Manufacturing

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Feb 11 2022

Scientific Thinking and Manufacturing Improvement

“Scientific thinking” appears more and more in discussions of Lean, Kaizen, or TPS. What is it? Well, it’s the way scientists think.  In reality, however, talk to actual scientists about PDCA, DMAIC, the 8D, A3 thinking, Why-Why analysis, TRIZ, or even statistical design of experiments,  and their eyes glaze over. Most will have no idea what these methods are. This is true for physicists, chemists, biologists, or even economists. If you elaborate, they will dismiss these tools as trivial or devoid of any connection with their work.

Improving how things are made does make the world a better place but it’s not science. By growing a body of knowledge that is our greatest asset as a species, scientists make another contribution, that we should recognize as different. 

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Apr 16 2021

Measuring QC Efficacy: A Proposal

[The featured image is of a Vietnamese satellite undergoing final test in Japan]

As Jay Bitsack pointed out in his comments on LinkedIn about my previous post, the portability of a method from epidemiology to manufacturing quality is not a foregone conclusion. Formally, the logic of validating a vaccine seems applicable to the solution of a quality problem. They look similar when you consider only outcomes in terms of infection rates or the proportion of defectives. 

There are differences between data sets from a clinical trial and tests run before and after a process change in production that may affect the applicability of a method. We examine the conditions for the approach developed by Carlo Graziani for vaccine efficacy to cross over to quality control. Then we work out the math of Graziani’s method and the means to apply it. 

 

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Oct 29 2019

The Manga Style In The Japanese Literature On Manufacturing

A unique characteristic of the Japanese literature on manufacturing is its use of comic strips — or manga — to communicate with readers. The subject came up in a recent discussion on LinkedIn, that Mark DeLuzio started by saying:

“Toyota has been given credit for making the complex simple. Some say that this is the definition of genius. I think that the Lean consulting industry, in their attempt to help others follow Toyota’s footsteps, has in many cases done the opposite. We have made the simple very complex.”

My comment was that, while expressed in jargon, most of what goes as “Lean” in the US is simplistic. I contrast it with what I found in Japan, like the Kojo Kanri (工場管理, or “Factory Management”) monthly. It is full of case studies communicated in manga, on subjects ranging from the strategic to the tactical.

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Nov 17 2018

Manufacturing Today, By The Numbers

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What does manufacturing as a whole look like as a worldwide economic activity? When a company starts up or shuts down a plant, or relocates production from one country to another, it is a data point. It may be a compelling story but it doesn’t tell you the aggregate effect of all manufacturing on a country or the world.

Beyond anecdotes about particular companies or locations, the global data collected by the World Bank and the International Labor Organization confirm that (1) the size of the manufacturing sector is positively correlated with that of the rest of the economy, and (2) the share of manufacturing in advanced economies is holding its own in terms of value added but declining in terms of share of the labor force.

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Jun 2 2018

Data Mining/Machine-Learning Tools In Manufacturing

This elaborates on the section on Analyzing The Data of the previous post. For a list of tools used for  “data mining” or “machine-learning,” I researched, for each one, who invented it, when it was invented, for what purpose, and what applications it has had in manufacturing, and summarized my findings in the table below.

I am, however, not satisfied with the level of applications I found and would like to crowdsource more. If you have made these or other tools useful in your own manufacturing environment, please share whatever information you can about your applications in the survey that follows.

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Feb 5 2018

Countries Don’t Have Production Systems, Companies Do

Kobe Steel CEO apologizing (10/2017)

“Companies Everywhere Copied Japanese Manufacturing. Now the Model Is Cracking. Concepts celebrated in business publications worldwide have been tarnished by a string of scandals.

Japan’s reputation for flawless manufacturing quality and efficiency transformed the country’s postwar economy, changed business practices worldwide and spawned a library’s worth of management manuals and business advice books. Now, the model is cracking.

Kobe Steel Ltd., Mitsubishi Materials Corp., and Subaru Corp. have all admitted in recent months to manipulating quality inspections, though all say no safety problems emerged. Takata Corp. declared bankruptcy last year after admitting to supplying more than 50 million defective vehicle airbags in the U.S. Mitsubishi Motors Corp. has admitted covering up vehicle faults and falsifying fuel-economy data.”

Sourced from The Wall Street Journal

Michel Baudin‘s comments: What does the Volkswagen diesel emission scandal say about eyeglass lenses and telescopes made by Zeiss or A320s assembled by Airbus in Hamburg? Nothing. Factories for these companies are all located in the same country but a lapse by one is just that, and the Wall Street Journal did not publish articles suggesting that it made a statement about German industry as a whole. When it comes to Japan, however, this is exactly what they are doing with this article, assuming there is such a thing as “Japanese manufacturing,” which is blemished by the misbehavior of any Japanese company.

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