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In our consulting work, clients often ask us about the most frequent reason why improvement projects fail. The response is always the same: "A few managers will resist any form of change and will block any improvement initiative. If the boss doesn't support us and help us push through the resistance, we will fail." All the training in the world will not convince people who are afraid to take risks. And that's really the reason for resistance -- fear of change. Fear of losing some power in the … [Read more...]

One of our regular readers, Brad Pritts, sent me a note about yesterday's article. I thought it was a great follow up. Here it is. -- I've been working with ISO TS 16949 since its inception, and with its predecessor, QS-9000. I'd have a few comments for those unfamiliar with it. 1) Why did it come about? As mentioned, the auto industry is highly dependent on supplier quality; they've had their own approaches for SQA since the late 1970's. Besides the difficulty of change, think about the … [Read more...]

Last month, Mr. Guenther from Adidas Footwear's Manufacturing Excellence department gave a presentation on the topic of "Dealing effectively with increases in labor costs in a labor intensive industry". It was one of the best presentations of the last sourcing conference organized by the European Chamber. Adidas Footwear works with a number of suppliers that own a total of 48 factories. They have to source about 25,000 articles every year. So they have to maintain a massive buying … [Read more...]

In Limits of Statistical Process Control in China, experienced consultant Brad Pritts described his observations over the years. Below is his advice to use statistical tools to improve production processes.  ----- What I do when I work with companies, whether US or Chinese, is the following approach.  I learned most of this from books by Dr. Don Wheeler, a statistician and disciple of Deming.  I strongly recommend anything written by Wheeler to people who want to use statistics to improve … [Read more...]

I am always interested in tools that prove useful in improving a factory's operations. But I always wondered, how useful is Statistical Process Control (SPC)? The fact is, I have never seen a Chinese factory make good use of SPC tools. I asked Brad Pritts, an experienced quality consultant specializing in the auto industry, for his opinion. Some classic SPC tools are listed in the "core quality tools" of the North American car industry. So it would make sense to have lots of factories apply … [Read more...]

A couple of weeks ago, I sat down with David Collins (consulting director of China Manufacturing Consultants, a company I am involved in) and we shot a few videos on topics related to factory improvement in the Chinese context. We have already uploaded some of them. They are very instructive, and about 2 minutes long. They are on Youtube and soon will also be on Youku. Quality Improvement Here are two concepts that 99.9% of Chinese factories don't apply. Hence the heavy reliance on final … [Read more...]

Designing a mold tool is all about designing it to produce the part required as efficiently as possible with maximum output and minimal tool down time. Unfortunately, few mold makers in China apply best practices, and few importers are knowledgeable enough to catch design issues. A few common errors to avoid are shown below. They can be categorized in two groups: tooling design and construction, and part design. 1. Tooling Design Points 1.1 Incorrect material selection – The coefficient of … [Read more...]