Many traditional organizations operating in old fashioned ways continue to emphasize silo mentality in optimizing costs.  They hardly see the impact of one decision affecting others. For example, if we need to cut down on logistics and supply chain cost, cutting down on the frequency of deliveries from the supplier or to the customer looks obvious. This is what traditional management end up doing.  This will have a high impact of increased inventory, increased need for space, high batch production, high rejection or high rework which is hardly noticed. Lean way of doing things is to optimize the overall cost and not in bits and pieces.

The success of an organization is greatly affected by the efficiency of its stores & Inventory control strategies & practices. Efficient management of these two are vital to maintain continuous operations that will ensure unhindered delivery of the required products or service to the customers and retain customers. Mismanagement in stores & inventory control leads to unsatisfied customers due to missed deliveries & opportunities, blockage of working capital and frequent interruptions in production. Achieving the right mix of stocks and warehouse management are a must today to ensure product to the customers at the right time, price & quality on a sustainable basis.

While the advent of computerization and ERP systems in recent years have improved the efficiency of store operations to a large extent, they have not replaced the need for the much required conceptual understanding. The materials manager must be able to manage the stores activities & control inventory – Planning, organizing, coordinating work, educate, train & supervise the employees and implement strategies to meet the organization’s profitability & customer-centric goals at the lowest possible storage & inventory costs.

The increasing level of computerization demands quick adaptation to improvement process to better manage store operations & inventory levels

• Stores layout, organization & structure
• Stores operations – receiving, inspection, put away, picking, issuing & packing
• Storage & material handling techniques
• Technology for Stores
• Adapting to lean manufacturing requirements.
• Location & facility identification and management.
• Inventory identification and classification strategies
• Inventory control – Stocktaking, inventory accuracy, discrepancies & resolutions
• Inventory valuation methodologies
• Performance cost and value measures

Seven Steps Academy of Excellence offers training courses on Lean logistics and Supply chain by using the following methodology.

• Illustration of concepts and applications through presentation, lectures and discussions that include best practices. 
• Participants learn through interaction with faculty and their industry peers in the session with the sharing of experiences and solutions.
• The program will have exercises & case studies for the participants to interact and work as a team to find solutions.

This course is useful for the following profile of professionals.

•  Executives & Managers working in Stores & logistics, Purchasing, Planning & Inventory control, Vendor Development, Sub-Contracting, Logistics & Distribution.
• Executives from other functions such as Production, Tooling, Quality, Sales & service of spare parts and Customer service support to OEM dispatches that have day to day interactions with warehouse personnel.
• Executives from functions providing supporting roles like Costing & Material accounting
• Faculty and students from Academics, such as MBA institutions & Engineering colleges, for exposure into Warehouse & Inventory management

The following are the key outcomes and learnings from  Lean Supply Chain Management in Manufacturing Firms

• A thorough understating of the concepts and applications of the same in day to day management of respective functions & roles.
• Learn, apply or improve on the principles of lean management for Stores operations – 5S, Kanban, production area supermarkets, etc.
• Improve on decision-making capabilities of Stores operations & inventory control for efficient and effective management of these areas.

For organizations to prosper, constant attention must be paid to quality control. This has become a well-known fact. The basic idea of quality control has been spread to all, but the implementation of it has not. The Japanese believe that caution is required for progress, but one who is overly cautious can never become a top manager.

Quality circles, if implemented correctly, can encourage and enable people at all levels of an organization to play meaningful roles in their organizations, hence improving the quality of their work. The concept of the quality circles was gotten from the Japanese, who believed that implementation of quality circles enabled problem solving at the front lines of their organizations.

To understand the concept of quality circles, we must first know

what quality is and how to achieve quality ?

Quality has been described by many people as many different things, but in reference to quality circles, quality is the state in which the entitlement of value is realized for both the customer and the provider in every aspect of the business relationship without majorly affecting the environment or the society.

