I. Probe into the proportion of factory shutdowns caused by sub - standard incoming materials
In the context of industrial production, a factory shutdown is an issue that can seriously affect the production schedule and efficiency. So, what role does the sub - standard incoming material quality play in this? This proportion varies significantly across different industries and product levels.
The situation is particularly worthy of attention in the discrete manufacturing industry, which requires a large number of component purchases. In this field, the quality of components is directly related to the assembly and production of the entire product. For some enterprises, due to sub - standard incoming materials, the production halt ratio may be as high as 50% or even higher. Imagine that a production line has to be shut down because of the unqualified quality of a certain key component, and subsequent processes such as assembly and debugging cannot be carried out normally. This will have a huge impact on the enterprise's production plan and delivery time. If an enterprise conducts a detailed statistics in this regard, it may be shocked by this astonishing ratio, because it means that there may be serious loopholes in the enterprise's raw material procurement and quality control.
II. Consideration of Quality Costs
Quality cost is an indispensable part of enterprise operations. The quality expert Philip B. Crosby once emphasized that the quality - related cost losses of most companies reach 15 - 20% of their sales revenue. This figure is summarized from the actual operations of numerous enterprises.Quality cost encompasses multiple aspects, including prevention cost, appraisal cost, internal failure cost, and external failure cost. Prevention cost refers to the expenses incurred to prevent quality problems, such as the evaluation of suppliers and pre - product certification. Appraisal cost is the cost for inspecting and testing product quality. Internal failure cost is the loss caused by quality problems during the production process, such as waste products and rework. External failure cost is the loss resulting from quality problems after product delivery, such as customer complaints and product returns.Such a high proportion of quality cost losses should definitely draw the high attention of enterprise managers.
III. Severe Consequences of Unqualified Incoming Materials
When the incoming materials are found to be substandard, the production order of the entire factory may be completely disrupted, plunging it into utter chaos.
First of all, once the quality department discovers that the incoming materials are unqualified, it will promptly notify the production planning department, the logistics department, and the purchasing department. The production planning department will determine the latest arrival time of the materials based on the delivery time given by the sales department. At this time, the logistics, purchasing, and quality departments will simultaneously contact the seller and require the seller to reship the goods within the specified time. Most sellers, in order to maintain the cooperative relationship with the buyers, will actively cooperate and do their best to prevent the buyers from experiencing production shutdowns or being unable to deliver goods to their customers on time.
However, before reshipping the goods, the seller must identify the root cause of the problem. If the problem is not identified, the re - shipped goods may still be substandard. To resume production quickly, the buyer's quality control personnel will work closely with the seller's quality control personnel, putting in extra hours for the investigation. They will search historical data and cooperate fully with the production department, R & D department, and laboratory department to jointly formulate a temporary solution. The seller may also need to repurchase raw materials and restart the processing and production.
If the buyer's production line has sufficient capacity, it may be relatively easier to handle the situation. However, if the production line capacity is insufficient, it is necessary to arrange the production of some semi - finished products in advance. In this way, when the goods to replace the sub - standard raw materials arrive, they can be installed immediately to save man - hours and ensure the goods are shipped within the specified time. But this will also bring a series of new problems. Since semi - finished products are not packaged and cannot be stacked, the warehouse may not be able to accommodate so many of them. They may be placed in corridors, meeting rooms or even offices. To prevent dust from settling on them, they need to be covered with plastic sheets. Moreover, if there are more than two models in this batch of goods, proper identification and differentiation must be made, and a lot of labels will be placed on the products.
At this time, the normal working order of the factory is completely disrupted, and almost all departments will be involved in the process of problem - solving. Departments such as production, planning, warehousing, logistics, procurement, sales, quality control, and technology will hold frequent coordination meetings with only one purpose: to ensure on - time delivery.If the products can be delivered on time, the situation is still relatively optimistic. However, if not, the sales department needs to inform the customers. Even worse, if the buyers' customers get involved, they may require a situation report every 24 hours. Moreover, overtime work and customer fines are also inevitable.
IV. Approaches to Solving the Problem of Unqualified Incoming Materials
Since non - compliant incoming materials can bring so many problems, then how can we solve them? The answer is undoubtedly "prevention".
Common preventive measures include recruiting more SQEs (Supplier Quality Engineers) and incoming inspection personnel, strengthening the evaluation of suppliers, selecting high - quality raw materials, enhancing pre - product certification, increasing the sampling ratio of incoming materials, strengthening the quality statistics of incoming products, promptly tracking product changes, and immediately notifying sellers once there are changes in incoming materials. These measures can indeed improve the quality situation to a certain extent. However, the resources of enterprises are limited, and they cannot blindly rely on traditional practices. Just as a carriage pulled by 4 horses is usually faster than one pulled by 1 horse, even a carriage pulled by 100 horses cannot reach a speed of 100 kilometers per hour. Relying on traditional methods such as paper records, Excel spreadsheets, and email communication cannot fundamentally solve the problem.
