Vision

Whatever happens in the course of the scrap kill project, encourage the team to go forward unafraid and to conduct themselves in a way worthy of the vision for excellence.  Then whether I come and see the team on a plant visit or just hear about them, I’ll know that they stand firm in the one scrapkilling vision, working together as one for excellence, without being afraid of those who oppose the project.

The team’s quiet unity is a sign to the detractors that they’ll fail and the team will win —and that by intelligent action.  Your plant and especially your scrapkilling team not only believe in the project, but have also willingly suffered to get it done, going through the same struggle others have before them.

November 25, 2012 – 7:21 pm Categories: Uncategorized | Comments (3)

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Top Ten Reasons Scrap Reductions Fail

If you’ve read much of my material, you know there are a lot of ways that Sigma practitioners unintentionally sabotage their scrap reduction projects.  But even with the fastest laser-like methods I use, I used to encounter other barriers and delays that threaten to cost precious time and money on the road to killing the problem.

If you want to save your company monies and multiply process capabilities, you’ll have to address the barriers that Murphy has planned for your scrap killing project.  Before starting the project, have a contingency plan in writing for all the following actual barriers I’ve encountered over ten years.  Otherwise, delays will kill your project sooner or later.

But the payoff for preparation is millions!  

No one person alone can be responsible for the commitment to overcome these obstacles.  The commitment must be shared by the production manager, supervisor, lead operator and I working together.

We all have to have the attitude that, by Jackson, we’re going to get this done, and we have to document at the start which of these are going to take precedence over our  project, and which will take a back seat.

Some of these things may be easier to say here than right in the meeting room.  Whether reasonable or not, unavoidable or not, these are all real things that have delayed and threatened real, million-dollar projects:

  • Champion not excited about the project.
  • Unrelated shop problems force catch up. Part shortages and quality failure containments top this list.  Hurry to ship to customer schedule!
  • Fear, jealousy, and embarrassment of the veteran lead who doesn’t want the need for change exposed.  In private he’s amenable, publicly he openly challenges the core test team.
  • Production is in the middle of a run that uses temperamental fixtures.  Once they’re set up and working, no one likes to mess with them.
  • Production is working 10 hour shifts — don’t want to work the test lead operator too many hours.
  • Production is not working that shift — don’t want to bring the test lead operator in for just a couple of hours.
  • Lead operator sick, vacation, or needed elsewhere.
  • Wrong lead operator selected for the project — bad attitude.
  • Wrong lead operator selected for the project — not enough basic knowledge.
  • And the top reason scrap reductions are delayed or killed:  The cell is a production constraint. Volume goes up. Sorry, no time to test.

Be ready.

November 17, 2012 – 9:14 pm Categories: Examples | Comments (7)

Beware of unhelpful traditional test methods

Avoid certain test methods.  Don’t assume that a ‘time-tested’ method will help you — even if your Sigma department still teaches them.  Listen to me!  Don’t burn valuable time with the following examples:

  1. T-tests, ANOVA, 2 Sample Test of Proportions.   These popular (why?) and 10-odd other methods test one factor at a time (OFAT).  But oh don’t their names sound fancy??  OFAT tests kill time and are not capable of capturing all the variation that is killing your productivity, quality, and lead times.  It’s you kill scrap or scrap kills your business.  There is never a time when OFAT is needed.  Your lead operator can read on a simple chart anything an OFAT statistic can cook up.
  2. Fractional factorials.  Don’t use complicated, tangled, high-order-interaction-confounding, uneconomic, feeble, closed test designs like fractional factorials.
  3. Avoid making decisions using attribute, or go-nogo data, whenever possible.  A technician certified in the famous movement advised me that I was wrong to substitute variable data for his preferred gold standard, “scrap as a ratio of production”.  He advised this knowing that it would require unmanagably high sample sizes, making the project infeasible.

Why are smart people so dumb?  I wondered if he was trying to send me on a goose chase for no good reason.  But I knew better.  Using substitute variables gets the scrap-killing job done.  Sticking with attribute would have required conducting a 270-trial test just to certify the gage.

Such tomfoolery confounds a project and discourages your people from learning how to reduce scrap and rework and beat the competition!  A 270-trial study would threaten the project’s clarity, credibility, and the project itself.  Your production people smell a rat — in this case they’re right.

The cost of conducting tests that are too long is not only dollar-hours but also project clarity.  Your goal is to complete the improvement in as little time as possible with as little noise as possible so the processing and interpretation of the relevant data is as clear as possible, and so the before and after time windows remain crisp and as little confounded as possible.

