As a Quality Assurance Manager, I have seen several instances through the years where quality control in the manufacturing arena has completely broken down. The most notorious of these incidents took place in 2004, and the repercussions are still being felt. This supplier lost most of its market share due to what happened.
In the manufacturing process for clear polyester film, many things can be added to the polyester to improve performance. Tiny particles called "fillers" are typically added so the film won't be too slick, and can be wound in roll form without sliding off of itself. The little particles are tightly controlled so that they are neither too big nor too small; they must stick up out of the surface of the film just enough to give the proper effect.
The process also involves a certain amount of recycling, where defective film is ground up and mixed with new chips that go into new film. The problem occurred here, when recycled film with the wrong filler particle sizes got made into new film. This went on for several weeks, and the story of what happened next could fill a manual on "what not to do in damage control."
As always, it took some time for the new film to trickle out into the market. At first, the customers did not realize any potential problem, but eventually, the larger particles made themselves known when other layers of film that were laminated to them in subsequent processing began to show "tenting," or a raised area like a tent-pole with a void around it. Photographic analysis of the problem was used to show what was happening. The supplier of the defective film did not own up to what caused the issue, either because they did not know yet or because they were hiding it.
About six months later, the reputation of the company continued to take serious hits as they were still selling the bad film. There was no announced resolution to the problem, and the technical reps for the company were dragging their feet on problem analysis. Their mantra seemed to be "avoid, delay, hope it goes away." By this time they had started to produce and distribute new film without the problem, but the months had taken their toll. Although the problem did go away, the company began losing business and as of today, they are almost completely shut out of this market segment which they once dominated.
In hindsight, it is always simpler to point out what they should have done differently. In the quality area of manufacturing, it is always preferable to acknowledge a problem once you become aware of it and before it gets processed down-stream. First, as soon as the technical people investigating had an idea of what caused the problem, they should have halted all further shipments of this production run. (All production is lot-controlled; this would have been easy to do.) Second, the bad product that was already in the field should have been recalled. Although the total footage of bad product that was produced was substantial and would have created a large financial hit, it would have been preferable to the slow drip of problems in the field and erosion of reputation that took place.
No comments:
Post a Comment