Lean Newsletter 2018

Waste of Defects; causes, examples and solutions

The Waste of Defects

Defects are one of the eight wastes of lean manufacturing or 8 mudas, defects
are when products or service deviate from what the customer requires or the
specification. When you talk about waste most people think of defects rather
than the other wastes such as waiting and transportation.

The Costs of the waste of Defects

The cost of rejects and rework are often compared to an iceberg; only a small
fraction of the true cost being visible above the water level.

In addition to the obvious cost of the initial scrap item we have a number of
other costs that are not always obvious or considered although frequently far
in excess of this initial cost. The general rule of thumb is to multiply the cost of
the scrap by a factor of ten to arrive at the true cost to your business.

There are costs associated with problem solving, materials, rework,

rescheduling materials, setups, transport, paperwork, increased lead times,
delivery failures and potentially lost customers.

Causes of the Waste of Defects

Defects can be caused by many different problems, many that should be
avoidable with a little thought when designing products, processes and
equipment.

Steel Strips Wheels Ltd. Friday, 07 September 2018

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Many defects are caused by incorrect method due to non-standard operations,
differences in the way that processes are undertaken by different operators on
different shifts.

We also build the opportunity for errors into our products by failing to think
about how items can be assembled when we design them; we have
components that can be assembled incorrectly if the operators do not align
them correctly and so on.

We fail to maintain our equipment, machines and fixtures allowing defects to

occur.

We don’t have a culture that empowers and makes our operators confident
enough to highlight problems and allow them to be solved; they often
continue and make the best of a poorly fitting component rather than stopping
to have either the fixtures or the components corrected.

We don’t provide training to our people; we throw them straight in at the deep
end and tell them to do the same as the guy stood beside them, often the one
that was thrown in there the week before.

We also reward the wrong behaviours, paying for quantity rather than quality,
encouraging our employees to work as fast as possible and even penalizing
them if they do not make the numbers with little thought to the consequences
on the quality of our products or services.

Examples of wastes of Defects

Scrap produced by poorly maintained fixtures.
Parts assembled with the incorrect orientation.
Missing screws and other fixing due to lack of controls.
Incorrect components used due to incorrect or missing instructions.
Poorly made components that continued to be made as the employees wanted
to reach their performance bonus.
Parts damaged due to excessive handling.
Faulty parts that have reached the customer.

Steel Strips Wheels Ltd. Friday, 07 September 2018

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How to eliminate or reduce Defects
There are many techniques out there to help you to identify and eliminate
wastes; however within lean manufacturing, prevent them occurring in the
first place.

This prevention of defects is achieved by a number of different techniques

from autonomation / Jidoka (Machines with “human” intelligence that are able
to detect when a non standard event has occurred) through to Pokayoke
devices that detect if a product is defective, either preventing the process from
running or highlighting the defect for action.

Implement standard operations procedures (SOP) and training to ensure that

the correct methods are undertaken and standards achieved.

The most important factor however is the empowerment of teams to solve and
prevent their own problems. By harnessing the talents of employees we can
quickly and efficiently prevent the occurrence of defects.

In next letter we will discuss about waste of overproduction in detail.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Steel Strips Wheels Ltd. Friday, 07 September 2018