QA (real world) manufacturing issues

We could call this a discussion of 'How to circumvent the quality system' to realize greater advantage.

The primary reason we learned how to build defects into automotive products during the time that I worked in manufacturing was because managers decided that building the defective parts was the lesser of the evils, considering all their options.

Construction of products requires a myriad of operations, any one of which has the potential to compromise the parts passing through it. Almost all defective parts begin with a manager’s decision to allow defective subassemblies to be passed on to production and the primary reason for that decision is department efficiency.

Corporate production managers who falter in the efficiency of their responsibilities are typically chastised and their bonuses are reduced so they have an incentive to go to extreme lengths in assuring that assigned quotas are met. When these decisions are made, the hourly production workers are duly disgusted but they have little effect in assuring quality of the end product.

I’ll offer an example from those that I’ve seen firsthand to represent these typical issues.

(Ex.) In a solid state ignition department, we built HEI (High Energy Ignition) modules for the G.M. lineup of Chevrolet, Pontiac, Buick, Oldsmobile and Cadillac. In one process there was a pick & place station on an assembly machine that transferred a Darlington transistor onto a subassembly part at relatively high speed. The depth-of-travel on the pickup was controlled by adjusting the length of a turnbuckle and then locking it into position with a jam nut.



Over a number of days the jam nut had come loose and allowed the turnbuckle to extend in length, causing the pickup to go lower and hit the transistors with considerable force, fracturing many of them. The problem wasn’t noticed until a quality control operator looked at some of the parts from the machine under a microscope. She alerted the machine operator and the department manager, who shut the errant machine down.

The machine had processed nine (9) lots of subassemblies, each having 10,000 pieces each. Many of the transistors were cracked and many more were severely damaged. Engineers were called to evaluate the seriousness of the problem and the department manager dismissed the operators until a course of action was determined.

“You guys go ahead and take a coffee break while we have a meeting to decide what we’re going to do with these parts.”

“Whadda ya mean, what we’re gonna do with ‘em? They’re damaged parts. The only thing to do with 'em is to scrap ‘em.”

“Well, I’ll tell you now what they’re gonna do. They’re gonna go ahead and build ‘em anyway.”

“They can’t build ‘em. These are ignition modules. It’s not like the customer’s radio might stop playing. The engine could quit running in Chicago in the middle of the night! They’ve gotta scrap ‘em.”

“Well if there was just 900 of ‘em, they’d be scrap. But if there’s 90,000 of ‘em, they’re GOOD parts! They’re gonna build ‘em. You watch and see. They’re not gonna throw away that many parts even if they ARE defective.”

After the top managers had concluded their meeting to determine their next course of action, they sent for the operators to return to the production floor.

“We’re going to set up a visual inspection line with a bunch of microscopes. All the parts with cracked transistors are going to be scrapped and we’re going to build the rest of them.”

“Build ‘em? These are engine ignition parts. You’re not gonna be able to do THAT!”

“We’re going to find most of the bad ones at final test. The final test machines will throw most of them out.”

“Well, what about the rest of ‘em? What’re you gonna do when those things start failing in the field?”

“We’re going to run a few samples of them on the life-test rack to see how long they last. Just so long as they last through warranty – that’s all we’ll care about. We’re going to mark them with a green date code so we can keep them separate from the regular production parts to make sure they all go to Chevy. We don’t want any of these going to Pontiac, Buick, Olds or Cadillac.”

That part didn’t surprise us. We always send all of our substandard parts to Chevy just like all the other divisions suppliers. The defective parts will be blamed on the hourly production force and it’ll make good newsprint as to why we are going to be sending more production offshore to Latvia and Singapore.

A few months later a tool and die maker came up to the HEI department and asked me, “Hey there, Highpockets? Don’t you guys know how to make any good parts up here?”

“Sure. What’cha got?”

“Well, here’s one of your ignition modules that came outta my new car. I’ve had two of ‘em in there now and the keep goin’ bad. I’ve had it towed in twice now. Can’t you guys make any good parts?”

“What kind’a car you got?”

“Chevy, Malibu.”

“Oh, that explains your trouble then. It’s a Chevy.”

“Hey, don’t give me THAT! These were good parts. They came right from the local Chevrolet dealer’s inventory.”

“I’m not kiddin’ you, Ron. We know they weren’t good parts because we didn't SEND them any.”

“Well, how can I get a good one then?”

“Come over here to Final Test and I’ll give you a good one. The machine sorts out the ones that fail the voltage and output tests into these tubs. The parts that fail all the tests are scrap. But the ones that only fail some of the tests go to Chevrolet. If they make it all the way to that last tub, they’ve passed all the tests. We send those to Pontiac, Buick, Olds and Cadillac. Here. Take this one. It’s a good one. Give it to the dealer and have him install it when your other one goes bad.

