Assembly Planbook - April 2008 - (Page 31) processes are integrated. Quality used to be something that was confined to data and analysis, in addition to test and inspection. Today, quality is more built into the overall production system.” For assemblers to truly improve quality, they must go after the root causes of defects. “Most quality systems just contain the problem and protect the customer,” claims Flinchbaugh. “That’s not really a true improvement. It’s merely a safety net that screens things out. “When you do that, quality-related problems often go right through the holes in the net,” adds Flinchbaugh. “You can’t do quality improvement as a kaizen event.” Quality problems on the shop floor come in all shapes and sizes. Some are really design errors that get through to manufacturing. Some are inherent in the production process design, which may or may not have stringent quality gates. Others are supplier quality problems that are caught in final assembly. And, of course, there are manufacturing problems that are made in-house for whatever reason. “Some problems are easy and some are hard to solve,” says Smalley. “It takes skill and discipline to solve problems. The plant floor is where all problems appear, but they may or may not have their root cause on the shop floor. Nonetheless, manufacturing often gets stuck with resolving the quality problem regardless of its source of origin.” While many people like to talk about “mistake-proof assembly,” it’s hard to tell if it really exists. “There are designs that are harder to assemble wrong and easier to assemble right,” says Smalley. “But, there is no assembly that I have ever seen that can be done by a novice 100 percent right every time. For example, humans or machines still scratch things or put small dents in them even when they are assembled correctly.” According to Lee, quality control has to do with corporate culture more than anything else. “For all the hoopla about Six Sigma, the fact is that the basic tools have been around since Walter Shewhart invented the control chart in 1924,” he points out. “Most managers view quality as either a technical problem or they see it as a bad attitude on the part of individual workers. “However, corporate culture and the integration of people and processes play a huge role in quality,” claims Lee. “Of W. Edwards Deming’s famous 14 points, only the third [build quality into a product throughout production] even hints at technical solutions. All the others involve issues of strategy or corporate culture.” Built-In Quality When lean manufacturing is correctly applied, quality is built into the assembly process. Jidoka is the lean tool often associated with quality control. It encourages assemblers to build 100 percent quality into the process so that a defect cannot be made. Jidoka is one of the two pillars of the Toyota Production System (TPS). Sakichi Toyoda developed the concept more than 80 years ago for use on one of this early power looms. He refined jidoka on www.assemblymag.com April 2008 / ASSE M B LY 31 ASB03084Weber.indd 1 2/5/08 9:24:39 AM http://www.weberusa.com http://www.weberusa.com http://www.assemblymag.com
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