×
INTELLIGENT WORK FORUMS
FOR ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS

Log In

Come Join Us!

Are you an
Engineering professional?
Join Eng-Tips Forums!
  • Talk With Other Members
  • Be Notified Of Responses
    To Your Posts
  • Keyword Search
  • One-Click Access To Your
    Favorite Forums
  • Automated Signatures
    On Your Posts
  • Best Of All, It's Free!
  • Students Click Here

*Eng-Tips's functionality depends on members receiving e-mail. By joining you are opting in to receive e-mail.

Posting Guidelines

Promoting, selling, recruiting, coursework and thesis posting is forbidden.

Students Click Here

Jobs

½Shop-Floor Work Instruction+ û how important they are?
2

½Shop-Floor Work Instruction+ û how important they are?

½Shop-Floor Work Instruction+ û how important they are?

(OP)
Hi All,

My name is Dmytry Mykhaylov and I’m a software engineer. The thing is... I sort of «inherited» one project and I need to make a qualified decision about whether to shut it down or continue up to some final product. The objective of the project is to create an on-line service for «Process Plan» or the «Shop-Floor Work Instruction» generation. It may be considered as a light-weight web-based CAPP system for small workshops or, if my understanding of MES is correct, it may be considered as a part of MES.

Unfortunately, I’m absolutely unfamiliar with the problem area of the project. I mean... I do know how to do this project as a software developer, but I have no idea what it is all about! :-) This is the first time in my practice when I have an absolute zero of knowledge, but have to use only my common sense. This is why I started to surf the Internet and eventually founded this wonderful forum.

Why does my common sense keep me searching? One moment about the core algorithm of this application tells me that it might be a really helpful and useful for somebody else:

• The algorithm doesn’t depend on any specific equipment, tools, instruments, fixtures, coolant, etc. etc. – anything what might be needed to «perform» the proper work. Technically, if stone axe will be put in the «knowledge base» of the system – it will be treated as a regular «tool» and used appropriately when needed.
• First implication: user never refers to any «shop-specific» data when describes the future process (may be only except information regarding material, which may be in the shop-specific format or classification).
• Second implication: the same «process description» may be run against different sets of equipment (or «knowledge bases» of different shops) and every time the «shop-specific» process plan or work, instruction will be generated.

Limitations:

• It has nothing in common with ISO 10303, STEP/STEP NC etc. It doesn’t require shop to have any specific equipment on the floor. It can work with _any_ equipment/tools/fixtures.
• It doesn’t generate CNC-code. It is not the goal. The goal is to provide _detailed_, readable «work instruction» for shop-floor personal and generate the proper data about equipment/tools/fixtures usage on every step of this process (after that these data may be transferred to the appropriate MES or MES+ERP systems for further analysis).

The purpose of this post is to ask one question about how useful such kind of service might be for today’s manufacturing. Is it important to have a formal description of the process on the shop floor?

As an illustration to my question, here is the meaning of some columns in this document:

For example, the record "R" of the document contains the following info:

• "PI" - # of the position
• "D or ?"- design size of the diameter or width
• "L"- design size of the working stroke
• "t"- cutting depth
• "i"- number of cuts
• "S"- feeding
• "n"- spindle’s speed
• "V"- cutting speed
• "? aux"- auxiliary time (min)
• "? main"- main time (min)

The terminology and grammar of the document might be slightly inaccurate, but I hope it demonstrates the general purpose of the service.

I’ll be thankful for any advice, comment or information of any kind,

-dm

RE: ½Shop-Floor Work Instruction+ û how important they are?

The documents you seek to generate are called Operation Sheets, or something similar.