What’s your story?

November 10, 2012 – 3:47 pm Categories: Examples | Comments (4)

If you can do these 7 things, you’re ready to reap millions of dollars for your plant

SK can certainly help you complete your radical scrap reduction project with no capital expense, faster than traditional practicioners.  But there are 7 things you have to be willing to do.  If you can, you’re in for big profit gains:

1. When volume is down, you must waive your no-overtime rules for the test lead operator throughout the limited time of test planning and testing. We know it’s tough for production to schedule tests. That’s why SK is so thrilled to be using methods so far superior that we call traditional methods the “turtle methods”. ___ initial ok

2. The previous guideline applies when your volume is down – this next item is for when volume goes up: the problem cell is a production constraint and the test team must compete with production demand. Your production manager must have a contingency plan for when volume goes up. “Sorry, no time to test” has killed many million-dollar projects. SK will show up at 2am if that’s what it takes. Commit and reap the huge rewards! “When volume goes up, regular test schedules will be shifted to (time and days _______).”

3. You must have a backup test lead operator for when the primary one gets sick, goes on vacation, or is needed elsewhere. Production will be struggling to keep moving in the absence of their regular lead. Do you have a contingency plan for that? If not, say goodbye to the millions of dollars you could start saving in a few short days.

Alternate test lead operator: ______________

4. You must have at least one of the two test lead operators available when the problem machine is available for test work. If production is working 10 hour shifts over long periods of time, some don’t want to require the test lead operator to stay over for testing work. That’s understandable. But you must commit to a plan. I suggest that if you have two shifts and one off-shift, on test days have the test lead operator work one fewer production hour for each added testing hour. This can be done on the shift that’s after the off-shift (the lead leaves before end of shift) and on the shift that’s before the off-shift (the lead comes late to production). How bad does your plant want the millions of dollars in scrap and rework reduction?

Plan: ________________________________________________________________

5. You must call in the test lead operator when production has Not scheduled work on a given day, even for only a couple of hours of testing when necessary – including Saturdays. If necessary, pay him a minimum of four or eight hours when he shows up just for test leading. Especially if he commutes. For heaven’s sake, you pay some vendors $3000 per day to fix some of your machines! If it’s too tough a problem to get your test lead operator in and compensate him fairly, your plant is not ready to commit to radical scrap killing dollars. ___ initial ok

6. You must list the top 5 likely part shortages and quality failures that may throw your production schedule and threaten to delay the project. For each of the most likely, delineate steps production will take to prevent, mitigate, and/or manage the potential delay. Some things you can’t at all predict. But these 5 are intelligent guesses with reaction plans assigned.

_________________ Reaction Plan: ______________________________

_________________ Reaction Plan: ______________________________

_________________ Reaction Plan: ______________________________

_________________ Reaction Plan: ______________________________

_________________ Reaction Plan: ______________________________

7.  The test lead operators assigned must have basic knowledge of the process and a positive attitude about the project. Most leads prove to have a good attitude once I’ve spoken with him and told him how the process will work. He does Not have to have any previous experience in testing. Certifications like Yellow Belt, etc., are Not necessary. Pick your smartest lead operator if possible. ___ initial ok

I’m sorry, I’m not likely to take your assignment unless you’re open to committing to these delay-mitigation measures in writing. I will consider your suggested alternative measures since each company has different challenges to manage in different ways.

November 3, 2012 – 11:01 pm Categories: Uncategorized | Comments (2)

Is corporate hesitating?

By now you’re fully aware that Scrapkillers can raise capability (“Cpk”) and save millions of scrap dollars in a fraction of the time it takes traditional methods.

But suppose corporate frowns on hiring an outside source to break your toughest technical problems. You ask why, and the answer comes: You’ve got your own corporate Six Sigma department, use them.

But ask these questions:

Can the Six Sigma department commit to a time line? How many months will it take for them to accomplish the job?

For the typical Six Sigma department, plan on months of interruptions to production. And with each passing month, your project becomes more and more doomed to failure.

The corporate SS program has reasons why it takes so long. They’re using traditional screening tests to find the important factors. A very large number of trials will be required for them to solve the problem – if they can solve it at all, since many attempts using traditional methods  fail due to important interactions confounding and mistakes due to excessive test complexity.

How flexible is your corporate Six Sigma practitioner’s schedule? How far away are they? How soon can they get there? Using their cumbersome test methods, you are likely to see your crucial project needlessly killed after repeated delays of scheduling between production runs.

