Solving a Quality Problem

Most efforts at solving a quality problem start in the boardroom and unfortunately spend too much time there. This is where we brainstorm and throw our ideas on the table for review. The place to be when you're trying to solve a quality problem is on the factory floor where the problem is created. Like a detective trying to solve a crime, you need to be at the scene of the crime and collecting clues. This sounds obvious but it is surprising how infrequently people take this approach.

I was working with a group in China a few years back and there was a quality problem that caused significant numbers of their product to fail and they had not been able to determine the root cause. Upstream in their process was a 12-station rotary table that was used for swaging (forming metal). There were no labels on this rotary table identifying station 1 vs 2 vs 3 etc. So we labelled them 1 to 12 and then took items off the process and lined them up in several rows of 12. It was there right in front of us. Station #5 produced terrible product. The company management was impressed with how quickly we resolved a long-standing quality problem.

Brainstorming doesn't work. Gathering evidence does.