The small shops of my acquaintance don't use them, or don't distribute them if they exist, for several reasons:

- The workers are expected to design their own process on the fly, in very little time, and have a lot of experience doing so.
- The workers have already memorized the process.
- The workers have evolved their own process.
- The process changes dynamically on the shop floor.
- Only the workers know the real process, and they damn sure aren't going to write it down, for fear of being replaced.
- All documented processes don't work, and nobody wants to document the laborious process that actually is working, for fear of being fired for spending so much money.
- If the documents describe a process that actually is working, they have commercial value to competitors, and no manager would entrust them to his own workers.
- Nobody who knows the process knows how to do the math, and nobody who could do the math knows the process.
- Documenting the process might uncover some inefficiency that is intentional, i.e. expose some larceny or corruption in high places.
- Someone uses knowledge of the process as a power base, and does not wish for the knowledge to become distributed.

WRT to the record you have provided, it is associated with a turning or milling operation.  A _lot_ of software exists for computing this stuff, including some built into machinery and some available from tool manufacturers, at least for single operations in isolation.  Machinists generally ignore it, and adjust the process by the shape and kinetics of generated chips, by sound or by smell.  

It's relatively easy to optimize any single operation, e.g. to balance tool life and metal removal rate.  Big cost savings, and big quality risks, come from readjusting the process flow, e.g. moving a particular operation from one machine to another in order to increase the total shop throughput.  The risks come from things that are hard to quantify in advance, e.g. losing control of a hole location because of too many chuckings.

Frankly, I think you're handicapped in this instance by a complete lack of overlap of experience and vocablulary between you and your intended user population.  Additionally, the people who could benefit most from your product are typically not authorized to spend money to buy or use it, and/or are extremely frugal.

Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

RE: ½Shop-Floor Work Instruction+ û how important they are?

(OP)
Mike, wow... wonderful response! Thanks! I'll print it in bold and put on the wall of my cubicle :)

But, I'm still wondering... Did you just describe what people call a "tribal knowledge"? I understand that it is a part of the reality, but is it a big problem which better to be solved ASAP? How do you measure your efficiency in all this chaos and mutual distrust? How do you plan in such kind of environment where "Nobody who knows the process knows how to do the math, and nobody who could do the math knows the process"? And what about ISO and its requirements to the documentation?

It looks like you do _need_ some solution for all of what you've just mentioned, or you won’t survive. I'm far from the thought that "I'm the solution", but something must be done. The picture you just drew looks horrible.

But thank you again; it is like a snapshot from the front line.

RE: ½Shop-Floor Work Instruction+ û how important they are?

The core of ISO, as it appears to be understood by management in America, is that if you document your process thoroughly enough, you could hire idiots off the street as production staff, greatly decreasing your labor costs, and you could abuse them at will, because they are interchangeable.

They forget that you'd need to hire _literate_ idiots, e.g. lawyers, so your labor costs would actually go up.

Operation sheets for JIT, called Method Sheets, include graphics sufficient to eliminate the literacy requirement, which actually has the side benefit of making them language- independent, a big virtue here in polyglot SoFla.

But, the whole idea enshrined in ISO, that you have to _tell_ people how to do their job, is itself fallacious, and symptomatic of distrust.  The idea that a document of any kind _could_ replace training and experience is just silly.  

Succesful small business owners rely totally on "tribal knowledge".  E.g., they expect their welders to know how to weld.  They expect their machinists to know how to drive a German Precision Hand Milling Machine, which you might mistake for a file.  And they expect them to crank out work efficiently and rapidly and with acceptable quality, so that the business survives and everyone gets paid.

As a business grows, you do have to start measuring and checking things.  Somebody who can do the math has to come out of the office and learn the process and get the chaos under control.  It happens that I'm doing that right now.  But trust and respect has to be part of that process.






Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

RE: ½Shop-Floor Work Instruction+ û how important they are?

(OP)
quote:
---------------------------------------------
...
But, the whole idea enshrined in ISO, that you have to _tell_ people how to do their job, is itself fallacious, and symptomatic of distrust.  The idea that a document of any kind _could_ replace training and experience is just silly.
...
---------------------------------------------
hmm... I understand it in slightly different way. IMHO ISO wants to make sure that the quality of any product will not depend on manufacturer if manufacturer + product are certified by ISO. So, if you want to certify something by ISO you have to document the way you've manufactured it. With the help of this info your product may be replicated by somebody else, probably with the same level of quality. (you are probably smiling right now smile yes, I understand that it will help to make illegal copies of your products, BUT the copies will be more reliable and, potentially, less harmful for customers. Lack of documentation never stops pirates. It challenges them!