The typical Six Sigma department plans for only about half of the Top Ten Things that Kill a Project.

So if you want to join elite manufacturing superstars, stop telling yourself that you can live with scrap, and instead, start using effective, Scrapkilling Age strategies and techniques that will bring highly capable and reliable production to your shop right now.

And just what are those strategies and techniques?  

The good news is that I spent years with top manufacturing plants and in trial-and-error research, figuring it all out so you don’t have to. The answers are in my free visit to your plant, and the best news is that you decide if you want to work with me, or simply never hear from me again.

It’s that simple, so call our office today.

October 27, 2012 – 12:26 am Categories: Why hire us now | Comments (2)

Oasis in the manufacturing desert

Years ago, I looked for good practical ways for manufacturers to reduce costs. The field was terribly thin. Trade journals offered arcane techniques purporting to help the manufacturer, but to the last one they were specialized to a very few operations.

In many cases whole pages, websites, chapters, even books were dedicated to a solution found that could never apply to any other company!

That seemed inefficient to me. That seemed unhelpful to me. That seemed frustrating to me! These were the internet and hard copy journals that supposedly sustained American manufacturing.

I searched trade journals and materials from the top professional organizations. You were expected to sift among boring titles to find the book that might have a chapter that answered your question. And you had to be willing to shell out.

I found no material that provided practical how to for manufacturers who both machined and assembled product.

Gee, then was that because the manufacturers were keeping what they’re doing quiet, so’s to keep potential competitors in the dark? They really do know what they’re doin’, right?

That’s what I thought for a long time. Although back-of-mind doubts nagged me, I mainly thought, look, competition is high – with a few exceptions, the existing companies embody the state of the art in adding value, operating efficiently, bringing everything together in a supremely elegant assembly.

After all, they’re the ones in business, they’re the ones buying supplied parts and selling higher level parts at a premium, they’re the ones with accounting departments, materials, quality, engineering, production, HR, safety, and maintenance. They must be geniuses, right?

The engineers talked like they knew what they were doing. The materials department talked like they know what they were doing. The managers of course did the same. The market allows only the most efficient market providers to survive, right?

Right. But … why was there so much waste in American manufacturing? Why isn’t manufacturing, the true stimulus package, winning the war on poverty? Why is a trillion dollars wasted in scrap alone every year?

There were a few sources of water found going through the desert. I learned Lean Manufacturing under James Wommack, Dan Rother, and Mike Roth in Detroit. I studied the best testing methods available from Keki Bhote.

That was then, but everything’s better today, right? I don’t know many who would say that! American manufacturing is still not organized, still doesn’t apply basic know-how consistently through its shop floors.

That’s why I’m putting together a package that I’ll offer exclusively to subscribers to my e-newsletter. I can’t tell you much about it yet, but stay tuned. And if you want an advance glimpse of this mega-bomb, download a free copy of my eBook, How to Eliminate Defects and Double Your Plant’s Profit. Stop wasting your time and losing money with six sigma fractional factorials, and learn techniques that get real results instead.

October 22, 2012 – 2:16 pm Categories: Uncategorized | Comments (3)

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Get Up, Get Out, and Kick Scrap Out the Door

Break the Chokehold

There’s a loose pile of money stacked on a pallet on your shop floor. Every day the wind is blowing $10,000 off the top and sending the cash down a sewer just outside the overhead forklift door.

Not everyone has high scrap. You may be up against tough competition.

But the good news is, few if any of your competitors are doing what Scrapkillers is doing. Why should Fortune 500 companies who use this method be the sole beneficiaries?  

Why are you leaving hundreds of thousands of dollars lying around on your shop floor?

October 21, 2012 – 11:13 pm Categories: Why hire us now | Comments (1)

Let your quality system allow ‘cheat reps’ … yes??

Does your plant’s quality system allow ‘cheat reps’?  Tony Horton, creator of the blockbuster P90X fitness videos, tells the camera in one workout, “I don’t mind a little cheat rep once in awhile.”

A cheat rep is when the body builder loses form on the last repetition of her set, because her muscles have reached their capacity and are starting to fail. As she struggles at the end of her set, her arms wobble and twist a little, her dumbbells don’t move in the perfect path like we normally want her to maintain.

Tony is building her body into something stronger. A higher quality body.

When a body builder’s arms are about to fail, she has a choice: stop pushing and “maintain good form”, or keep pushing and possibly fail good form.

