The Detroit Free Press just published a good article, Robots descending on Michigan industrial workplaces in record numbers, that describes what happens in the US but has a lot of significance for Chinese manufacturers too. Let's go through a few excerpts, one by one. The immediate future is likely to be a combination of human workers amid automation and not a "lights out" factory devoid of people entirely. Very true. General Motors fantasized about 'lights out factories' in the 1980s … [Read more...]
Understanding a Manufacturing Process in Your China Factory
Turning raw material into a finished product can be a complex process. And it usually requires more steps than a lay person would think. Understanding the process(es) at work is really manufacturing 101, and most foreign buyers skip this. They come to China/Vietnam, think the factory people know their processes pretty well, and don't take the time to gather that knowledge. There are a set of process inputs, different controlled variable inputs as well as many uncontrolled variable inputs, … [Read more...]
How a Chinese Factory Can Get ISO 9001 Certified
I wrote before about the way certain consultants are routinely hired by manufacturers to “make paperwork look good”. It is the norm in China. However, some factory owners really want to manage their business in accordance with best practices. They are not looking for shortcuts. They understand that ISO 9001 is not very advanced but it is already a basis good basis -- if applied correctly -- on the road to operations excellence. So, how can consultants help a relatively small factory get … [Read more...]
The Process FMEA: Template, Use Cases, and Example
Process FMEAs are so useful... and so poorly conducted in China. There is an art to it, just like there is an art to conducting a solid root cause analysis. It is quite a difficult and unnatural exercise for most Chinese engineers, technicians, and managers. What is a process FMEA? It is a formal approach to proactively reducing risks in a process. A failure modes & effects analysis (FMEA) aims at: Identifying potential risks Documenting and keeping track of those risks … [Read more...]
Why Chinese Factories Don’t Get Better: Constant Fire Fighting
I came up on a really insightful article entitled Stop Fighting Fires. It was published in the Harvard Business Review in 2000 and is still very relevant. The authors identified the following 6 symptoms that are common to all organizations where fire-fighting takes precedence over continual improvement. 1. There isn’t enough time to solve all the problems. There are more problems than the problem solvers—engineers, managers, or other knowledge workers—can deal with properly. Here is an … [Read more...]
The Best of Process Improvement Tools: The Flow Chart
Do you want to make changes in your, or your supplier's, factory? The question is, where to start? There are countless process improvement tools. Some lean purists say, draw a value stream map and strategize about what needs to be done first. Others will say, pick a really bad area and do a kaizen event, to show everyone that quick improvement is possible. And so on. If I had to choose one tool, it would be the process flow chart. It is usually the first tool we use when we have to make … [Read more...]
Using Statistics To Improve Production Quality in China
I have covered at length how to use statistics to accept/refuse a batch of product based on a random sample. Those statistics are usually the only ones the typical production manager has ever come in contact with! I have visited hundreds of Chinese factories. And, outside of the auto industry, I don't remember ever seeing any trace of statistical process control. Can statistical tools be used to improve production processes? Yes. Are they always useful? No. The difficulty is to know where … [Read more...]
Solving a Quality Problem Seldom Necessitates High-Tech Engineering
In many companies, and in particular in many Chinese companies, the response to problems is often "let's invest in technology". Unfortunately, spending a lot of resourcing on engineering is seldom the best solution. I just read a great story that illustrates this. A toothpaste manufacturer had a regular quality issue that was generating bad publicity: some boxes didn't contain a tube of toothpaste. It was due to the way the production lines were setup. They spent 8 million dollars on a … [Read more...]
3 Steps for Manufacturing ‘Off-The-Shelf’ Products in China
About 2 months ago, I posted a video about the steps to make a customized product in China. I noted that most of the steps outlined in that video don't apply when the importer is buying simple products that don't require serious customization. For what is generally called "standard" or "off the shelf" products, there are 3 steps and they are relatively simple: (It is on Youtube… Blocked behind the great firewall.) If I had to sum it up, it would be "get the basics right, and that … [Read more...]
A Control Chart You Can Ask Your Chinese Suppliers to Keep Track Of
A few days ago I introduced a basic statistical tool (the capability index) that is simple and can be represented visually, so that any Chinese factory can understand it and try to improve it. Today I want to introduce the p chart. It is quite simple, yet is seldom mentioned when control charts are mentioned. The most common type of control chart is not very appropriate The “classic” control chart tracks the average value and the amount of variation of a particular value of interest. They … [Read more...]
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