So, the document doesn’t substitute training or experience. It just accumulate experience and increase safety of products. May be it is like in drug-manufacturing. If you got certification for some new drug – follow the process which had been certified. I understand that this is rather extreme example and this approach will be inefficient in general manufacturing, but I’m using it as an illustration only.

quote:
---------------------------------------------
...
Successful small business owners rely totally on "tribal knowledge".
...
---------------------------------------------

Of course they are! The half of my life I’m working in startups or small companies. And _every_ time when the small company tries to get some relations with bigger one, the bigger company starts to ask questions about “procedures”, “best-practices”, “measurement”, “processes” etc. because they want to see their potential partner (even the small one) as a _transparent_, and _predictable_ for their business. Do you have the similar situation on your area?

If you own a small shop and want to get some contract from somebody who doesn’t know you. Will it be helpful for you to provide for the first meeting something more tangible then just “tribal knowledge”? I saw many times when simple statement, like: “Don’t worry! We are very experienced developers! We’ll do your project in no time!” just doesn’t fly. But on the other hand, if on the first (!) meeting you are ready to provide any king of formal interpretation for the potential project and demonstrate how it fits with your methodology... you may not get the contract, but you definitely get the attention!

Something tells me that software technology and manufacturing one have a lot in common. Do you think?

RE: ½Shop-Floor Work Instruction+ û how important they are?

An ISO certification guarantees nothing, beyond full employment for ISO auditors and legions of consultants who help you prepare for the process.

Survival of the certification process pretty much requires simplification of haphazardly evolved systems of management that might then work better, not as a result of the ISO process, but as a result of the attention given to them.

The documents created as part of the certification process represent an accumulation of intellectual property that would not otherwise be aggregated for easy redirection.  The magnitude of the commercial risk involved is widely underappreciated.

;---

Sunshine promises work about as well on hardware as they do on software.  Idiots keep making them.  Idiots keep believing them.

;---

I wrote software full time for about ten years.  I like to write, and I like to build machinery.  Software is like a machine, that you write.  They suffer analogous quality defects, express analogous behaviors, and respond to analogous diagnostic tactics.

Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

RE: ½Shop-Floor Work Instruction+ û how important they are?

(OP)
Thank you, Mike. I wish you the best.

-dm

RE: ½Shop-Floor Work Instruction+ û how important they are?

(OP)
Mike, do you know any forums where I could talk with shop owners or any kind of consultants who work in manufacturing?
I would really appreciate it.

Thank you,
-dm

RE: ½Shop-Floor Work Instruction+ û how important they are?

Mike brings out many good points on the uses and limitations of documented processes.  I utilize them only if needed to supplement a component or assembly drawing to capture what needs to be done for the operation to be complete.  Method cannot be captured by a work instruction nor can experience.  This we recognize by the need to include training and supervision as part of the "quality system".  ISO cares not if you make good or bad product, as long as you do it consistently by the procedures.

Regards,

RE: ½Shop-Floor Work Instruction+ û how important they are?

"do you know any forums where I could talk with shop owners or any kind of consultants who work in manufacturing?"


There are some really sharp people here:

http://www.practicalmachinist.com

Manufacturing Freeware and Shareware
http://mrainey.freeservers.com

RE: ½Shop-Floor Work Instruction+ û how important they are?

Mike brings out several good points.

ISO simply means this:
 "You document what you do, and you do what you document."

Nothing more, nothing less. A good quality program does not necessarily mean a good product/services.

If you document a poor procedure, and follow it, it is still a poor procedure. Yes, you are ISO compliant, but, it is still a poor procedure.

Lots of ISO certified companies produce bad products. Lots of non ISO certified companies produce good products.

