. 
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.
When Deloitte wanted to get people excited about employee training, the company decided to adopt a gamification strategy for its online training portal. Using elements like achievement badges, missions and leaderboards, they achieved a 37% increase in participation.
And when Ford Canada gamified its sales and service training, platform usage jumped a massive 417%, with big gains in engagement among younger employees.
Saying gamification makes work a game is an oversimplification. In reality, it’s all about leveraging proven psychological principles around our motivation to compete, encouraging habits and behavior that improve business performance.
These principles can also be used in manufacturing to increase engagement in audits, which are critical to quality but often suffer from low participation. Key gamification tools and techniques to consider include mobile apps, competitions and recognition programs.
In 2017 and 2018, respectively, General Motors (GM) and Fiat Chrysler (FCA) both released new customer-specific requirements that suppliers must meet for IATF 16949:2016 certification. Among other topics, the automakers outline layered process audit (LPA) requirements, each putting their own spin on these high-frequency checks aimed at process standardization.
If you’re a supplier for both original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), it’s important to understand what the two sets of requirements have in common—and where they’re different.
Understanding the details is the only way to create an LPA program that’s streamlined and ensures customer satisfaction. Here we compare the two sets of requirements and summarize best practices for an LPA program that satisfies both of them.
When you look at standards like IATF 16949 or ISO 9001, the requirements boil down to two essential elements: improving customer satisfaction and reducing risk.
They go hand in hand, because effective risk management means safer products and happier customers—and fewer problems for their suppliers.
To help automotive suppliers proactively avoid quality and safety issues, we’re looking at 4 important places to focus for improving risk management and reducing costs.
Next to defining a problem accurately, root cause analysis is one of the most important elements of problem-solving in quality management. That’s because if you’re not aiming at the right target, you’ll never be able to eliminate the real problem that’s hurting quality.
A few days ago, Apple announced its 3 new iPhones for 2018: iPhone XS Max, iPhone XS, and iPhone XR (pronounced “ten-R”), and it’s the iPhone XR that we’re excited about. Although we wouldn’t call it ‘cheap’ at $749, out of the 3 new iPhones, it’s the most cost-effective for manufacturers needing mobile devices for company use.
The Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG) has many resources for companies focused on continuous improvement, represented as a set of key checkpoints on its Road Map to Quality Success.
While it looks like a simple set of steps, the path isn’t necessarily straightforward. Each step is a process in and of itself, but there is one common tool that will help you get from point A to point B: audits.
Today we're looking at how audits, and specifically mobile audit tools, can help accelerate your progress towards quality goals.
Imagine you’re a supplier seeing a troubling spike in returns over a component with high failure rates. After a lengthy investigation and millions in warranty costs, you discover certain workstations haven’t been heating a product element to the right temperature.
Having already distributed tens of thousands of faulty components, you realize the problem is far from over, putting your most important contracts at risk.
How does this happen, even with a robust system of product audits? The simple fact is that product inspections don’t always catch process issues responsible for defects. And while quality checks in manufacturing tend to center on product audits, process audits are just as (or even more) important to quality. Let’s look at the difference between product and process audits, and how they work together in the big picture of quality.
Companies that implement a layered process audit (LPA) system must account for a wide variety of questions. Which process areas will you audit? How often will you audit them? What will the process audits cover? How will you take action when you find non-conformances?
At the heart of these high-frequency checks, however, are the questions you include in your actual audit checklists to verify processes are being done right. We’ve discussed strategies for writing LPA questions, such as providing context on why and how to check individual items. Today, we’re examining 7 types of questions to consider for your process audit checklists, including:
PLANT FLOOR QUALITY
Mobile Auditing Software
We’re reshaping the world of archaic paper-based processes like layered process audits (LPAs), 5s, health & safety, Gemba, and mitigation management, all through our intuitive mobile software, Beacon Quality.
