Responsibility for Product Quality Problems in Sequential Manufacturing: A Case Study From the Meat Industry

By Group 3, Sec-C : Abhishek Adhikari (198) Jayanta Chakraborty (200) Tushar Kanti Nayak (201) Swarasij Guha Roy (202) Madhuchhanda Nayak (207) Ritesh Shreemal (220) Shalini Sah (222) Manas Ranjan Mahapatra (227) Smruti Ranjan Tripathy (242)

Introduction & Overview

Case study is about the Product Quality Problems in a meat manufacturing industry. Oban Foods - Pork processing company. Cooked Pork precooked meat; innovative new product. Production reject rate - over 20%, costing the company more than $250000 per year. Successful yet unprofitable.

Cooked Pork Production Process

Receive and store carcass Debone, trim and cut 100% screening Processing Plant

Store in distribution Intensive chilling

Cook

Apply color

Inject

Cooking Plant

Weigh and Pack

Store in distribution

The Cooked Pork Problem

Product did not meet the finished-product weight specifications. Skin tear and color issues. Inability to produce the desired ratio of size 1 and size 2 cooked pork. Neither size could be produced alone. According to the -Production staff high rejection rate was beyond their control. -PD team Production staff was incompetent.

Analysis of current Situation

Avg. Rejection rate due to weight factor 11.8%
Under weight contribution 10.8% Over weight contribution 1%

Over weight solution

Upper limit increased by 20gms (i.e. 1430gms to 1450gms ). Specification of donor meat weight was changed.

Inability to produce the desired ratio of size 1 and size 2 of CP.

Process Capability Analysis

1. Donor weights
No measurement error.

2. Donor weights prior to injection

Problems: Excess donor meat kept as inventory leading to drip loss. Impact of mixing different age-donor in one cooking batch. Improvements: One day old donor is to be used. Avoid mixing different age-donor within one cooking-batch. 49% reduction in variation rate.

Contd..
3. Post injection weights
Problems: Incorrect injector setup method. Pickup specification were 20% but actual varied from 4-35%. Unnecessary & frequent adjustment to the machine settings. Sample size of three was too small to detect shifts in process mean or variance. Measurement error.

Contd..
Improvements: Proper draining of brine from meat portions to calculate pickup. Standard settings were determined leading to 20% pickup.

Sample size increased to six.

Setup & production process were made simpler.

Result: 43% reduction in variation.

Contd..
4. Finished product weights
Problems: Cooking & intensive chilling. Temperature gradient within the oven. Delay in removing product from the oven. Cooking batch size. Improvements: Full capacity of cooking batches used. New procedures implemented to eliminate the delay in removing product from oven.

Contd..
Results: 36% reduction in finished product weight variation. Less than 7% drop in total rejects. 2.4% drop in rejects due to under or over weight. Average product weight increased to 1309 grms (previously 1291grms) in order to maintain 75-25 ratio. Rejects inevitable.

Variation Transmission Analysis

This model makes the following assumption:
Y1~ N(112) Process has no memory of its distance past beyond the previous stage. Multistage process: tracking and measuring individual parts.

Lastly the variation added and transmitted at each stage can be estimated iteratively.

Applying VT Analysis to CP
Variance added at each of the stages. Residual standard deviation indicates amount of variation added. Parallel lines between donor and pre-injection stage.

Splayed lines between pre-injection and injection stage.

Contd..
60% of the finished product weight variation at final stage i.e. cooking. 21%,17% & 1% at the previous three stages. Major improvement in the final product weight variation can be achieved through changes in cooking process.

Conclusion
An innovative product but did not achieve expected profits due to high levels of production rejects.

The production staff believed the PD team had handed over a product with unresolved production issues. The PD team believed the production staff was not following production procedures.
60% of the variation in the final product weight was due to cooking as per the VTA technique. Remaining variation contribution-injector(20%), donor meat(19%)

Contd..
Use of SPC reduced production rejects from 20% to 7%. Also rejects due to under or overweight were reduced from 11% to 7%. Further reduction was not possible: PD team failed to consider manufacturability issues when designing the product The production staff was not following the production process. Alternative cooking cycles or replacing the current oven with a better one. High need for DFM & DMI practices.

Adequate training should be given to the product team.

Thank You