Beacon Quality Blog

If you’re a plant manager, you might not be excited about conducting layered process audits in your facility. Between monitoring plant metrics, managing your team and putting out the latest fire, there’s little room to add yet one more task to your already packed schedule.

It’s understandable given the time and resources required to perform layered process audits (LPAs), which require adding daily and even shift-level checks to team members’ responsibilities.

You might be thinking, “My team is already busy, and now I have to tell other busy people to do more busy work? No thanks.”

In reality, a well-executed LPA program is far more than just another flavor-of-the-month quality initiative. It can help plant managers achieve key goals, including creating a culture of quality and safety, providing insight into plant health and eliminating hidden nonconformances that increase quality costs. Let’s take a look at how.

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In our new Q&A column, we’re interviewing top manufacturing experts about industry trends and solutions to common quality challenges.

We recently talked with Casper Zublin, president of International Rubber Products (IRP), about rising quality expectations, Industry 4.0 and how to build a culture of quality. IRP’s three divisions manufacture liquid silicone rubber for medical device components (IRP Medical), precision rubber rollers (ABBA Roller) and elastomer components for aerospace and defense (MikronPMP Aerospace).

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According to the National Safety Council, workplace fatalities have risen 17% since 2009 after decades of steady improvement in occupational safety, outpacing workforce growth over that period.

Companies conducting layered process audits (LPAs) can help reverse this trend by using these verifications to identify safety nonconformances and fix them before they cause safety incidents.

With daily checks of high-risk processes, layered process audits lead to more conversations about safety, also demonstrating leadership prioritizes safe work—both critical to creating a culture of safety.

Achieving this level of reliability, however, doesn’t happen overnight. Organizations must first make a key mindset shift, also taking a strategic approach to uncovering and resolving instances where people don’t follow standards.

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Do layered process audits drive real improvement in your organization? Or are they just another hoop to jump through for customers like General Motors (GM) and Fiat Chrysler (FCA)?

Layered process audits are comprised of quick checks of high-risk processes, preventing defects by identifying when people aren’t working to standard. While each audit only lasts about 10 minutes, they also take place daily, creating an administrative burden that leads many manufacturers to simply treat them as busy work.

This “check the box” attitude creates its own avalanche of problems.

Completion rates are low, delivering little data. People pencil-whip audits by passing every item blindly—a problem for nearly half of respondents in our State of LPA survey. Completed checklists become an overflowing pile of unfinished paperwork, waiting for someone to enter and analyze the findings. When auditors do uncover problems, they may not receive the proper follow-up, sending the message that management doesn’t actually care.

It’s a vicious cycle that adds up to huge amounts of wasted time and money considering the effort required to set up, manage and track LPAs. Ultimately, this bare minimum compliance approach also means more defects, complaints and warranty costs. That’s because process failures lead to product failures, and if nobody’s looking for them, they will continue to impact quality.

In this post, we examine how to break this cycle, leveraging strategies like checklist design, problem-solving and automation to get more from LPAs and move beyond compliance.

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Whether we’re talking to a front-line operator, a plant manager or CEO, people’s reactions to being assigned a new recurring task are remarkably similar.

“Oh great—more to do.”

Sound familiar?

It’s a reaction that’s common in organizations transitioning from paper-based to an automated digital process for layered process audits (LPAs), even though the end result may be a sharp reduction in defects and simpler audit processes. While there are numerous benefits to moving from a paper-based to a mobile digital platform for your LPA program, the focus of this article is how to make the transition as smooth as possible.

Layered process audits focus on quick, straightforward elements of process inputs, helping ensure process standardization and reduce defects upstream from the point of manufacture. Automating LPAs can involve a transition process, one made easier by adopting a pilot program to help you learn as you go. Here we discuss different types of pilot programs, as well as some best practices to ensure success.

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“Garbage in, garbage out.”

That’s the mantra commonly ascribed to computer scientists and software engineers to describe how low-quality data impacts the software development process.

The same concept applies to manufacturing in the context of layered process audit (LPA) questions. Layered process audits are a high-frequency audit strategy aimed at ensuring process inputs comply with work standards, as opposed to trying to identify defects after production.

When it comes to LPA questions, creating a generic plant-wide checklist and adopting a “set it and forget it” approach doesn’t deliver meaningful data. Instead, manufacturers must invest time in the process, collecting input from quality, engineering and plant leadership to ensure questions are relevant and provide real value.

In other words, the effort you put into writing LPA questions determines the quality of data they ultimately provide.

With that in mind, this post looks at 7 generic LPA questions that don’t work, and how to fix them for more meaningful results.

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If you’re new to layered process audits, it’s critical to make sure everyone on your team is on the same page with basic terms. Here we provide a guide of 16 essential terms to know when launching your LPA program and getting your team up to speed. Don’t forget to directly download your own copy of this guide to keep as a reference for yourself and your team.

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On October 2-3, 2019, the Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG) hosted its annual Quality Summit, an event that draws hundreds of industry leaders every year. As in previous years, the event took place at the Suburban Collection Showplace in Novi, Michigan, a familiar venue for those who have attended in the past.

We talked with Murray Sittsamer, president of The Luminous Group, and John Rose, quality systems manager for Jacobs Vehicle Systems, about the event. Some of the highlights from this year’s summit include key updates from industry groups about new quality initiatives, informational sessions and even a celebrity appearance.

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According to a Deloitte study on the manufacturing skills gap, the U.S. will need to fill 4.6 million manufacturing jobs over the next decade, but over half of those are likely to sit vacant.

It’s a grim prospect for the manufacturing industry, where the average time to fill a position rose from 94 to 118 days from 2015 to 2018. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data show that as of September 2019, a full 500,000 manufacturing jobs remain open, a problem that affects nearly every company in the industry.

Quality departments are already feeling the pain, with a quick search of Indeed showing thousands of open positions for quality engineers nationwide.

What can companies do to adapt to the skills gap? And how can they ensure they’re bringing on the right hires?

To answer these questions and learn how to hire a great quality engineer, we talked to Craig Nowotny, general manager of Arthur Wright & Associates. The staffing firm focuses exclusively on filling positions in manufacturing, engineering and operations, an area where Nowotny has nearly 30 years of experience.

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