Blace Jacobus

IE 673

Assignment 6

1) Explain why continual quality improvement is important

A company must constantly be improving in every aspect if they wish to keep
growing or even remain competitive in their current markets. This continued
improvement directly applies to the quality because every process can be
improved. As the needs of the customer change so should the way the company
operates to accommodate the customers. An example would be with amazon
prime. They know customers want products fast so they offer two day shipping
for free. Now other online retailers must shift the way they function to meet the
customers needs of wanting products fast.
2) What is managements role in continual quality improvement
Continual quality improvement really starts with management and then trickles
down to the workers. If management doesnt give quality improvement the
resources it needs then the employees wont be able to accomplish what is
necessary to improve quality process. Managers can give this support by direct
resource allocation, establishing quality councils, and building continued
improvement into the reward system.
3) Discuss the Kaizen approach
The Kaizen is a constant continual improvement approach that says that good
enough is never good enough. The company must always be improving on all
levels. At my current job we struggle to have this mind set. On a recent project
of mine it was noticed that the CNC program for one of our highest running parts
was not very efficient. The program had been setup when the product was first
released but has grown substantially. I had to really push our machine shop to
reprogram the CNC machine to accommodate the high quantity of parts it runs.
We were able to cut the time per pieces nearly in half but the fact that they had
put up such a fight to keep things the way they are was frightening and is nearly
the exact opposite of the Kaizen approach.
4) How would you describe a lean system
A lean system is one that runs very effectively with little resource waste. This
forces the company to put the resources where they are most needed. A
company does this by reducing overproduction waste, inventory waste, and so
on. This waste reduction frees up the resources and must be allocated to the
areas where they are most needed to meet the customers needs.
5) What is lean six-sigma and how would you apply it to a quality management
system?
Lean six-sigma is the meshing of the two improvement methods and not just a
small portion of each. It is the significant reduction of rejects using well allocated
resources to achieve this goal. This approach focuses on the quality of products

Blace Jacobus

IE 673

Assignment 6

and processes as well as reducing the eight major forms of resource waste to
free up the resources to better serve the customer.

Blace Jacobus

IE 673

Assignment 6

6) Define benchmarking
Benchmarking is the measuring and comparing process output to the best-inclass. This provides companies with a numerical value to assess how effective or
ineffective changes are. If a process was not benchmarked before a change
there would be no way to efficiently tell if it had a positive effect on the outcome.
The numerical value also allows the companies compare their processes to other
companies and they can determine what processes need to be attention and
what process that is effective
7) How can you apply benchmarking data
The text book outlines the application of benchmarking in a 14 step process as
follows:
1) Obtain Management Commitment Management must be committed to
all improvement approaches
2) Baseline your own processes Initial process data will be needed to
analyze what processes need improvement
3) Identify your strong and weak process and document them Use the data
in step to 2 to determine where you are strong and weak
4) Select process to be benchmarked use step 3 to determine what are the
weakest areas and improve them
5) Form benchmarking teams Create teams that will excite the
improvement
6) Research the best-in-class Find companies that are doing the processes
the best to lean from
7) Select candidate best-in-class benchmarking partners Attempt to lean
directly from the companies that are doing the process right
8) Form agreements with benchmarking partners Agree to shear the
information with the best-in-class and share your best processes with
them
9) Collect data- Collect more benchmarking data from partner
10)
Analyze and establish the gap Compare the partners data with yours
11)
Plan action to close the gap or suppress Make a plan that will improve
the processes
12)
Implement change to the process Enact this plan
13)
Monitor results Take benchmarking data and see if the changes have
an effect
14)
Update benchmark; continue the process repeat from step 1

Blace Jacobus

IE 673

Assignment 6

8) What is a JIT system

JIT is Just in time manufacturing. This is a system that focuses on eliminating
waste in the form of extra raw materials needed for manufacture. A common
misconception is that instead of the manufacturer warehousing the extra raw
material the supplier holds onto the excess. My current job strives to be a JIT
system but some of our supplies are not following suit. An example is when we
attempt to make a change to a product we try to sell out of our existing supplies
before we switch to the improved product but in some situations our vender
make large amounts of extra inventory that was not ordered. This slows down
the change process and also ties up resources where a true JIT system would not
have this.
9) What are the benefits of JIT/Lean.
The advantages of the JIT system allows for flexible production scheduling. Mass
production factories attempt to guess the future needs of a product based on
historical data. The problem with this is that the future in unpredictable. As
highlighted in my last example if a mass production manufacturing companies
guessed that they will need a large amount of a product but then they customer
of that product suddenly no longer has a need for it they are left with a huge
amount of resources tied up in a product that is no longer needed. This is an
example of minimizing inventory. Other benefits are cycle time, continual
improvement and elimination of waste.
10)

Discuss automation system ideas for JIT/Lean

Automation can be a great assist to a company that has their quality control in
order. If the company seeks to reduce their quality issues with automation they
are in trouble. A company that has bad quality and shifts to an automated work
force will simply shift the defects from human beings who are able to quickly
adapt to change to robots making the poor quality products and are very difficult
at adapting to change.