to either an acceptable level or products are redesigned with less risk to the end customer.
Project and Program Management processes are used to ensure accomplishing development and launch on a predetermined timeline and at budget. These times and cost budgets are the basis of approval for the new product and slippage of either can create unpleasant surprises after the work has been completed. It is estimated that an enterprise without a formal process overspends the time and cost budgets about 75-80% of the time. Unless this probability is factored into the profitability equation, a promising new product could become a negative factor going forward.

Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP) is a specific series of actions and documents required to report progress at achieving quality targets for a new product at the launch phase.

Production Part Approval Process (PPAP) covers the manufacturing of initial sample parts intended to prove process capability when the intended production process is run at intended speed on the actual manufacturing line using all tools and equipment designated for the production of the product. Some customers even specify the length of time or number of parts to be submitted for validation after the process has been observed.

Some of the critical pre-manufacturing concepts include:

“Lean” is a concept useful throughout the enterprise that concentrates on the elimination of “waste” (referred to as Muda) by Toyota, the creator of the technique. These techniques are useful in a manufacturing plant to optimize product flow within the factory.

“Six Sigma” is also a useful series of actions involving the application of statistical process control (SPC) to individual operations, once they are defined through “Lean” studies.

“Theory of Constraints” involves defining and eliminating constraints to work flow that resist efficient processing.

All of these techniques are required in various degree to ensure highest quality product at minimum risk of failure in service. Time and cost for these processes and techniques vary, but the expected cost and time must be considered in project plans to increase probability of success.

Perfect Plans Make Perfect Results!