Delta Plastics Case Jose De Costa, Director of Manufacturing at Delta Plastics,

Question

Delta Plastics Case

Jose De Costa, Director of Manufacturing at Delta Plastics, sat at his desk looking at the latest production quality report, showing the number and type of product defects per week (see the quality report in Delta Plastics, Inc. Case A, Chapter 5). He was faced with the task of evaluating production quality for products made with two different materials. One of the materials was new and called “super plastic” due to its ability to sustain large temperature changes. The other material was the standard plastic that had been successfully used by Delta for many years. The company had started producing products with the new “super plastic” material only a month earlier. Jose suspected that the new material could result in more defects during the production process than the standard material they had been using. Jose was opposed to starting production until R&D had fully completed testing and refining the new material. However, the CEO of Delta ordered production despite objections from manufacturing and R&D. Jose carefully looked at the report in front of him and prepared to analyze the results.

Case Question

Given your findings, what advice would you give Jose?

Explanation / Answer

Use simple tools such as 7 QC tools to analyse defects and get quick understanding the trend.

In this case, we are not having information about the case, still, I recommend to use simple tools such as:

1. Checksheet - Tool to capture the defects data during the quality inspection.

2. Histogram - visual aid to understanding the different types of defects

3. Root Cause Diagram - understand the cause of the defects

4. Pareto Chart - to identify key causes

5. Scatter diagram - to understand the relationship

6. Process flow chart

7. Process control charts - this is very useful in the above-mentioned case to monitor the defects on a real-time basis.

Using process control charts, easily we can identify the assignable cause such as material change and collect data over a period of time and compare. One with standard plastic and super plastic and use control charts x bar, R and C & U charts to find the deviations from average target values. If any point falls outside the control limit and probably an assignable reason such as material change. Change the material and start plotting the control charts with new data points.

If you to find out the reasons, process improvements tools such as Six sigma or Design of experiments to improve the process.

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