Operations Planning & Management
(Part 3 of 3)

QUESTION => Manufacturers – Are you achieving 500% + on Overall Equipment Efficiency (OEE)?  Are you achieving the planned ROI?   This week, we are wrapping up this month’s blog series on the OPERATIONS PLANNING & MANAGEMENT principle providing focus on the topic of QUALITY ASSURANCE IN OPERATIONS.

It is astounding how many manufacturing functions think of Quality Assurance as someone else’s responsibility.  Well … it is not and it is everyone’s responsibility.  It is true however that Quality Assurance leadership is accountable for it.  From product development through to manufacturing introduction for series production, the quality of a product/service is a continual chain of checks and balance every step of the way.  It assures conformity (business management processes & product) from start to finish.  Robust Quality Assurance almost always, provides continual improvement opportunities as well.

With our support for manufacturers looking to improve, our Business Management Health Assessment (BMHA) process examines a number of categories within the Quality Assurance domain:

• Manufacturing practices & integration with quality processes
• Quality measurement of performance and action
• Methodology of the previous two points
• How resources utilize and take action with the information
• Company process routines and behaviour throughout the organization
• Conformance controls and feedback into design, manufacture including customer input
• Impact to work in process production
• And many more …

Now ask yourself, do we do all of this?  If not, maybe its time to peel back the layers that comprises how your company and leadership operates. Over decades of working with experts in the field of quality assurance, a great appreciation of what they offer to improve a manufacturing organization is realized.  Everything we do is an element of quality assurance.  The trick is to know how to tap into daily operations to extract what is going on and where to navigate to going forward.  Operations needs to be joined at the hip sort-of-speak with QA capitalizing on that expertise supported by a good QMS (Quality Management System).  It can only help with success and a better work-life for a manufacturer and their employees on the factory floor.  Our LYNXBMG partner (Nessis Inc. located in the GTA; Main » Nessis Inc) has refined and developed simple to use QMS systems for that purpose.

We encourage you to reach out to us on this topic.  We are practitioners with a true passion to help manufacturers like you meet your objectives.  It costs nothing to enquire, and we wager that you will be glad that you did.

Next month’s article will be moving onto the business management principles of ORGANIZATION CHANGE READINESS.  This is a topic that has traditionally been the most difficult for manufacturing organizations to succeed at.  Its about cultural change and belief by every single resource and stakeholder that the leadership is doing the right thing.  In the end, everybody in the organization needs to understand and believe how change improves their work and non-work lives.

As we always say, the solution is the easy part, the doing is the hard part. We look forward to your feedback.