All the process input (4Ms, 1E) variations except
material which I have wrote about for the past few months are confined to the
manufacturing vicinity. Most of the
products get VIP treatment during their product life cycle in manufacturing
facilities. All people involve in the transformation
process are taught to handle the product with Tender Loving Care and sometimes
there are custom made carrier to transport product in production floor. However there are not many thoughts had being
given to the external factor which can contribute to the product quality. As quality engineering professional for the
past 30 years, I have resolved more
quality issues related to the root cause contributed beyond the manufacturing
process than root cause due to manufacturing process 5Ms.
There are 3 major source of variations beyond
manufacturing facility :-
Variation beyond manufacturing
process
|
Main contributor
|
Major issues
|
Before
product is made
|
Design
|
Manufacturability
|
After
product is shipped before solde
|
Logistic
Transportation
Storage
Design
|
Handling
damage
Shelf
life expire
Product
changes
Easy
to damage
|
After
product is being sold to consumer
|
Design
Poor
manufacturing control
|
Handling
damage
Safety
Reliability
|
Product must be designed before it can be made into
reality. Design of the product should not only focus on ground breaking feature
which will delight customer, it must
also take into consideration whether it can be mass produced with realistic
specification to get consistent good quality product. The design must be robust
enough to withstand handling throughout the supply chain before reaching end
user. The major culprit for quality
issues is poor design. No matter how
well a manufacturing process is controlled, it can never compensate for the poor
design of a product.
There are not many thoughts being put in to what happen
to the product after it leave the manufacturing facilities. Definitely the product will not get the VIP
treatment it is getting in the factory. Logistic
company who knows about quality engineering hardly exist, there will be a uncontrolled process input
exist in transportation process and storage.
All those uncontrolled process inputs will potentially impact the product
such as damage packaging and parts. The
most common action to mitigate the risk contributed by transportation is
packaging design to protect the goods. A
good protective packaging design should be a basic requirement, however it should not be the only mitigation
plan.
For some companies facing chronic issues contributed from product movement thru
supply chain, it is advisable to set up
a dedicated team to work with the logistic service provider. This would include data collection to track the
current issues which serve as quality metrics and use quality planning
principle to minimize issue. Design of
experiment methodology can be used for this purpose as well.