Preface

Some readers might ask why they should invest the time needed to read this book. My hope is that the answer is provided in the following pages.

Foreign competition and job outsourcing have caused dislocations in many industries. Since economic uncertainty abounds across the world, most manufacturing facilities attempt to maximize their competitiveness. Due to the attempts to control costs, there are plant closings, employment stagnations, dislocations, and reductions. None of these actions is beneficial to the long-term viability of a manufacturing facility unless they are coupled with innovative changes that increase competitive capability. Consequently, managers evaluate each employee’s attributes in efforts to retain talented workers who are believed to sustain the company’s future.

Since affected individuals must yield to these changing conditions, education and experience on the job are primary attributes that can be used in the decision-making process. This may be true even in union-protected bargaining units if the opportunity presents itself. Therefore, it benefits all individuals to be viewed as contributing and irreplaceable employees.

There are many owners, managers, and technical and mechanical personnel who have excellent training in their respective fields, yet are without competence as trained problem-solvers. This book provides a simple method to be used independently or in conjunction with standard, sophisticated problem-solving tools. The methods and examples explained in this book stand alone and can be easily applied, without in-depth statistical competence or understanding.

When you use these methods, you are more likely to increase profits, decrease scrap, and improve the manufacturing process. Consequently, people who enact profitable improvements are more likely viewed as valuable assets and not as expendable.

After earning two degrees, one in industrial technology and the other in industrial engineering, I was assigned to act as a problem-solver in a high-volume automotive foundry. Upon receiving the position, the manager of quality called me into his office and asked me to improve the plant scrap quality level. He indicated that I had complete control of how my skills were used and that he expected to see reductions in waste and the other negative trends the plant was experiencing. And he wanted them now!

I was overjoyed at the opportunity, since I had a lot of academic theory from a variety of subjects. So I defined problems, recorded data, and created charts to indicate the current scrap levels by defect. Through this process, I found that charts alone do not solve problems.

Generally, I found that the major differences were assignable to different production lines with different causes for each line. On a daily basis, I found incorrect chemistries, mixed parts, cold iron, burn-in, core cuts, sand holes, shrinks, blows, shift differences, pattern differences, part differences, line downtime, and the foundry nemesis—porosity. There were so many variables that it was difficult to pick out the most significant ones. Consequently, I decided to rank those defects based on their effect on the plant’s bottom line. I placed the cost data rankings in a chart to allow the most significant targets to be picked for reduction. I could not think of a better alternative.

There were some obvious defects that were easily corrected, but the majority of the defects could not be solved with the aid of the technical information that I had available. Book knowledge is a wonderful asset, but I lacked the real-world knowledge and the knack to determine the causes or conditions necessary to facilitate change. Over time, I gained the experience and developed that knack, and this book contains both, in distilled form for your benefit.

During that time, the most important lesson that I learned was that there must be agreement about the problem being discussed. It is not unusual to have eight or so people discussing a defect without even two of them agreeing on the specific description or nature of the problem.

For years, I had a gnawing desire to identify more specifically the tools needed to investigate and correct problems. Using the simple tools available didn’t typically result in expedient solutions.

Working with various managers over the years, I realized that even they have difficulty recognizing and overcoming basics associated with problem-solving. Thus, this treatise is an attempt to provide the basic knowledge and skill.

I invite you to become a proficient problem-solver using the plan, examples, and worksheets provided in this book. With these tools, your efforts will be focused naturally on the actual cause of the problem. Follow the eight-step roadmap provided in the following pages and see how easy your journey to manufacturing problem resolution can become.