Managing Production Operations

Assuring Product Quality

Quality is described as fitness for use or customer satisfaction. It is divided into three categories. Quality of Design: Measures the extent to which fitness for use is incorporated into the product design through the specification of proper materials, tolerances and other precautions. Quality of Conformance: Also known as quality of production, measures how well the quality specified in the design is realized in manufacture and delivered to the customer. Quality of Use: Measures how the product is applied or employed and what that does to its properties.

Quality Costs
An important step in getting management support for improving quality is documenting the total cost of poor quality and of quality control efforts. ASQC has established four categories of costs to help in this analysis: Prevention Costs: Incurred in advance of manufacture to prevent failures, such as quality planning, training, data analysis, reporting, process control and motivation programs.

 Appraisal Costs: Include the costs of inspection of incoming parts & materials, inspection & test of product in process & as a finished product, and maintenance of test equipment. Internal Failure Costs: Those that would not appear if there were no defects in the product before shipment to the customer. They include scrap, rework, downtime and yield losses caused by defects, cost of material review and disposition of defectives. External Failure Costs: Caused by defects found after the customer receives the product. These include the costs of investigating & adjusting complaints, the costs of replacing defective product returned by the customer, price reductions and warranty charges.

Total Quality cost

Failure cost Quality Costs

Appraisal cost

Prevention cost

Increasing Quality of Conformance

Effect of Quality Improvement on Quality Costs

Statistics of Quality
Statistics consists of gathering, organizing, analysis and use of data. Statistical methods are used to evaluate the quality characteristics of the process / product. Two Types of statistical methods are used in quality control. They are: Variables method involve measuring the quality characteristic on a sample of the item being controlled. Attributes method involve counting as defective those items that do not fall within a stated specification.

Process Control Chart

Upper Control limit

Sample mean

Central line

Lower Control limit

4 5 6 Sample number

Inspection & Sampling

Inspection is carried out to determine whether the product meets the specifications set for it. This is done by sampling lots (batches) of product and accepting or rejecting the lot depending on the number of defectives in the sample. Example: Take a random sample of 125 items from the lot. Accept the lot if it contains no more than 3 defective items. Reject the lot if it contains 4 or more defective items, then either 100% inspect it or return it to the producer as unsatisfactory.

Taguchi Loss Factor

Loss ($)

LSL

USL

Total Quality Management

The criteria focuses on two goals: Delivering ever improving value to customers. Continuously improving overall organizational performance. TQM is deployed in categories such as manufacturing, service, small business, education & health care. Productivity: It is defined as the output produced per unit of resources applied. A simple measure might be units of production per labor hour.

Work Measurement
Work measurement is the art and science of determining reasonable and fair times for performing various work tasks. These are called time standards. A time standard is the time required for a qualified employee working at a normal pace under capable supervision experiencing normal fatigue and delay to do a defined amount of work of specific quality when following the prescribed method. It is a measure of how long the task should take. Time standards are usually set on a per piece basis. These are divided into informal time standards and engineered time standards.

Informal Time Standards

Methods for developing informal time standards include educated guesses, use of historical data, timing one cycle of a task and work sampling. This is less accurate and inexpensive.

Engineered Time Standard

Engineered Time Standard are precise and accurate, expensive also. Each portion of the work measured is observed closely to eliminate unnecessary motion to improve work place arrangement and to institute better work methods where possible. Allowances like personal time, recovery from fatigue and unavoidable delays are included here. These are developed by stopwatch time study, predetermined time systems and standard data.

Maintenance & Facilities Engineering

Scope of Maintenance
The following are the primary functions of the maintenance activity: 1. Maintenance of existing plant equipment. 2. Maintenance of existing plant buildings and grounds. 3. Equipment inspection and lubrication. 4. Utilities generation and distribution. 5. Alterations to existing equipment and buildings. 6. New installations of equipment and buildings.

List of maintenance concerns in a plant:

Roofing Flooring Refrigeration Air conditioning, heating & ventilation Special purpose rooms and their environment Electric circuit protection Utilities Transportation equipment Materials handing systems Elevators Painting Corrosion protection Pest control Lubrication of machine tools

Types of Maintenance
Corrective Maintenance: Simply repair and work, when an equipment breaks down. Preventive Maintenance: Establishment of most cost effective schedule for inspection, lubrication and identification & replacements of worn parts. Predictive Maintenance: Involves the use of sensitive instruments like vibration analyzers, optical tooling, audio & resistance gages to predict trouble or any other critical issues that may occur.

Some Maintenance Management Considerations

Size of Maintenance Staff Work Orders Work Scheduling Repair Parts Inventory.

Total Productive Maintenance

An integrated, top down, system oriented, life cycle approach to maintenance, with the objective of maximizing productivity. Promotes the overall effectiveness and efficiency of equipment in the factory. Establishes a complete preventive maintenance program for factory equipment based on life cycle criteria. Is implemented on a team basis involving various departments to include engineering, production operations and maintenance. Involves every employee in the company, from the top management to the workers on the shop floor. Even equipment operators are responsible for maintenance of the equipment they operate. Is based on the promotion of preventive maintenance through motivational management. The objective of TPM is to eliminate equipment breakdowns, speed losses, minor stoppages and so on. It promotes defect free production, just in time (JIT) production and automation. TPM includes continuous improvement in maintenance.

Human Resource Management

Recruitment and Employment Equal Employment Opportunity Industrial Relations Compensation Education and Training Health and Safety Employee Benefits

Purchasing & Materials Management

Recognition of need Description of requirement Selection of possible sources of supply Determination of price and availability Placement of the order Follow up and expediting of the order Verification of the invoice Processing of discrepancies and rejections Closing of completed orders Maintenance of records and files