V. Utilize the system to prevent incoming material quality issues
Enterprises need an efficient system to help monitor the quality of incoming materials and issue early warnings for quality risks. The operation of this system is not complicated. Enterprises only need to input the data of each incoming material inspection into it.
It can identify the crucial 20% of information from a vast amount of data, specifically including:
1. Supplier non - conformity ranking: By ranking the incoming material non - conformity situations of each supplier, enterprises can clearly understand which suppliers have relatively serious quality problems, so as to take corresponding measures, such as strengthening supervision over them or replacing the suppliers.
2. Ranking of non - conforming products: Ranking the non - conforming situations of different products helps enterprises focus on those products with more quality problems, analyze the causes and make improvements.
3. Pass rate of all products: This data can intuitively reflect the overall incoming material quality level of an enterprise and provide important basis for the enterprise's quality decision - making.
4. Qualified rate of a collection of similar products: Conducting statistical analysis on the qualified rates of similar products can help identify common problems among the products, so that targeted improvement measures can be taken.
5. Inspection rate of all products: Understanding the inspection status of all products helps enterprises allocate inspection resources reasonably and improve inspection efficiency.
6. Defect ranking of all products: Ranking the defects of products enables enterprises to identify which defects are the most common and severe, so that they can be subject to key control during the production process.
7. Defect ranking of similar product collections: Similar to the pass rate of similar product collections, this ranking can help enterprises identify common problems in terms of defects among similar products.
8. Sorting of defects in a certain product: Sorting the defects of a specific product enables enterprises to gain in - depth understanding of the quality problems of this product and take targeted improvement measures.
9. CPK, SPC, and trend charts of a certain parameter: By analyzing the CPK (Process Capability Index), SPC (Statistical Process Control), and trend charts of key parameters, enterprises can promptly detect abnormal fluctuations in the production process and take measures in advance for adjustment.
10. Quality comparison of the same product from different suppliers: By comparing the quality of the same product from different suppliers, enterprises can select the suppliers with better quality and improve the overall quality of their products.
11. Statistics for any specified period: Enterprises can conduct statistical analysis on data for any specified period according to their own needs, so as to better grasp the quality change trend.
VI. Methods to Ensure the Authenticity of Sellers' Quality Data
If the buyer can get the cooperation of the seller, they can authorize the seller to log in to the system and enter their shipping information. In this way, the buyer can understand the quality status of the products and whether there are any changes between product batches before taking delivery. Meanwhile, the buyer can also compare their own quality inspection results with those of the seller to avoid errors in the determination of non - compliant quality caused by measurement differences.
VII. Strategies for Sellers and Buyers to Achieve a Win - Win Situation
A more efficient approach is for the buyer to authorize the seller to view the buyer's incoming material inspection results and trend charts. Sellers generally have a strong desire to know the buyer's evaluation of the quality of their products. This practice can avoid the situation where the buyer only sends an email to inform the seller when there are non - compliant products, which is caused by problems such as primitive statistical methods, backward communication methods, and low efficiency in data retrieval.In this way, the buyer can save a large amount of human and material resources, and the seller can also significantly reduce the risk of being fined for product returns, achieving a win - win situation for both parties. This is also a key part of quality prevention in the supply chain.
8. The Secrets to Making Customers Satisfied
In today's mobile era, having a quality information system enables enterprises to keep track of their own quality status anytime and anywhere. When facing customer inquiries, enterprises can query the required information and statistical reports on their mobile phones within 10 seconds, instead of having to return to the company, mobilize a large number of personnel, and spend a week to provide an answer as in the past. Undoubtedly, this can greatly improve customer satisfaction and enhance the enterprise's competitiveness in the market.
9. Make quality information transparent to reduce procurement costs
The quality information system also enables buyers to obtain quality comparison information of the same product provided by different sellers within 10 seconds. Through data comparison, it's clear at a glance which is better and which is worse. For example, by displaying the variation ranges of a certain part's dimensions from 4 different suppliers within a year, enterprises can clearly see the quality stability of each supplier, and then select suppliers with better quality and lower costs to reduce procurement costs.
X. Improvement of Comprehensive Benefits
By adopting the quality information system, enterprises can ensure the quality of incoming materials, reduce quality costs, improve work efficiency, and enhance their competitiveness. In the fierce market competition, this is undoubtedly an important guarantee for enterprises to achieve sustainable development.