Traditionally, brain teasers are thought of as puzzles to solve using logical thought process in a sequential manner. Everyone who is faced with using the current data available in their organization will relate to this notion of a brain teaser. The brain teasers are based on real-world situations that are encountered by workers in a manufacturing environment. The brain teaser has three parts: (1) the situation -- a description of a process or problem, (2) available data or other supporting information and (3) questions that various workers want answered for continual improvement. Recommended solutions will follow in the next issue and on the Web at Quality Online (http://qualitymag.com). At the site, you can discuss the current brain teasers, as well as how its principles apply to everyday manufacturers. Use the skills that you have previously learned in Wheeler's Workshop to solve these problems.
Situation
Production downtime is an ongoing problem for many companies. In response to the problem, the corporate office of one company decided to track downtime in order to quantify the lost productivity. Patrick was asked to develop a method to measure downtime and his results would be used throughout the organization. The production process is made up of three sequential steps, which are virtually identical in all locations. Patrick tracked the downtime and recorded the cause on paper for each step of the process. These values were added together to determine the total daily downtime, which were then expressed as a percent of the working day. The findings were reported to the plant manager.