QA6640 Chat Room Transcript
March 21, 2007
Prof. Atkins 20:16:41
The chat room is closed for this evening. It will reopen next Wednesday at 7:36
PM.
Rich Weaver 20:12:39
Thanks...good night.
Prof. Atkins 20:12:26
If there are no questions, we can close the chat room for this evening.
Prof. Atkins 20:06:50
The thirty-minutes are now up. Responses posted after this message appears will
not be evaluated for chat room participation credit.
Module Assignment 3 is due on Monday, March
26th.
If you have a question, you may ask it at this
time.
gstevens 20:03:55
Glenn Stevens
Email: anandale@comcast.net
1. Briefly describe the company you have chosen.
2. Briefly describe the goal you have selected.
3. Discuss the goal as it pertains to a specific supplier, and include as much
detail as possible without exceeding the thirty-minute time limit for your
response.
Company Selected: The company selected is LHS
which was in the business of developing customer care, rating and billing
software productions for the telecommunications industry. The company had
different departments involved in the development of the software solution,
with each department playing the role of supplier and customer in the software
development process.
Goal Selected: Problem Supplier. This is the
case where a supplier of inputs into the processing pipeline has problems in
meeting its commitments as established with its customer. The problems can be
related to poor quality, unreliable delivery schedules, cost fluctuations and
quantity uncertainties.
Example. LHS was responsible for the creation of
a software products that was sold commercially. In this case however the
problem supplier was within the organization. Consider the fact that one of the
most critical components or raw material that goes into the making of any
product are the requirements. In this case the Product Management department
was responsible for documenting and finalizing the requirements to be used in
the development of the next release of the product. The company senior
management had established a production schedule that a release would be
produced every six months. The company had established a development life cycle
with phases. The first phase was planning, which was then followed by
requirements, and then analysis, design, construction, testing and deployment.
The Product Management team consisted of business analysts who were responsible
for documenting the requirements for the next release. They were responsible
for creating the release notes for the software, which were a listing of the
features, defects fixes and any technological upgrades or improvements
introduced to the product since the last release.
The requirements area or suppliers have proven
to be one of the more problematic areas in the development process. At the
conclusion of each release the defects recorded during the development life
cycle are assigned root cause codes. It has been shown repeatedly that the
requirements are responsible for over the majority of the defects. To this end
an effort a quality improvement effort had to be implemented to reduce the
number of defects that were attributable to the Product Management team
provisioning of the requirements. The goal of the survey was to identify the
root cuases of the variations. A quality analyst was assigned the task to
conduct a survey and analysis to identify the primary root causes for the
quality problems with the delivered requirements. The analyst reminded was
chartered to find the cause to the problems and provide a report. The analyst
was cautioned not to get side tracked into solving the problems but to identify
the various types of problems. The survey was done by conducting interviews
with the affected personnel from departments that relied on the requirements.
The analyst took over 4 weeks in interviewing various members of the Product
Management team, conducting meeting with the sales and marketing teams as well
to understand their relationship in feeding the customer requirements and
market desirables to the Product Management team.
The quality analyst was also allowed to research documented defects, to come up
with grouping of root causes that were assigned to the requirements.
The survey addressed for the following areas:
causes for delays in finalizing the requirements, clarity of requirements
definition, expertise and training of staff, tools availability and usage in
requirements documentation.
The following are some of the types of
variations reported in the survey results as presented by the quality analyst.
Requirements were sometimes lacking in clarity and ambiguous.
• Requirements were delivered late beyond the standard schedule cut off period.
• Requirements sometimes changed well after these were delivered, with
application design and coding under way.
• Additional requirements were introduced from time to time as last minute
emergencies (scope creep),
• Requirements lacked severity ranking and labeling necessary for traceability.
Komic 20:02:54
Company: Sundyne Corporation
Goal of Survey: System evaluation
Sundyne Corporation is a division of
Hamilton-Sundstrand, a United Technologies subsidiary. Sundyne Corporation
designs, manufactures and supports industrial pump and compressor products for
the process fluid gas industries. Sundyne’s aftermarket services include spare
parts, overhaul and repair as well as engineering and technical support.
United Technologies Corporation (UTC) requires
assessments to be made of their suppliers quality system in support of supply
chain management activities. They perform these assessments by a survey
utilizing a checklist and a more detailed site audit. These activities are part
of the UTC “Q+ Process”.
