A Case of Throughput efficiency

Miss Precious Quality (Miss. PQ) is a Quality manager at one of the big copper ore processing plant in Zambia . She has had no formal qualification in Quality management and has come up in her career by showing interest in these areas , and her boss thought that she would do a better job learning Quality on the job .

Miss PQ had learnt that efficiency is the output over input and had calculated the efficiency for each of the stages of production and had displayed it on the respective notice boards , to the pride of the departmental staff . It showed up something like this .

Incoming Ore purification : 93%

Stage 1 processing : 95%

Stage 2 purification : 97%

Copper ingot facility : 96%

Storage department : 98%

The outputs and inputs comprised of a matrix of variables that related to the function of the department . For example ,  the copper ingot facility had the molten copper poured into ingots for storage and transportation . There were process leakages in terms of how much the ingots were filled and any spillage . There was a variable related to the number of ingots produced in a month compared to a target set . 

The departments were very proud on their achievements of 90+ percentage points of efficiency . One day the CEO Mr. George  of the facility walked into the production floor with a Japanese consultant called Suzuki San . He introduced him to Miss. PQ and explained that the company had become a member of the newly formed Kaizen Club of Zambia and Suzuki San is representing an agency facilitating Kaizen activities in Zambia and was on a visit to the production facility . 

Miss.PQ thought this was one of her best moments in life , and took Suzuki San through the production facility explaining the stages and how best the departments were performing and showed proudly the efficiency calculations of each of the departments . After the tour , the team assembled in their board room for a feedback meeting and were eagerly waiting for Suzuki San to commend on their performance . 

Suzuki San rightly expressed his observations on the enthusiasm of the team and the way they were progressing in their improvement methods . Turning back to Miss PQ he then asked , “Miss Quality , I observe that you are very happy on the efficiency levels of each of the departments “ and Miss PQ responded “ Yeah , Suzuki San I am sure you saw the 90+ efficiency levels “ 

Suzuki San asked her “ Have you calculated your through put efficiency then “ 

Miss PQ  looked confused “ Suzuki San , I have never heard of that , is it not enough if individual departments show their efficiencies , Please explain throughput efficiency “ 

Suzuki San continued “ Miss PQ , Any production process shall have an input and an output and you have done it wisely by calculating the functional efficiencies of each of the stages , however you have to also calculate the throughput efficiency , which gives the overall process efficiency . Now we have your stagewise efficiencies . Throughput efficiency is simply the product of all the efficiencies in stages . So your production process has a throughput efficiency of

Throughput efficiency : 93% x 95% x 97% x 96% x 98%  =  80.62% 

Miss PQ got a shock of her life . “Are we doing so badly , Suzuki San “ . She almost broke down . 

Suzuki San kindly replied , “ No Miss PQ , the concept of Kaizen and Quality management, is that you must never be happy with your present levels of performance , but keep embarking continuously on how to improve your outputs for the same or lower levels of inputs . This is done by using lots of Quality and statistical tools and identify wastage and eliminate variations . Have you heard about Six sigma quality levels and various statistical tools “ 

“ Yes Suzuki San , I have heard of the word Six sigma , but not beyond that , would you be kind enough to tell something about it “ 

“ Yes for sure , but not now, Miss PQ , I will spend an hour with you and your team during my next visit . You can in the meanwhile try to find out more from websites and be aware of these ,OK”

“ Thanks a lot for these inputs , Suzuki San . This has been a good eye opener for us , and we will certainly adopt and learn more of how to continuously improve our process efficiencies and of course the Throughput efficiency “ 

Miss Precious Quality knew now that she was embarking into a new territory that will put her on the Roadmap to Quality movement in Zambia .

Note: The case study was developed by KJ and has no relevance to any particular processes that may be followed in the concerned industry , All names are fictitious and do not represent any individual or organisation . All mention are purely for illustration purpose of the central theme of the case . Readers are invited to express their views on this continuing case study series .