Beacon Quality Blog

As one of the world’s largest automakers, General Motors (GM) must continually look for ways to increase value and reduce waste throughout its supply chain. Like many manufacturers, they are under pressure to keep ahead of the increasing challenge to meet demands for ever better, faster and cheaper products.

Following the unprecedented recall problems of the past few years, GM put some of their best and brightest minds together to develop new strategies that include their suppliers as one aspect of a multi-prong quality improvement initiative.

Read More >

Whether it’s due to the Internet of Things (IoT) or simply the remarkable decline in cost, companies are rushing to equip their employees with smart mobile devices or allowing them to bring their own device to access work systems. Manufacturing has tended to lag in this area, but as devices have become cheaper and more rugged, this area has seen an influx of smart devices as well, and they are playing a crucial role in plant operations. In fact, a recent joint study by LNS Research and MESA International showed that 54 percent of plant supervisors and 53 percent of plant managers could expect to use mobile devices to supply all of the needed information to fulfill their job responsibilities.

Read More >

A recent Wall Street Journal article detailing how Boeing is facing up to 24 million dollars in FAA penalties over quality control going back several years across a number of locations shows how even the biggest manufacturers need to close the loop on quality control (QC). Closing the QC loop requires a two-way flow of information across functions that enable end-to-end visibility into quality across the value chain.

This can only be done when quality functions such as document control, compliance management, nonconformance/corrective and preventive actions (NC/CAPA), audit management, and others are integrated across critical business processes. It may be clear on the surface to manufacturers that moving beyond the concept of a bi-directional connection of people, processes, and data across the value chain is paramount to success in the manufacturing sector. That being said, the hard work of achieving that goal starts with understanding the benefits and the challenges of a closed loop approach to quality control.

Read More >

We are happy to announce that within the next few days we’ll be releasing version 1.5 of Beacon. The release has several new features which are detailed in our release notes, but the interface has also received some big updates so we wanted to let you know in advance. It’s important that we mention that we’re not fans of “change for change’s sake”, but these changes are well worth it. We re-evaluated our navigation menu and overall site structure to make the Beacon experience more consistent, but also to prepare for a number of big new features we have coming soon.

Read More >

In a manufacturing environment, it’s common for teams to run into Murphy’s Law - the notion that “anything that can go wrong, will.” A simple day that starts with an employee calling in sick, can escalate through other events such as a workstation running out of parts, a machine shutting down for unknown reasons, or similar issues which result in missing production targets for the week.

In order to minimize risks, plants should use a Layered Process Audit (LPA) program to ensure that the most important controls to prevent defects and waste are in place.  But with so many things that can go wrong, where do you start?  

One great tool to consider is Process-FMEA (Failure Mode and Effects Analysis). Teams that are looking to start a Layered Process Audit (LPA) program often have a long standing practice of doing PFMEA to determine their areas of high risk and frequent failures. Teams can use the Risk Priority Number (RPN) calculated from PFMEA as the basis for focus areas to prioritize when developing LPA questions.

Read More >

In manufacturing, leaders innovate and grow while followers fall prey to inefficiency and waste. A recent report from the Aberdeen Group, Lean Manufacturing: Success Starts with Visibility and Alignment, describes how manufacturing leaders consistently benefit from having tools in place to track continuous improvement activities. In addition, 61% of these high performers provide management with a comprehensive, easy-to-understand view into operations. These results reinforce the truth that lean principles are only as good as the actionable data available, and it follows that organizational integration of manufacturing software solutions is key to process improvement.

Read More >

When implemented correctly, layered process audits (LPAs) go beyond satisfying customer requirements by transforming an organization’s culture into one that embraces continuous improvement. This powerful audit approach pays dividends by improving safety and quality, and delivers cost savings by greatly enhancing traditional assurance systems and making continuous improvement nearly routine.

The additional layers in LPAs ensure additional eyes are looking for issues, and the rotation of participants involved provides a powerful deterrent against those eyes “looking the other way” if even marginal concerns are identified. LPAs should include a wide spectrum of employees—from shop-floor operators to executives—conducting audits in order to verify that standardized procedures are followed consistently in the continuous pursuit of quality.

Read More >

Historically, business executives have viewed manufacturing plants as cost centers because they are units that do not produce profit directly, but instead add to the operational costs of the organization. Increasingly, however, more business leaders are daring to challenge that paradigm by stating a case to recognize manufacturing units as profit centers. This, of course, has raised eyebrows.

The shift from the narrower perspective of the manufacturing plant as a cost center into a profit driver is supported in part by concepts from the balanced scorecard approach developed by Robert Kaplan and David Norton nearly 25 years ago. More than a measurement tool, the balanced scorecard is a management system. By bringing together measures that are focused on internal processes and external outcomes, the balanced scorecard promotes continuous improvement through strategic performance and results.

Read More >

“Try not to make 5S a goal in itself. … Focus instead on the leadership part, building the right discipline and culture in your organization towards the objective of 5S: Create, maintain, and improve an efficient workplace organization with high levels of visual control.” Torbjørn Netland, Associate Professor, Department of Industrial Economics and Technology Management, Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Those are words of wisdom from an in-depth article on 5S entitled “5S – We Are Doing It Wrong” by an associate professor at Norway’s NTNU Department of Industrial Economics and Technology. Although the benefits of implementing 5S audits in a plant are many, realizing them requires a plant-wide focus on cultural change. As Netland notes in the article, the objective of 5S audits goes beyond the practice into developing “high levels of visual control.”

What follows are two broad areas of ROI and safety that reveal five business and bottom line changing benefits of conducting 5S audits in the plant.

Read More >