RE: ½Shop-Floor Work Instruction+ û how important they are?

(OP)
Thank you for all your answers. Yes, I've mentioned "ISO" in one of my posts, but "ISO certification" is not a part of my concerns. I think my initial post doesn't work very well for me, because I over emphasize the role of "documentation" or "instructions". My fault. The instructions are one of the "nice features" which the application I'm thinking about may have, but they are not its primary objective.

The primary objective is to provide the functionality which allows disconnecting formal design and formal manufacturing processes. Or at least will make them less coupled. I think the way to do it is through describing manufacturing process without mentioning any specific equipment/tools/fixtures/etc. - _anything_ what you will need on the shop floor to make job done. If you can describe the process this way and run this description (lets call it meta-description or meta-process) on the set of equipment which represents the particular shop and get the “process sheet for this particular shop” as a result – mission accomplished.

Lets imagine for a sec. the application which works like this:

- you install it
- you enter the information about your equipment/tools/fixtures/shop structure into the database. if you remove/update/buy some equipment, then you should update the database and reflect all changes
- you’ve got the order on something and you decided that you may need a "Process sheet" for this
- when you are entering information into the application, _you never tell it how to make_ (I mean in which order what equipment/tools/fixtures to use). You just enter the info about _what should be done_ (80% is geometry and you can get it straight from the file with drawing)
- you press the button and you get the process sheet
- if you disagree with the process (the result), you edit the data (you make imperative suggestions to the system) and system will regenerate the process. In fact, you can tell to the system: "Idiot! use this one!"... and it will winky smile, but you will do it only in 5% of cases

Does anyone could refer me to the existing system like this?

Thank you,
-dm

RE: ½Shop-Floor Work Instruction+ û how important they are?

What you are looking for was at one point in time referred to as Generative Process Planning. Back in the early 80’s there were 2 camps on the thought of Computer-Aided Process Planning. The Generative approach and the Retrieval approach.

The retrieval approach work from a classification of your part and then standard plan for the part shape would be retrieved from the database and you could edit it to fit your exact part. These edited plans could then be stored to help refine the database to allow the search and retrieval system to get a better plan the next time through.

The generative approach relied on steps in a plan being stored and the sequence of certain steps being controlled by the system logic. It also relied on part characteristics to get the base shape and manufacturing steps from the database. If your part had a tapped hole, the system would know that you needed a center drill operation, then a drill operation and finally a tapping operation..

CAM-I developed both types of systems in the 70’s (retrieval) and 80’s (generative). Alex Houtzel took the retrieval system and developed MI-Plan from it. He now has a semi-generative system available from his own company. Dr. Ham of Penn State and Dr. Allen of BYU, both thought that the generative system was better. It was harder to design and implement, but it could also take into account manufacturing quantities. Would you build a one-off prototype using the same methods as a 10,000/year production run?

"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli
Sr IS Technologist
L-3 Communications

RE: ½Shop-Floor Work Instruction+ û how important they are?

(OP)
Hi Ben,

Great contribution! Thanks. Before to answer I want to read more about the projects you've mentioned. From the terminology prospective I would classify ‘my’ system as a: "pure generative by nature, which you can use as retrieval if you like".

Just for clarification purpose, two questions:

1. Alex Houtzel is it for "HMS Software" http://www.hmssoftware.com/?

2. Quote: "Would you build a one-off prototype using the same methods as a 10,000/year production run?" - what do you mean? "It is impossible" or "It is useless" or something else...

thank you,
-dm

RE: ½Shop-Floor Work Instruction+ û how important they are?

What adds to the fun is that one part can have fifty features and another can have exactly the same fifty, plus one.  That single difference can sometimes force the two parts to be manufactured with very different processes.

Manufacturing Freeware and Shareware
http://mrainey.freeservers.com

RE: ½Shop-Floor Work Instruction+ û how important they are?

dm,

Yes, that is the same Alex Houtzel.

