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ht+a's Podcast
What is a Robust Manufacturing Process? Part 1.
Discover the blueprint for creating a robust manufacturing process with Matthew Woodford, a veteran in the motor industry with over four decades of experience. What exactly makes a manufacturing process "robust"? Matthew tackles this complex question head-on, sharing his expertise from years of refining quality systems. He emphasizes the critical importance of addressing robustness at the PFMEA stage to preclude costly corrections later on. With his down-to-earth guidance, you'll learn how to design processes that consistently meet or exceed quality expectations, maintaining minimal variation, even under changing conditions.
Matthew breaks down the key elements of a robust process, focusing on overall equipment efficiency (OEE) as a fundamental metric. He explains why achieving high-quality outputs is essential for maximizing production volume, and how poor quality can drastically affect your bottom line. With practical tips and quantifiable targets, Matthew outlines the steps necessary to claim your process as robust. Prepare to gain actionable insights that will not only help you understand OEE but also guide you in implementing the tools and systems needed to sustain it. Tune in, and ensure your processes are not just effective, but truly robust.
Hello, my name is Matthew Woodford. I'm a manufacturing production engineer and I've been in the motor industry now for more than 40 years. In my later years I have been asked to give back some of my experience in the way of lectures and teaching people the practical side of quality systems. During one of my sessions I was taking for Core Tools 3, a student asked a relevant question which deserves a quantitative answer. So, in order to answer more comprehensively than I did during that training session, I want to break down my response to this question into several posts that you can listen to.
Matthew Woodford:Often in the automotive industry we throw around phrases like best in class, lessons learned, robust process. We say them all too freely and all too easily, assuming that our recipient audience understand what we're talking about. Well, it was while using that last phrase robust process that a student asked me well, what is a robust process? So I gave him a brief answer that describes what a robust process is is and I continued with the lecture. After the lecture was finished, I thought about this and I thought if someone gave me that answer when I was starting out in process manufacturing, I would probably say again so what is it? Say again so what is it If we were just to say, from a descriptive perspective, that a robust process is one that consistently produces products at the required volume and meets or exceeds the customer's quality expectations with minimal variation, regardless of changing conditions or inputs? That may well describe what a robust process is, but does it quantify it? If that statement was given to me, I could still say well, so how do I achieve a robust process? That statement does not give me boundaries or targets to which I can claim that yes, now I have a robust process.
Matthew Woodford:So I thought let's dig a little deeper. What do I need to achieve in order to claim that my process is robust? Really, this question should be asked at your PFMEA stage when designing your initial process. These are part of the systems and the procedures that you need to undertake when designing your process. To design it in afterwards is always more difficult than doing it at the outset, before you have spent any capital money, because you may find that once you've put your line in, it is not robust. Now you need to change it, improve it, and this can cause both time delays and, obviously, incurred costs. So, as I say, unfortunately all too often this very important stage of process design is often overlooked.
Matthew Woodford:However, if you have inherited an existing process which performs below expectations, well then we need to identify what functions or systems need to be initiated, if they don't already exist, and what are the targets. What are the goals for each of these tools in order to claim that you have a robust process? If we look at that statement that I mentioned earlier, we can break it down into pieces. Earlier. We can break it down into pieces. Firstly, if we want a facility to perform with minimal variation with regards to the required volume, the production line must be capable of achieving quantity and both quality. If we think about it, if your quality is poor, it's going to affect my output. My output is my quantity.
Matthew Woodford:So what better measurable to monitor than what we would call OEE, which is our overall equipment efficiency? Which is our overall equipment efficiency? Okay, oee. So what is OEE? What is my target? What do I need to do to reach and maintain that target? What I'm not going to do in these recordings. I'm not here to teach OEE or any other system that gets mentioned. I just want to give guidance and targets and values that then, when you've achieved those, you can claim that your process is robust, that your process is robust. I shall give you the pointers and targets mentioned in quality systems that we will refer to as we go on to understand what they are, where they come from and, more importantly, what are the quantifiable target values that allow us to relax and claim that my process is a robust process. Hopefully, if I have whet your appetite, I will do another session following this one. My next session will break down what is OEE, what should I aim for, and what tools and systems help me to achieve and maintain and monitor OEE. Thank you for listening.
