When
companies manufacture consumer products, they are creating more than just a
product. The product is a representation of the company as a whole. It is a
companies’ reputation. That being said, it is obvious as to why a company would
implement a process to ensure a quality product is produced. This is when the
concept of Cost of Quality comes into play. The cost of quality metric compares
the costs of making sure a product is sufficient to the costs incurred for a
poor product. CoQ says that it is beneficial for a company to spend a short
time ensuring the quality of a product; rather than produce a poor product that
causes internal and external costs that will result in a larger cost.
It
is clear that creating a quality product greatly benefits a company. However,
on rare occurrences, companies may actually spend too much time focusing on
quality. I am reminded of a quality issue that I encountered during my co-op in
which too much time was spent on quality. It was during my time studies that
this specific problem arose. In a production cell with two stations and a final
quality station, the touch times at each station were the same. However, the
quality station was double the time of the previous two which resulted in a
significant bottleneck. My boss informed me that the quality station could not
be changed because it was a specific checklist sent from the customer. I brought
up the fact that if the line could be balanced, the unit production would have
increased by roughly 30% per shift. He simply said, “If the customer wants to
pay for the long checklist, let them”. This is a perfect example of how a
company can spend too much time on quality.
While there may have been a reason the
customer wanted a detailed checklist, the checklist was not made with a
fast-paced environment in mind. In the environment the checklist was used, a
written explanation for the checklist was a very inefficient method. A wiser,
faster solution, which would not affect the quality of the product would have
been to have an image checklist.
-MD 11/1/12
No comments:
Post a Comment