Quality Problems in Manufacturing

In 2005, CME's 20/20 Magazine published results from a Management Issues Survey. The least satisfactory skill set among employees in Manufacturing was Problem Solving. All manufacturers have quality problems. Plenty of them. We tend to assign these to our technical employees assuming that they possess the required skills. Engineers will certainly have strong math skills and engineering intuition. But this isn’t enough. There are other elements of problem solving that need to be known such as nonparametric statistics, variation reduction strategies and components of variance techniques. Problem solving is a skill that can be learned. It’s important, indeed necessary, that manufacturers develop problem solving skills among their employees and dedicate a small team to doing nothing else.