If your were building one set, lets say a wheel for a toy, you would make them on a manual lathe. If you had to build 20 sets, you may goto a CNC lathe. If you had to build 100 sets and the design allowed it, you may use a stamping process. If you had 10,000 sets to make per year, you would look at die casting. The manufcaturing process chnages as the quantity changes. And as mrainey says, one additional feature may change the whole complexity of the part and the related manufacturing processes.

Most CAPP systems have a Group Technology coding system front end to help identify similarities between part shapes. Does or will your system also do part classification and coding? Many papers written in the late 70's and early 80's and presented at SME conferences on these and CAPP concepts and theroies.

"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli
Sr IS Technologist
L-3 Communications

RE: ½Shop-Floor Work Instruction+ û how important they are?

(OP)
Ben, http://www.sme.org/search/jsp/SearchResultController with results for "generative" is definitely my place to read. Thank you.

quote:
----------------------------------------------------------
If your were building one set, lets say a wheel for a toy, you would make them on a manual lathe. If you had to build 20 sets, you may goto a CNC lathe. If you had to build 100 sets and the design allowed it, you may use a stamping process. If you had 10,000 sets to make per year, you would look at die casting.
----------------------------------------------------------

As far as I understand generative approach _before_ my long reading of SME site, the major problem is in “manual lathe”. If you can handle process for manual lathe, the rest is the question of scalability of your data structure. Here is the scenario of conversation between user (U) and system (S) I can image:

U: “Who can handle ‘wheel for a toy’ of this _shape_?”
S: “We can! Manual Lathe, CNC Lathe, Stamp and Die Cast Machines raise their hands”
U: “Ok, here is the _dimensions_”
S: “Stamp Machines lovers its hand. It can’t do so small items (for example)”
U: ”I need 500 of them”
S: “Manual Lathe lovers its hand. To large bunch to work on. The Master will be unhappy...”
S: “System will pickup CNC Lathe because it came first from the database” (or it may be more intelligent choice – it doesn’t matter right now)

Is it how it suppose to work?

I’m not brave at this point to answer on mrainey comment...

-dm

RE: ½Shop-Floor Work Instruction+ û how important they are?

Yes, the logic built-in to the system will define the optimal manufacturing process based on the input parameters.

Getting all of the logic and maintaining it for your company is the hard part. The software has to be flexible to handle the changes without a major rewrite of the ubderlying code. In the case of BYU, they used a program called DCLASS to process decision tree structures. Generative CAPP from CAM-I used decision tables.

"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli
Sr IS Technologist
L-3 Communications

RE: ½Shop-Floor Work Instruction+ û how important they are?

(OP)
Hi mrainey,

quote:
----------------------------------
What adds to the fun is that one part can have fifty features and another can have exactly the same fifty, plus one.  That single difference can sometimes force the two parts to be manufactured with very different processes.
----------------------------------

Could you provide an example? I understand it this way:

- you have a piece of metal with 3 holes. 1 Drill Machine will be used for that. (but Mill is an option)
- you add 1 pocket
- now 1 Mill will be used for holes & pocket (Drill + Mill will be bad choice)

does it work as a _very_ basic example for your scenario?

thanks,
-dm

RE: ½Shop-Floor Work Instruction+ û how important they are?

(OP)
Hi Ben, I hope you are still around...

Well, it is really educational reading, but it looks like a “sort of” pure theoretical approach. It looks like nobody actually using “generative planning” for planning or estimating. IMHO software for estimations should use it as a “must have” functionality, but I didn’t find to much references on it in the Net. Do you know some commercial products which successfully implemented generative approach?

I looked through Visiprise Inc. (former HMS) site... no visual indication that they have something like “semi-generative” it looks like they are using dialog-based system for entering data for planning (but difficult to judge – they don’t have downloadable demo-version)

Thanks,
-dm

RE: ½Shop-Floor Work Instruction+ û how important they are?

In the early 80's a few companies that used geberative CAPP were: Westinghouse Defense in Baltimore, now Northrup-Grumman; Cincinnati-Milacron; Texas Instruments; Hughes Electronics.

