Every day, a person is most likely to run into some
sort of problem. No matter how big or
small, problems hurt a process or workplace. How well these problems are
handled is what separates a good company from a bad company. When solving a problem, it is very important
to make sure that the problem does not occur again.
Problems are not always recognized until it is too
late or there is data that brings it into light. During my internship, I
encountered production problems every hour. Sometimes problems arose from
product defects or manufacturing issues. For the most part, the problems that I
came across were single occurrences and could not be prevented. However, sometimes
problems were recurring. For instance, I noticed that sometimes a hard copy of
the bill of materials (BoM) was needed. The software that was used took the
entire BoM from the database and exported all information to an excel document.
The engineer would then remove all of the unnecessary information and give the
BoM to production. This process took anywhere from 15-30 minutes and occurred
several times a shift. After a week or so, I realized that this was a problem that
could be fixed. To resolve the issue, I created a program that took the desired
data and reformatted it into neat and standard template. When I started to use
the program, the BoM process took under a minute and was so simple that
production could do it without an engineer.
In hindsight, I can see that I loosely followed the
Plan Do Study Act(PDSA) cycle after I faced this problem. I did not necessarily
base my solution off of the cycle, but I did see the relation and importance.
Sometimes smaller problems do not need to follow each step of a problem-solving
process.
-MD
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