The Q+ Process uses a module approach with 12 categories based on ISO 9000
sections. These categories are broken down further to 24 criteria, which
address specific aspects of a supplier’s quality system. There are additional
criteria that may be applied to specific commodities or suppliers with special
needs. Each criterion has four possible levels of compliance. Each Supplier
will be assessed, overall, at the lowest compliance level obtained in any of
the Q+ Criteria.
As a part of the system evaluation, UTC is
looking at the Management responsibility to check if management defines and
documents its quality policy, objectives and commitment, defined org.
structure.
An evaluator reviews the quality system to ensure it is documented, maintained, and communicated throughout the organization. Evidence of Quality planning and org structure should be presented. The areas of process control, design, purchasing, document control, training, corrective and preventive action system and all other areas of the ISO requirements shall be evaluated for compliance.
Rich Weaver 20:02:00
Type of evaluation: Reformed supplier
Background: Johnson Controls, Inc. (JCI)
produces seats for many GM assembly plants. A series of quality problems led to
them being put into “Level II containment”. This means that their efforts to
produce a quality product were not satisfactory, and they were forced to pay
for a 3rd party to inspect their product for them.
The parts in question were the seat covers. JCI
did not sew them; they had a sub-supplier to do that work (These sub-suppliers
are termed ‘Tier II suppliers’). It was evident that JCI had not paid
sufficient attention to the quality of the seat covers from their Tier II
supplier, and merely received them, assembled them to the seat assembly, and
shipped them on to us. As part of JCI’s process to get out of Level II
containment, representatives of GM Supplier Quality were invited to visit the
Tier II facility in Ohio to observe the evaluation of the outgoing product, and
their quality system. As a representative of the assembly plant, I went also.
Survey process:
The process that was followed was very similar to that outlined in Bossert. The
JCI folks were the ones doing the actual surveying; the GM SQ folks and I were
there as interested observers. We had a formal ‘opening meeting’ with the
management of the facility, and went over the reasons for the visit, the
seriousness of the situation, what they wanted to see, and who they wanted to
talk to. Similar to what you experience with an ISO audit, we met first with
their upper management to gauge their commitment to quality, and their
involvement with it. They had prepared a process flow diagram of the work
performed, and discussed the inspection points in the process. We also reviewed
their internal quality results for the past several months.
Most of the time was spent on the floor. We
walked the process from the receiving dock, through the maze of sewing
machines. We spoke to many operators about their job instructions: how did they
know what cover to select? Did they follow standardized work for sewing the
covers? What did they do when something went wrong? We looked at the
maintenance schedules on the machines, and material handling.
We reviewed their in-process inspection, looking
for job instructions and boundary samples, and observed their final inspection
process. The JCI reps were especially interested in how their supplier reacted
to problems – was there a satisfactory corrective action process, was an
adequate root-cause done, was the effectiveness of the corrective action
verified. We sampled ready-to-ship material for loose threads, open seams, etc.
At the closing meeting, the JCI reps discussed
their findings. Overall, the facility had made excellent progress, and both the
JCI people and those of us from GM were convinced that the facility was able to
produce consistently good product. JCI assured us that they would continue to
perform receiving inspection on parts from the Ohio facility, and to closely
monitor the QMS there.
About 2 months later, the seat quality had
improved to the point that JCI exited Level II containment.
J Scott 20:00:16
J Scott
QA6640
Jscott6@spsu.edu
3. Problem Supplier: What must be done so that
this operation can give us the product quality we need?
The company I chose to discuss is Delta Airlines. Delta operates a vast
supplier network for spare aircraft parts and materials. The ability to select
suppliers and acquire quality aircraft parts in a timely manner is crucial to
the safe and efficient operation of the aircraft. Suppliers play a vital role
in supporting the operation; therefore it is imperative that suppliers be
surveyed before acceptance, and periodically thereafter. Additionally,
suppliers may have problems and this area is one I would like to discuss
tonight.
In the late 1990’s, we experienced a higher than
normal wear rate on our tires. The Quality Assurance department was notified
and immediately launched an investigation. The problem seemed to be the
premature wearing and separation of the tread. The supplier was a local
supplier, which supplied tires for that particular aircraft type. Due to the
long term relationship that both customer and supplier had enjoyed, the audit
process was much easier and the supplier seemed eager to assist in uncovering
the problem.
Since determining the quality of a sample tire
was difficult because process abnormalities were not readily detectable, a
process audit was conducted. The process audit thoroughly reviewed the entire
process and materials used to supplied product specifications, material
specifications, work procedures, and measurement methods. The audit team
discovered a disparity in an adhesive used in the recap process. This resulted
from a batch of material that was inadvertently substituted for the normal
adhesive. The problem was traced to a instance of combined stock with the 2
types.