When she keeps pushing, she breaks her muscles completely down because she knows that will result in more power, more strength, when her body recuperates.

Her body is stronger, better, of higher quality, because she allowed her FORM quality to degenerate a little on that temporary basis.

When Tony permits cheat reps, it’s ‘once in awhile’. A temporary concession of the rules, as a reward to the builder.  Reward her for what?  For trying to make the gains in the first place.  For pushing herself to do enough reps to become difficult.

It’s a risk: if she allows herself bad form, she could injure herself and set herself back. The best bodybuilders learn how to calculate that risk.

They know that injury could destroy months of building. And yet they engage in cheat reps anyhow.

It’s not pain they’re after: it’s muscles broken down under stress.

Is your quality system smart enough to accommodate cheat reps while building quality into the organization?

For that matter, does your quality system propose to improve quality, or merely maintain quality?

If you want your plant to get stronger, it’s not enough to maintain. Ya gotta allow cheat reps.

Your best supervisors are innovating, taking risks, to improve their manufacturing lines and their own abilities. In the pinch, at crunch time, their form, their execution sometimes suffers temporarily. The manager must weigh what’s being accomplished in the supervisor’s growth.

Your smart lead operator is innovating, taking risks to figure out how to do more with less – how to produce quality parts in less time.

When I perform tests to radically cut scrap and raise profits, I have to make parts that differ in quality. In fact, I generally have to make ‘bad’ parts during a test in order make the awesome gains that the shop so desperately needs.

Quality control hates bad parts. Quality improvement loves bad parts because the bad parts – though as few as possible, intelligently created – are the profound teachers for how to make good parts.  

October 14, 2012 – 10:58 pm Categories: zMiscellaneous | Comments (2)

The world partly revolves around them.

I just stepped outside my front door and called to my 10-year-old son and his friend playing outside, “Boys!”

“Yeah,” they said.

I said, “Lunch is in 15 minutes!”

“OK,” they said.

Because I’m working many hours, and one week is never the same as the next, my son’s life sometimes suffers from lack of structure.

When I gave the boys that moment of structure that lunch was coming in 15 minutes, their souls said to themselves, “The world partly revolves around me.”

“The world partly revolves around me!”  Plant employees need to feel valued. So step out once in awhile, tell them what you are about to do.

Much of their world revolves around you. This indirect way of letting them know that the world partly revolves around them will win loyalty, productivity, quality and profits. 

October 7, 2012 – 10:28 pm Categories: zMiscellaneous | Post a comment

Your benefits with our booklet in hand

Plant managers everywhere, get ready for new budget FREEDOM!

You’ve probably noticed by now that I don’t freely give away most of the secrets that I teach – the secrets to crush high scrap and rework.  And that’s fair – this is how I make my living, and if I simply gave away all of my knowledge for free, I’d be out of business pretty quickly!

But I AM giving away an eBook that includes some of the best scrapkilling material for you, including a method I learned from Keki Bhote that renders several testing methods obsolete.

You can download the eBook version of it Free on this website right now!  However, here’s a bit of a preview of the version that ships to your door – not the eBook.

I’ve gone through the hardcopy version of the booklet “How to Eliminate Defects and Double Your Plant’s Profit”, and have created this list of some of the amazing techniques and strategies you’ll learn with the KeyFinder Scrap Killing system:

- A simple strategy to flush out all the hidden reasons for scrap that your best employees have overlooked. – page 4

- A psychological trick to get operators, engineers and technicians to stop squabbling and work through the issue intelligently.  – page 5

- The one technique that will take you farther down the road to higher profit, productivity, and shorter lead times than any other method available out there!  Although some Fortune 500 companies use balanced testing to eliminate scrap and rework, very few of them have discovered the power of this method.  And there’s no reason why your medium-sized shop can’t profit from it too!  - page 6

- How to establish the unmistakably best level for the important factors to achieve zero defects! - page 11 

- How to set your machining cell on “quality autopilot”, leaving your line leaders free to finish part runs and complete products all day long!

So there you have it – a partial list of the extremely powerful techniques you’ll learn with the KeyFinder Scrap Killing system.  And remember, you get to try the system out for a full 30 days.  If for any reason you don’t like it, simply return the booklet to us within 30 days and you’ll be given a full refund.  This is 100% risk-free for you.  Grab your copy right now!

October 2, 2012 – 10:48 am Categories: zMiscellaneous | Comments (1)

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