Kaikaku

Zero Defects

Sorry to have parted so long.  I will try to be more regular.

Zero Defects - Where to start?

Recommend that you begin with:

1. Spotlessness - Get everyone involved in looking around them and begin to clean up their work area, like being in the Army when you know the General is coming or when you know that a guest is coming to your house, you tend to put things in visual order. 

2.  Order - Like with the 5 S technique you want everything to be kept at a certain place, well marked, easy to find, visually pleasing, easy to spot defectives, and easy to tell the number of items in front of you.  When you consider that the next person to receive your work is your customer you want them to receive things nicely.  When you send someone some candy, you don't pile up it up;  Imagine receiving a box of candy with the chocolates just piled on top of each other.

3.   Pre-set – only what is needed is in front of you, tools exactly placed, easy to reach, and marked.  You take only those parts you need to be assembled.  Start off with a small batch.  Say you are going to build 100 items, take only 10 of each and assemble only ten; use a template to place the parts on and when you assemble the 10 items, if any parts are left over there is a chance you might have missed using that one part and you only have ten to items to re-check.

4.  Pre-inspect – take just an extra second and inspect every part before you use it.  Stop and watch your fellow worker to see if they are pre-inspecting.  You can learn a lot just by looking.   

5.    Do it – assemble it precisely in the best way possible.  Learn standard work which is to have in front of you the exact instructions of how to do your work with precision.  Check your quality standards and note down any discrepancies.

6.   Post-inspect – stop for a second to make sure the work you did was done exactly right.  Make sure that there are no scratches, no mars, no burrs, and that no defects will be passed on to your customer.

7.  Order – check that the exact number of items needed is going to be past on to your customer.  When I first moved to Portland Oregon I went to shop at a Safeway Supermarket Food Store. I spent just a few minutes as the sight was so unpleasing.  A few years later while running a workshop on customer service one of the attendees told me what great customer service they received at a Safeway.  At first, I couldn't believe it but the attendee insisted that I go back and check.  What a pleasant surprise to see such a spotless and immaculate store.  Safeway has seven attributes which I will write about in the next article.  But, Safeway insures spotlessness by having one of their managers take every single hour of the working day a walk around the store just looking to make sure that everything is in exact order. It only takes a few minutes but what a powerful way to insure that the store stays spotless - try it in your company.

Once you have gone through the first seven steps than our challenge is to really go after zero defects through our poka-yoke devices.  Talk to you about this a little bit later.

Best,

Norman Bodek

And please do read my two new books:  Rebirth of American Industry and JIT IS FLOW.

Zero Defects

Dear Terry,

 

Thank you for your comments on my Blog. 

 

Learning from Dr. Shingo and Mr. Ohno, I try to keep things very simple.  Zero defects is simply zero defects; at first, not a single defect leaves the plant and then not a single defect is produced.

 

Can it be possible?  I think so.  Does it happen for Toyota? Not yet?  Will they get there?  I don't think anything less is acceptable to them.

But , many Japanese companies claim to produce no defects. They feel they are able to fully control the process.  Even more importantly zero defects must become a believable target. 

 

I have a dear friend in Japan, a great teacher, that absolutely believes in zero defects.  He teaches it and takes you through a step by step approach to get there. 

Of course, it is a journey until attained and then you move on to other things. 

Unfortunately, many managers are stuck with a goal less than zero.  It gives them an out. It means that some of your customers will surely be disappointed.  I don't want to disapppoint anyone.   

If you are prepared to jump from a tall building, you better believe that you can fly.  I would not even consider that anything less than zero should be our goal.

From Terry Bignoche

 

I greatly appreciate your approach to asking workers for ideas and encouraging responsible action for improvements. As you know, the action always involves some experimentation which is where learning thrives. As "lean" is a journey rather than a destination, I also think "zero defects" may be more of a journey as well. To determine if you are "lean" or there are "zero defects" doesn't one have to use data +/or opinion as the basis? By some measures one may have a claim to have reached either destination which could lead to complacency if one is not careful. This doesn't suggest you don't get on the journey and celebrate successes along the way. I just wanted to share some thoughts in this forum because you have helped my thinking so much along my path.
Thanks!
Terry Begnoche

Zero Defects

Yesterday I had the opportunity to walk through a manufacturing plant with the goal of finding ways to achieve zero defects.  I simply went over to one operator after another and asked,  "What defects have been recently found from this operation?"  I also asked them to give me examples.   Amazingly, information and examples poured out.  Since I teach Quick and Easy Kaizen I asked them to write each problem down on our Kaizen form; then I asked them to suggest ways to eliminate those defects and ideas poured forth.

As an example, in one area around 100 little stems came into this department  on a board with the flat tops up, stems down, and it required the operator to first turn them over in order to insert little black O rings, (washers).  I asked if there was a way to either receive the stems in reverse order or to develop a very simple device to allow them to flip all 100 stems over at one time.  I didn't tell them how to do it.  I asked.  I then watched them insert little black O rings onto the stems and was told occasionally,  one out of five, O rings fall into the wrong grove and have to be removed and re-inserted.  I asked them more questions and sure enough one lady said, "Why can't I have a different tool with a stopper that would only allow the O rings to be placed into the correct grove."  I quickly asked an engineer if he could make such a tool and his answer was, "of course."   Another idea came out that after the o rings were placed onto the stem, all stems could be placed onto another board which would not hold stems with wrong O rings.

What I learned was that these people have great ideas, but you have to ask them.  And we want them to come up with Poka-yoke ideas that absolutely prevent defects from occurring.  I am hopeful that quickly we will have hundreds of poka-yoke devices implemented by the operators themselves. 

It is a wonderful journey for me to find such "jewels," in the average worker.  You must ask and not tell.