During the past 30 years, quality has been a major area of contention for many companies. Companies with better quality products have historically had an edge in the marketplace. However, Dr. Juran and others have warned that a competitive strategy based on quality alone might not continue to be effective at capturing market share.
In a recently organized Zagreb Economic Forum, I had the opportunity to give a keynote about our Breakthrough Innovation (Brinnovation) framework. During my talk, someone asked, Why isn’t innovation sensational, sporty or sexy to attract more people and executives?
Whenever there’s an economic downturn two things happen: more measuring instruments get repaired when they should be replaced, and more people start going to auction sales looking for bargains.
A recent experience made me think that quality and manufacturing have become an integral part of everyday life, and that there may be hope for attracting more conscious interest in both.
Many manufacturers have gone or are going through changes as the challenging economic times continue. Companies are consolidating-buying out competitors through mergers and acquisitions, thinning their workforces through layoffs or merging locations in an effort to save money-all while trying to maintain the highest level of quality.
Imagine applying an EKG to a company’s most critical manufacturing processes. What if electrodes could be attached to an assembly line, or to the fill heads of a bottling process? Doing so would allow manufacturers to assess machine health, know when it is “sick” and prevent potentially expensive problems. This technology is available for manufacturers today, and it is called statistical process control (SPC).
Votaw Precision Technologies, maker of critical parts for the aerospace industry, bought a used vertical machining center (VMC) several years ago. The previously owned, though almost new, VMC was at Votaw less than a year when it was discovered that the machine needed to tighten its tolerances in order to meet stringent customer requirements.
To help British Airways obtain more accurate test results, combined with a more efficient testing process, Mecmesin supplied a MultiTest 5-x console-controlled force testing system, fitted with a 5-kilonewton loadcell.
When Automated Precision Inc. noticed a need for a shorter and simpler calibration process for machine tools, the company set about finding a solution-a solution that has already proven to
be popular.
The unproductive cycle of mistake-blame-train-defend often is repeated in the quality industry, and manufacturing as a whole, as a reaction to problems. The best way to break the cycle and improve operator competency and morale is to take a proactive approach with training to prevent mistakes.
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