I have been out of the CAPP side of manufacturing for 20 years, but I was on the Westinghouse develoment team.

"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli
Sr IS Technologist
L-3 Communications

RE: ½Shop-Floor Work Instruction+ û how important they are?

"Could you provide an example?"


One simple example might be:

Part A has two operations on a CNC machining center.

Part B is identical to part A except that it has an additional hole.  This hole is deep and of small diameter (we'll say .125), and must be put in at an angle of forty-five degrees.  Because of the fixturing currently used, this can't be done on the CNC machining center.

The angled hole will intersect two holes that are presently being put in on the machining center.  One of these intersected holes is currently machined in operation 1, the other in operation 2.

Drilling through these holes at an angle might cause problems with tool breakage or wandering.  Most CNC machines have no "feel" for when chips are packing up in the flutes or the tool isn't cutting well.  Operators vary widely in their abilities.

When do you machine the extra hole and the intersected holes?  Do you add one or more operations?  Do you redesign the whole process around that one hole? Build a new fixture?  Buy special tooling?  Farm it out?  Talk the engineer into modifying the design?

How much will Part B cost to manufacture?

Obviously, smart people can usually come up with good (if not always optimal) solutions.  How well can a computer do?

Manufacturing Freeware and Shareware
http://mrainey.freeservers.com

RE: ½Shop-Floor Work Instruction+ û how important they are?

"ISO cares not if you make good or bad product, as long as you do it consistently by the procedures."

"ISO simply means this:
 "You document what you do, and you do what you document.""

I realize this is an old thread, but I just noticed it and had to add my two cents worth.  ISO has changed in the last several years.  While it is true (from what I have been told) that the above mentioned comments were basically true under the old standard, the new standard is dramatically different from the old one.  

ISO9001:2000 is very much oriented toward customer requirements.  It requires you to actually find out what the customer needs and expects and plan your processes around the customer and verify that you met his needs for quality, delivery, and that he is satisfied.  Just because it passed your final inspection and shipped on-time or just because he didn't complain doesn't mean he is satisfied.  The product could be better or worse that he expected.  Everything from initial point of contact with the customer the to preparation of the quote through delivery and post delivery needs to be customer focused.  There needs to be a review of capability before accepting contracts.  Production control needs to verify that the lead times are accurate.  Quality needs to make sure that they are capable of inspecting to CUSTOMER requirements.  Someone needs to follow up with the customer to make sure that their requirements were met.  There needs to be a formal process in place for documenting CUSTOMER changes to orders.  Customer satisfaction needs to be measured and improved. I am just try to clarify something as it was explained to me.  You can have the best process in the world, and make the best product in the world, but if you didn't give the customer exactly what he wanted or needed, you fail.  It sounds crazy, but ISO actually requires you to find out more about the application than the customer may even know himself.  For example if he orders the wrong tool for the job, you should actually have helped him decide from the beginning what he actually needed so that he could order the right one.  In other words, you could give the customer exactly what he ordered, but if he ordered the wrong thing, his need was not met and you don't understand your customers or their applications, so you fail.  OK, enough about that.

However, just because a company is ISO certified, that doesn't guarantee anything.  I know from experience that these documents are more or less for sale and auditors will freely issue them for the hefty checks that companies give them, regardless of whether you deserve them or not.

RE: ½Shop-Floor Work Instruction+ û how important they are?

(OP)
Thank you, nate2003

It is very interesting information, regarding ISO9001:2000, but how it affect the process plan you need on the shop-floor? How operator on the floor might be affected by these requirements? What an engineer should add/remove from the previous version of the plan for the same job for the same customer?
Could you summarize?

RE: ½Shop-Floor Work Instruction+ û how important they are?

Dmytry,
As long as the process was designed around meeting customer requirements and your process is good, nothing may need to change.  

