Anyone who has faced a production problem with a need to solve it by using production data can relate to the notion of a brain teaser. The brain teasers presented here are based on real-world situations encountered by workers in manufacturing environments. The brain teasers have three parts: (1) the situation, (2) available data or other supporting information and (3) questions that various workers need answered for continual improvement. Recommended solutions follow in the next issue.
Periodically, the customer will measure samples of the incoming tapes and create charts to compare to the supplier's documents provided with the shipment. According to the customer's analysis, the process that produced the most recent shipment of tapes was not predictable; the charts that were sent with the shipment indicate that the process was predictable. Patty has asked Graeme, a quality engineer, to determine why the two analyses give different results.