Everyone who has faced a production problem with a need to solve the problem by using production data can relate to the notion of a brain teaser. Brain teasers have three parts: (1) the situation, (2) available data or other supporting information and (3) questions that various workers want answered for continual improvement. Recommended solutions follow in the next issue and on the Web at Quality Online (www.qualitymag.com).
Situation
Stacey works as the day-shift maintenance supervisor in a bakery that makes hamburger buns for a large restaurant chain. Part of his job is to coordinate the preventive maintenance schedule for all of the equipment, some of which is offline too often. The dough press, for instance, which flattens dough balls into the shape of a bun, has been troublesome and must be shut down for maintenance every two weeks without fail. Two to three days after maintenance, however, the production department experiences problems with the dough sticking to the press and creating double and sometimes triple-decker buns. A production worker has to then be stationed at the press to pull the stuck buns apart. In a particularly bad run, this leads to a lot of waste and a loss of production.