Management quickly corrected the problem and
enhanced work documents to include the correct adhesive material by name in
addition to the mil-spec. The tire issues subsided after the defect tires were
removed from the system.
Brad McGuire 20:00:13
Brad McGuire
bmcguire@spsu.edu
1) I will be using Lockheed Martin Aeronautics
Company in Palmdale, CA as my example company.
2) I will discuss item number 5 (System
Evaluation) as done by the British Standards Institute on behalf of the United
States Government.
3) BSi conducts regular system-wide audits on
Lockheed Martin Aeronautics in efforts to determine if Lockheed is following
all contractually required procedures that have been deemed necessary by the
U.S. Government in order to deliver a quality product. These audits are in
place to ensure Lockheed is following not only manufacturing procedures to
ensure product quality but, in doing so, is also adhering to the
mutually-agreed-upon ISO 14001 Standards. As Bossert states, the BSi Surveys
has a “matrix of goals” and ensuring the supplier (Lockheed) is conforming to ethical
environmental rules is contained in that matrix. The objective of one
particular audit in May of 1994 was the “ Assessment of the progress of your
environmental management system (ISO 14001) in meeting the requirements of the
standard, your company objectives and targets, policies and procedures, and any
other applicable requirements.” Due to the large scale nature of the BSi audit,
the audit team conducted random-sample surveying in efforts to identify
discrepant conditions such as unidentified containers, properly stored
potentially hazardous materials, and proper safety training records. In
addition to the random-sampling, BSi also included ‘recommended Corrective
Action’, ‘Observations’, and ‘Opportunities for improvement’. At the survey’s
end, BSi concluded that “Significant progress has been established towards the
implementation of your EMS system for registration. The issues identified
require corrective action, firstly to correct the identified issues and
secondly to examine the underlying cause and implement the changes necessary to
prevent recurrence”. Lastly, the results of these audits are communicated on
the company intranet and are there to ensure all employees understand the
impact of the surveys and the potential ramifications if proper corrective
action is not instituted. Once this audit was complete, BSi was then free to
perform other system-wide audits such as operations and inspection record
systems.
Natasha_Romero 19:59:45
Natasha Romero
nromero@spsu.edu
New Supplier: Can this operation provide the
product quality we need?
1. I currently work for Sandia National
Laboratory. We are a contractor to the Department of Energy and Department of
Defense. Our mission is national security. We design both embedded and
non-embedded software systems.
2. The over all goal of a supplier survey for a
new supplier should be to determine if that supplier is capable of providing
the level of quality that is required by the customer.
3. Last year we had a new project which it was
decided to use a commercial hand held GPS tracking device that had software in
which we could customize. As part of the evaluation of the product before a
contract was set in place with the supplier a quality engineer and a group of
engineers visited the supplier to evaluate them. This visit was conducted in a
very informal matter in comparison to what was described in our text in that
there was never a written final report given to the supplier, no corrective
action plan, or post survey team critique. The reasoning behind this is that we
are not a manufacturing company and would be purchasing a set amount of product
from the supplier which was not going to be a very large purchase. We would
also just be modifying software and not any hardware associated with the
product. We did feel that it was necessary to visit the supplier before the
contract was placed because we wanted to be ensured of several factors
including the quality of their products and also to get a feel for the amount
of business they had to be able to determine if they were a company that was
going to be around for years to come. The overall state of the company was
important to us because we want to be sure that we are going to have support of
this product for years to come. On this visit the quality engineer who attended
the visit was tasked to review their quality program and what she thought of
this program. The quality engineer did not recommend any corrective action to
their current program because as stated earlier our purchase from them was
minimal and we did not feel it was necessary. One outcome of the visit was to
ensure that we were going to be able to customize their software and that they
would give us support in doing so. This concern was from the engineer’s
perspective.
Chris Wellman 19:57:58
Chris Wellman
Subject: 1. New Supplier: Can this operation
provide the product quality we need?
I have chosen Argon St, this company provides RF Equipment for Military
applications. They have about 800 people spread across the United States. We
visited their facility in Virginia.
Our Company is Kollmorgen which is a medium size
Company that provides complicated sensor systems to the U.S. Navy. Our goal was
as Bossert lists on page 102 to verify “this operation provide the product
quality we need?” We first sent the supplier a pre-assessment survey with
questions that reflected the standard they stated compliance, specifically ISO
9001:2000. In addition, we asked questions about the use of tools to achieve
such initiatives as Six Sigma and Lean. I provided notes I took form Bossert
Chapter 12 to the team as a guideline. We met and planned out our strategy
prior to our visit.