It'd be wonderful if we could build a 'bulletproof' quality assurance system but the ISO falls short of that in several ways. After the QA system is established and registered, manufacturers expend great amounts of time, resources and energy in developing ways to defeat it. :-(

Mr. Pelasgus

 

True. It goes all the way back to the basics... Who's quality system is it anyway? The customer expects quality in the product because he's paid for it. The manufacturer wants to gain a bigger market share and to have favorable reviews on his products to have an advantage over competitors. So the manufacturer is the 'owner' of the quality system in his operations.

Quality costs money. That comes in the form of salaries for the quality staff, delays in production to insert inspection gates and documentation to verify the quality performance to name a few. In manufacturing, the ideal world would probably be to give the impression that quality standards are high while at the same time to avoid being burdened by the associated costs.

So if the manufacturer decides to defeat his own quality system to save money by providing customers with defective products, then I suppose that is his prerogative. Realistically, he can give the impression of having high quality without actually providing it but that may eventually have consequences of it's own.

 

Pelasgus said: Quality costs money....

Andy Nichols said: You'll probably have people take issue with this assertion.

It would be interesting to me to hear how that could be challenged in 'real world' circumstances. As an example,
we did supplier visits to various facilities and one was to Hyatt Roller Bearing in NJ.

During our factory tour we watched how roller bearings are designed, then the tooling to fabricate them was designed, then methods used in how they're actually manufactured. There were many of bins of bearings. I noticed two groups of the bearings looked exactly the same but were sorted into different bins, and asked, "Why?"

The answer given was that the bearings straight out of the machines were for Chevy products. The other ones that looked identical but were located in a different bin at the end of that line were for Cadillacs. "What's the difference?"

"We X-ray the Cadillac ones to eliminate any defects."

• Good
• Better
• Best

"All three provided at the same low price!" (I think not.)

 

You may. My goal is to have a bit of discussion about topics that I find interesting. Having spent many years in manufacturing and development of documentation within the QA discipline, I rather miss the interaction that I used to share with others before my retirement.

I looked on the various boards for a forum where individuals could add input and came across 'qualityforumonline' and I thought to myself, "voila - a place where quality people hang out." and an opportunity to engage in some discussion about the world that I used to know.

I've met some remarkable people in my past employment at General Motors. One fellow that I worked with had an uncanny ability to remember part numbers. With production parts that changed numbers at each process when components were added it was a laborious task to keep an accurate track of them. Most everyone else had to look up each one to determine the current status. Buy you could shout at Roger, "Hey Roger? We need to restock those 88936s before the end of this shift or second shift won't have anything to start." And he'd come back with something like, "Those are already being punched out over in the pressroom at Plant 9 and they'll be ready to move out of the dock by one o'clock."

He didn't need to look up the number to know what you were asking about and he was aware of the status of just about everything in his assigned area. Amazing fellow.

And then there was Barbara. Barbara was a remarkable woman! She could read lips. The only person I've ever seen who could do that with such precision. If you've ever seen Charles Bronson in the movie, "The Mechanic" that's the level of expertise we're talking about here.



Two fellas are out on a golf course, talking a deal where they can't be overheard - but Bronson is watching their lips through a spotting scope and recording both sides of the conversation with his own voice.

Managers at G.M. actually taped newspapers over the windows of their offices because Barbara could read every word they spoke into a telephone or to others in a meeting. Regardless of the issue they were trying to spin, we knew it all even before any announcements were made.

"Hey Barb? What's the meeting about?"

"There's gonna be a layoff. They're laying off 17 people this Friday. They're going by inverse seniority."

That's just a couple of the really remarkable people that I knew there. Over the years, there were many.

Oh, I suppose that I do have a bone to pick on some topics. Nobody here wanted to take Deming up on his idea to build better products so he went to Japan. They were using a technique that they called statistical process control to watch trends in the manufacturing processes and catch irregularities before they went out of control. In the following years as imports started flowing into the country, Japan was kicking the big 3's backside on compact cars. So the big 3 decided to establish a quality system so they could compete. QS-9000

They began their own SPC monitoring and publicized their superior quality techniques to the marketplace. Only when it actually came to scrapping defective parts and accepting the loss, that was a bit too much for management. They wanted it to appear that they were complying to a quality plan - and they were - up to a point. Unless it involved losing some money and so they just 'fudged it' and covered it up as best that they could. Over they years they actually became quite adept at it.



A parallel situation might be Rod Rosenstein having a controlling interest in the DOJ investigation of the FBI. Maybe a conflict of interest there someplace in getting to the truth of the matter?
Anyway, it always kind'a irked me and many within the corporation that they were selling a bill of goods to the public on the quality of their products while at the same time, defeating the essence of it by hiding the defective assemblies and passing them onto production.

How about another example:

I was driving past a local Chevy dealership in 1969 and saw a truck on their lot that caught my eye. Well... what the heck??? A lot of people buy and drive Chevy trucks - so how much of a risk would it BE??? So against my common sense and better judgement, I went inside and worked out a deal on the 1969 C20, 3/4 ton pickup with a 4-speed floor shift and a 302 6-cylinder engine.