Basically, an audit should be done in each area to the appropriate areas of the ISO standard.  There are many areas such as review of customer requirements, planning of product realization, monitoring and measurement of processes, customer satisfaction, infrastructure requirements, control of records, control of documents, etc.  Customer requirements should be reflected in engineering drawings and processes should reflect this as well.  All too often products take too long to make and cost too much because operators are reaming holes to hold a thousandth of an inch on a hole because that is what the print requires because the engineer wants a "quality" product, when in reality, the customer just wants a hole to hang his shovel from a nail, so a cast hole plus or minus an eighth inch is plenty adequate.  

In other words, design engineering needs to design around the customer, not design and sell the best darn gold plated pen that writes in three colers with a built in level and wireless internet when the customer only wants a carpenter's pencil.

The new standard doesn't necessarily obsolete old processes, it does however shift the focus from "do what you say and say what you do" to "know your customer and show me that you are meeting his requirements".

RE: ½Shop-Floor Work Instruction+ û how important they are?

(OP)
Nate2003,

so... if I'm following you - the design engineers will be more affected by the latest shift in ISO requirements (because they are actually trying to express what customer wants in their drawings), but not the manufacturing engineers (who just trying "to make it happens") is it correct assumption?

thanks

RE: ½Shop-Floor Work Instruction+ û how important they are?

To some extent, but again, customer requirements cascade throughout the organization through purchasing, quality, sales, assembly, subcontracting and everywhere else.  As someone whose responsibility is to cut cost (not quality) I am constantly challenging design engineering with ways to reduce manufacturing cost.  For example, can we make this from a casting?  Can we use a purchased bolt instead of manufacturing our own?  Why are we manufacturing a washer?  Sometimes the answer I get back is "Well, what do you think?"  I say that I don't know what the application is and that is what determins the design.  They say that they don't know what the application is either.  ISO says, get on the phone with the customer and find out the application.  We can change the design to make it simpler and cheaper.  The customers are happy because they get what they need faster and cheaper.  We are happy because we split the savings with them and now have extra capacity because of the faster manufacturing so that we don't have to outsource so much and our delivery is improved along with inventory turns and all because we started caring about the customers requirements instead of forcing a quality product down their throat that was overkill for their application.  Win-win for everyone.  

That is big difference from the old ISO philosophy of making all junk with no variation between it.

RE: ½Shop-Floor Work Instruction+ û how important they are?

(OP)
Thank you for your contribution

RE: ½Shop-Floor Work Instruction+ û how important they are?

nate2003,

That is an interesting concept, give the customer what he needs, even if he doesn't know what it is that he needs.

So, how do I become an expert at what my customer does? Or, how does my supplier become more expert in my business than me? There are things such as trade secrets, copyrights, and other intellectual property laws that would pretty much make it close to illegal, if not impossible, to do what ISO is requiring.

Any proprietary trade secret would make a supplier unable to meet the criteria set out in ISO.

I think ISO is useful. I think what ISO thinks of itself is far more grander than what I think.

Like you mentioned, since an ISO certification is not a guarantee, it means that being certified is not related to whether I get a good product, service, experience with an ISO supplier.

"Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater."   
Albert Einstein
Have you read FAQ731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

RE: ½Shop-Floor Work Instruction+ û how important they are?

Ashereng,
I have mixed feelings about ISO in general.  My company went through certification about 4 years ago.  I was chosen right away to be an internal auditor to do baseline audits and then have been doing surveilance audits ever since.  We started out with the new standard so I have no experience with the old one although it was described to me during my indoctrination classes.  Personally ISO has been very frustrating for me.  We had a pretty good system in place at my facility for audits, for procedures and document control.  However we are only the manufacturing plant.  The design and sales side of our business has been very poor at their implementation of ISO.  Then the powers that be in our organization decided that the ISO control would take place in a different country.  Now we have no control of what we audit and where.  We audit areas of the company to clauses in the standard that do not apply to those areas.  We have two different company-wide accessible servers for "controlled" documents.  I have found eight different "controlled" Quality Policy Statements.  Engineering still releases drawings without going through the approval process, so the first time we run a job we need to do an engineering change to the print to make the parts fit together.  Sales still takes orders from customers for tools that we haven't made in 40 years and still gives them a 4 week lead time even though we need to have castings made and don't have patterns.  I have been trying to finish up an audit for a month because I did all 10 corrective action requests on the wrong form although I got it from our "Controlled" server.  The ISO person told me I should have remembered the email that she sent out 5 months ago with the new procedure for routing CARS.  Silly me, I was just following the controlled procedure from the document managment system.