The answers to our questions came back positive, but we still felt it was
important to visit their operation and verify the statements. We took a team
that included Supplier Quality, Project Quality, Program Management, our
General Manager and Sub-contract Management.
We kicked off our visit with a presentation on who we were and what we expected
to accomplish. Argon followed with a presentation of who they were and what
they did. The kick-off was followed by a tour of the facility. We were able to
pick-up a lot of information during the tour that supported the answers we got
from our survey.
Each of us chose a specific area, such as Financial, Manufacturing, Quality,
Procurement etc. We went through their operation using a “peer review” approach
similar to that described by Bossert on page 119. This included looking at
actual documentation.
We all reconvened and met again with the people from the Kick-off. We
summarized findings from each team member with the Management team from Argon.
Overall we had a positive experience, but we emphasized the changes we needed
to their proposal to help us achieve our goals.
After we returned to Kollmorgen we met as a team to go over individual reports
we prepared upon returning. We summarized our findings in a power point
presentation for our Management. We agreed to send the preliminary report to
Argon to let them validate our findings before formally presenting it to
management. We should be able to publish the report soon.
Gleiter 19:57:42
Kimberly Gleiter
kgleiter@hedonline.com
HE Devices produces electronic components for the mobile equipment industry.
Recently we noticed an increase in problems with one of our suppliers that
produces wire harnesses. The harness is used in a very labor intensive
operation and unfortunately there is no effective means for testing the harness
until after we have invested a great deal of time and resources in the
production of a unit. We continued to record the defects observed and
communicate them on a regular basis to the supplier. When the occurrences of
nonconforming product did not decrease, we decided that it would be best to
visit the supplier to observe how they were testing the harnesses prior to
shipment. One advantage that we have is that we build and supply the testing
unit to the supplier. The HE management team decided that we needed to address
this “problem supplier”, by arranging a visit to determine what must be done so
that the suppliers operation could give us the product quality that we need.
The team from our company consisted of the Materials Manager, Director of
Engineering, Test Technician and Quality Assurance Manager. The Materials
Manager is the main contact for the supplier so she arranged for the meeting
and explained that our purpose in visiting was to view how and how often they
test the harnesses and what they test for and to determine whether there were
any issues with the testing unit provided. Our records had revealed that if
they were conducting 100% inspection, using the tester accurately we should not
have seen many of the defects that we were finding. In the opening meeting, the
purpose of the visit was re-iterated and the supplier was assured that it was
our goal to help them improve and answer any questions that they may have had.
The team observed as their production team tested units and were able to offer
tips for improvement. We also verified that the tester was operating correctly.
The visit was effective in helping the supplier to improve their testing
procedures and resulted in a decrease in nonconforming product received.
Natasha_Romero 19:35:38
I have once when I ended up with multiple posts. I think it was due to some
connectivity issues on my end though.
Prof. Atkins 19:34:42
CHAT ROOM DISCUSSION QUESTION:
You have thirty-minutes to answer the following
chat room question:
In the 12th chapter of “The Supplier Management
Handbook” on pages 102 and 103 the author briefly discusses the following
typical circumstances that may be the underlying goal of a Supplier Survey:
1. New Supplier: Can this operation provide the
product quality we need?
2. Old Supplier: Can this operation continue
giving the product quality we need?
3. Problem Supplier: What must be done so that
this operation can give us the product quality we need?
4. Reformed Supplier: Has this supplier really
made the improvements necessary to give us the product quality we need?
5. System Evaluation: Is this operation
following all the procedures necessary to give us the product quality we need?
Discuss any ONE of the above Goals of a Supplier
Survey in reference to a specific supplier using an example you are familiar
with. You may discuss your example in context to any ONE of the following:
The company you now work for, or
a company you have worked for before, or
any company you are familiar with.
Your discussion should cover the following three
issues:
1. Briefly describe the company you have chosen.
2. Briefly describe the goal you have selected.
3. Discuss the goal as it pertains to a specific supplier, and include as much
detail as possible without exceeding the thirty-minute time limit for your
response.
Chris Wellman 19:33:50
Thanks for the reminder Professor.
Prof. Atkins 19:33:12
NOTE: Module Assignment Three is due on Monday, March 26, 2007.
The chat room discussion question will be posted
at approximately 7:35 PM.