On the same day that I picked up my new pickup, I stopped at a nearby gas station and filled it up with regular. As I got back into the truck, I could smell strong gas fumes and when I pulled out onto the street, gasoline sloshed up around the accelerator and the brake and clutch pedals!

I drove back to the dealership and they told me that the filler neck hadn't been welded into the fuel tank at the factory. "Go ahead and drive most of the gas out of it and bring it back and we'll have to take the tank out and fill it with water to weld on it."

"Are you NUTS? I'm not going to drive around with gasoline slopping around in the floor of the cab with me!"

After a lot of arguing, they finally provided me with a 'loaner' to drive while they completed the assembly of the gas tank. Two days after I got my truck back, the gear shift stuck in 4th gear and wouldn't budge. (Not linkage - there wasn't any. The shift lever bolted right into the top of the transmission so it was an internal transmission problem.) I finally got it out of 4th and I took it back to the dealer.

"Oh, we kind of expected you to be back. All of the C20s that we've sold this year have done that. We can't do anything with it as long as it's shifting normally. You'll have to bring it in when it's actually stuck in 4th."

So the next afternoon on the way home from work as I approached a 4-way stop, I pushed in the clutch and tried to downshift but the gearshift was locked into 4th gear. So back to the dealer I went - and pulled up to the big overhead door right in front of the service department. A guy stuck his head outside of the service entrance and shouted at me.

"HEY? You CAN'T park THERE! We have to keep the door clear. You'll need to move your truck."

"I can't. It's stuck in gear and it won't back up."

"Well, you can't LEAVE it THERE! You'll have to MOVE IT!"

I ignored him and went on inside the dealership. "I'm sorry sir... you'r e going to have to move your truck. You can't leave it there in front of the big door."

"I can't. It's stuck in gear and it won't back up."

"Well, you'll have to move it. You can't leave it parked THERE."

I ignored the salesman and went on in to talk to the service manager.

"Sir? Is THAT your truck? You're going to have to move it. We have to keep that door clear."

"You said that you couldn't work on it unless it was stuck in gear. It's stuck in gear and it won't back up."

"We can't work on it right now so you'll need to move it around to the side of the building and clear the big door."

"I can't move it. It's stuck in 4th gear."

"HEY ED? Go out there and move this man's truck away from the door and park it around the side."

"Are the KEYS in it?"

So the employee went out and we could see him start up the green C20 and he struggled with the gearshift, pushing and pulling and leaning against it. After much cussing and futility, he came back to the service door and stuck his head inside.

"I can't MOVE it! It's STUCK in GEAR!"

The following week I took my new C20 to the Magic Wand car wash, dropped in some quarters and sprayed the side of the truck with the high-pressure wand. A big sheet of green paint about two feet high by about four feet long stripped right off the side of my new truck and it was shiny steel. I picked up a piece of the paint sheet that lay at my feet and turned it over. There wasn't any primer on the backside. They'd just painted the green topcoat onto the bare metal!

The dealer told me, "I'm sorry to tell you - there's no warranty on the paint on a pickup truck."

I traded the C20 off for a '69 Mustang less than two weeks after I bought it. (-$,$$$.$$)

There was a news special on TV a few years later showing a Chevy truck getting T-Boned by another vehicle and the truck erupted in flames. The news program claimed that the fuel tank, mounted under the bed wasn't adequately protected by the frame.

One of the guys that I worked with in the plant told us, "Oh, that show about the truck catching on fire like that wasn't real. That was all STAGED!"

I couldn't resist chiding him a bit. "Bill? Chevy know's their trucks catch on fire. Heck, they call 'em BLAZERS!"

So, perhaps this forum isn't the appropriate place to have general discussions? Most of the topics here seem to involve those who're having some problem or another and looking for a specific solution. Say the word and I'll move on. My intent isn't to cause grief. We certainly have enough of that in the world today - with a lot more coming.

Respectfully,
Mr. Pelasgus

 

An old colleague of mine used to joke that for ISO 9001, you could have the business plan make "cr@p products and find new customers regularly" and conform to the requirements

It may cost money to set up, but in the long run it ought to more than pay for itself, the problem is short shortsightedness due to short cycles of financial reporting and most metrics being linked to short term cost goals especially at the top of an organisation

 

I believe you've hit the nail on the head there. We were in a meeting where the facilitator was announcing that Delco had received money from the federal government to build a duplicate facility to ours in Mexico - Deltronicos in Matamoros and that all of our processes would be transferred down there. One fellow asked, "What will GM do when all the jobs have left the country? Who's going to be able to buy $30,000 cars if we're all flipping burgers?"

The spokesman said, "We've already talked about that and you may be right but we're concentrating on our dividends to stockholders based upon 90-day reports. Maybe someday GM will have to resort to building can openers but that'll be a decision for the man who's sitting at the big desk at that time."