Intellectually, I believe that if properly implemented and administrated, ISO can be good and do good things for a company.  However, in my experience it has become a headache and a pain in my side.  We have our certification, but things are not better that I can tell.  It takes a lot of time and causes me much frustration.  Whether or not a company is ISO certified has little weight when I am looking at a supplier.  My thought is, "Yeah, so are we and I know what a mess we have".

Since I am salary, part of my responsibility is to be an "attitude thermostat" in the organization, so I have to support and defend my company policies on the shop floor, but personally ISO has been a pain for us.

I can defend the idea to some extent, but in reality I have not personally seen a company where it was actually effective although I am sure that there are companies where it is.

Anyway, enough of my ranting.  The intent of my original post was just to clarify a possible misperception and I think that has been done.  Thanks for the discussion.  

Only six hours until the weekend starts. smile

RE: ½Shop-Floor Work Instruction+ û how important they are?

nate2003,

I was with a company that was one of the early adopter of ISO. It was a very long process, over 1 year's worth of effort by everyone.

ISO, as a process is a good idea. ISO, the way it is represented, as a "quality" company if you are certified, is mis-leading. As you have noted, through experience, ISO can not guarantee anything. An ISO certified company does not equal a "quality" company, with good serice/products etc.  

The fact that ISO's changed their requirement to require you to give your client what they "really need", instead of what they "ordered" troubles me. This type of attitude is vey elitest and condescending - I know what you need, you don't. Sounds like consultants.

Wait a minute! ISO is really a consultant aren't they?

They come in, tell you what you need, charge you a huge fee, and then go away and comes back to audit later (for another huge fee). But, they don't tell you what you need, now, do they?

It seems to me that ISO isn't giving me what I need. They are not following their own preaching! Then again, most consultants don't - they tell you what should be done, but don't know what/how to do to get you there.

soapbox

Off soap box. Enought ranting. Weekend is starting!

"Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater."   
Albert Einstein
Have you read FAQ731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

RE: ½Shop-Floor Work Instruction+ û how important they are?

A quick comment on ISO certification.  If the intent is to be registered for the sake of registration, it's an incredible waste of time, effort and money.  ISO 9000:2000 is a BASIC business model, with global recognition. It provdes business with basic tools to provide a structure and frame work for a quality MANAGEMENT system.  

RE: ½Shop-Floor Work Instruction+ û how important they are?

I have been implementing ISO 9001: 2000, 14000, and 17025 for many years.  I have been a business management consultant for 32 years (including 10 years consulting for the BDC) and now I am the General Manager for my current employer.  ISO is now and always was a management diven initiative; without their buy-in it will die on the vine. ISO 2000 has 1.2 Application for Reduction in Scope.  You should create your vision of who you are as a company and base it on the Lean Principles that fit your process.  If you work your procedures (5) and work instructions (where their absence would adversely effect quality)in a consistent measurable fashion you will stand out as a dependable company.  Forget the ones who do not get this simple point and concentrate on your own mission and target goal setting.

RE: ½Shop-Floor Work Instruction+ û how important they are?

(OP)
Thank you, brookside

Red Flag This Post

Please let us know here why this post is inappropriate. Reasons such as off-topic, duplicates, flames, illegal, vulgar, or students posting their homework.

Red Flag Submitted

Thank you for helping keep Eng-Tips Forums free from inappropriate posts.
The Eng-Tips staff will check this out and take appropriate action.

Reply To This Thread

Posting in the Eng-Tips forums is a member-only feature.

Click Here to join Eng-Tips and talk with other members!


Resources