I attended the Annual Kaizen Conference conducted by the Kaizen Insitute of Zambia and JICA between the 15th and 16th February 2018 at Mulungushi Conference Centre , Lusaka, Zambia .
A presentation was made by Adachi San of JICA on how Kaizen was implemented in one of the Toyota Transmission manufacturing units in Japan . He explained how Toyota management started focusing on various improvement initiatives starting from TQC ( Total Quality Control ) to TQM passing through stages of Kaizen and ISO 9001 .
I also refer to presentations made by the team members of companies , who put up slides on Root cause analysis . I wish to discuss about the fineness of the root cause analysis .
The subject matter ingredient in any process is controlling variation . A product is said to be of good quality when it is able adhere to less variation between various units produced . To assure that the same is adhered to , the product has technical specifications with a tolerance bandwidth within a limit , that the produced product must fall under .
Many Quality managers and supervisors tend to focus more on having their product fall in between the tolerance limits and keep thinking that they are manufacturing a good product . Seldom does a QC team ensure statistical analysis of the batch production . I have observed in a few companies where the line staff think of entering the sample analysis in the X bar R chart as a mundane routine and boring exercise .
Infact , many of the QC managers are not even aware of the causes of variation , one due to special causes and one due common cause . Many of the Special cause variations , are given enormous amounts of focus leading to lesser focus on common cause variation .
While I solicit readers to come up with more details related to these , I will continue on the same in the next edition .
Regards
KJ
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