Beacon Quality Blog

With most endeavors the amount of detail and forethought you devote to your preparations, the better your final result, and layered process audits (LPAs) are no exception. One of the most significant tasks of implementing an LPA system is writing the questions for your LPA checklists. Spending time upfront to investigate what has gone wrong in the past with your processes provides valuable insight for preparing an audit checklist that covers all the bases to satisfy your customers and promote a culture of quality throughout your organization.

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You’ve heard it before: What gets measured gets done. Part of planning to reach an objective is measuring what must be improved in order to move forward—in a word, metrics. Metrics give companies a way to define success and a path toward achieving their goals.

Quality Standards

Plant managers and owners strive to ensure that their plants comply with quality standards. One of the best ways to achieve this is to use metrics.

Employing an array of key metrics can help assure that plant personnel identifies details that ultimately make up the objective and meet the standards quality owners and managers require. Having definite measurements, targets, and planned actions (the first three parts of the SMART mnemonic: Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, Time-Based) helps achieve the high standards managers and owners set while recognizing that goals that are too lofty often can lead to worker discouragement.

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The unique value of layered process audits (LPAs) stems from building an effective layering system where you have fresh eyes conducting audits on a consistent basis. LPAs involve employees from all levels of an organization, from operators to senior management, who devote periodic attention to core processes. Unfortunately, what makes LPAs so beneficial to your organization also makes them cumbersome—as the sheer number of audits and auditors involved can create scheduling headaches.

The good news is that you can reduce the time-consuming tasks associated with assigning and scheduling audits by using audit management software. For example, you can easily build a schedule where first-level supervisors are performing audits on every shift while top-level management representatives, such as a plant manager, complete at least one audit per week.

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Who doesn’t like a clean workspace?

Your job is to deliver the correct parts to the correct place at the correct time—efficiently and consistently.

Cleaning, organizing and standardizing your plant and office helps you accomplish this because a clean, organized and standardized workplace builds efficiency and consistency. Picture in your mind the difference between a clean and a messy work place and you know what we mean.

Implementing 5S will improve your workplace and your profits. 5S stands for:

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U.S. auto sales are on pace to exceed 17 million units this year and could break the record of 17.4 million sold in 2000, according to Autodata Corporation. Backing these figures is the Automotive News Data Center, which reports that sales for the first eight months of 2015 outperformed sales for the same period in 2014. For example, Daimler AG posted a 6.4% increase in sales compared to 2014, Ford Motor was up 2.7% for the first eight months, and General Motors showed a 3.2% increase from the previous year.

Many automakers are running their U.S. plants with three shifts of workers and scheduling overtime, particularly factories that make pickup trucks, SUVs, and crossovers. Of course, the automakers’ success in extending this upswing depends on the ability of their suppliers to keep up with industry growth. For tier one automotive suppliers the pressure to meet demand must be carefully balanced with the ability to maintain and even improve quality. This is where lean manufacturing principles come into play.

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Research studies show that manufacturers estimate their cost of quality at approximately 10 percent of revenues, while, in reality, that figure is double that at 20 percent. While statistics like this are eye catching, it’s important to understand what is meant by the term, cost of quality. Unfortunately, it’s a widely misunderstood concept. Many organizations view the cost of quality solely in reference to failure costs. Common examples of activities related to this line of thinking include:

• Rework
• Scrap
• Returned materials
• Warranty recalls

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Understanding and applying key components of an LPA program are critical to success, but to maximize the short- and long-term effectiveness of an LPA, Ease has found that manufacturers should also integrate the following four key practices.

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In today’s competitive environment, manufacturers are more focused than ever on delivering high-quality products while reducing costs. Unfortunately, too often efforts are driven by a skewed perception of how best to achieve this goal. This is because many manufacturers pay greater attention to the cost of poor quality (CoPQ), comprising internal and external failure costs, over the cost of good quality (CoGQ), comprising proactive prevention and appraisal costs. As a result, they make reactive investments that yield less return and later prove to be insufficient.

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