To achieve quality, all levels of the organization must have the responsibility to maintain quality and must be responsible for the job assigned to them. To control and achieve quality, Statistical Quality Control gives the first approach. Statistical Quality Control has five stages of statistical integrity, each one sharing equal importance regarding achieving Statistical Quality Control.

Statistical quality control

Statistical Quality Control is an all-pervasive function to achieve quality control, but Statistical Process Control (SPC) aims at increasing knowledge and awareness about Statistical Quality Control and steers a process to behave in a particularly desired way. SPC measures, analyzes and controls variations in process through the application of statistical techniques. It aims to increase the output produced from a given amount of resource input.  When implemented correctly, SPC reduces cost and increases profits majorly, though depending on the market, product and customer needs in many ways.

SPC also serves as a strategy for defect prevention in organizations. Total Quality Control -TQC is proven system for quality development, maintenance and improvement efforts and integrating various groups in an organization to enable production and service at the most economical levels. This in-turn allow the customer full satisfaction. TQC understands the necessity and importance of quality control by everyone in the organization being engaged in it. TQC requires the participation of all divisions in an organization.  Though TQC is perfectly functional by itself, the involving of the Japanese did improve TQC by quite a bit. The Japanese began using SQC after the 2nd World War.

One could easily see that quality has always been an important element of competitive success. The initial approach for quality was final inspection and postproduction adjustment. Total Quality Management (TQM)is a new approach to improve quality and customer satisfaction on a continuous basis by restructuring traditional management practices.

Quality Circle

A Quality Circle had been described by professionals as a small group that voluntarily performs Quality Control within the same workshop/workspace for self-development, mutual development, control and improvement using Quality Control techniques with all the members participating equally and in harmony. The concept of Quality Circles has been spread in more than 130 countries, though it is mostly used in Asian countries such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, China and others.

For effective functioning of a Quality Circle, the following instructions must be strictly followed by the organization implementing it:

• The upper management’s conviction and leadership for quality 
• Continuous education on developments taking place 
• Annual Quality improvement plans
• Annual cost reduction plans and their implementation.

Implementation of this process shall bring about not an evolutionary change, but a revolutionary change in the functioning of organizations. The Quality circle is the best path towards the development of human resources. The Quality circle is not only a means of bringing about efficiency in a given organization, but also encourages employees at all levels to think about themselves, their families, associates and loved ones for improvement, as ‘the best help is self-help.

Many magazines have mentioned the Quality circle in their articles.

Some people have shared their views regarding the fact that Quality Circles should not be conducted at the command of a superior but instead must be conducted voluntarily at individual workplaces and organizations. They believe that if a worker wishes not to participate in the implementation of a Quality circle, he/she should not be forced into it.  It must be noted that the Japanese started the implementation of Quality Circles long after every employee in their management had been thoroughly trained in quality control, at the end of the total program of implementation of quality control.

Not all companies require Quality Circles. To see whether they need the Quality Circle to increase the quality of the products, they should be clear about the following:

• Whether they need such an introduction in their company,
• Whether they are having the required conditions for such an introduction and
• How they should introduce the Quality Circle in their company.

To smoothly introduce the Quality circle into their organization, the following steps must be followed.

• Initiating an exposure program to senior executives,
• Forming a Quality Council / steering committee and selecting a co-coordinator,
• Working out an action plan,
• Finding qualified trainers and facilitators,
• Initiating an exposure program for workers and staff members

All together leading to successful quality circles.

Critical to Quality (CTQ)

Every product that are launched in the market have characteristics that describe their performance relative to end user, the customer’s expectations and requirements.  Some of these expectations can be to get high mileage or fuel economy of a car, having right of packaged goods such as corn flakes or such cereals, star rating related to fuel efficiency to improve power efficiency or lower the losses/cost of power at homes or life of springs or shock absorbers.  These are all some of the examples of product characteristics which can also be called CTQ or Critical to Quality requirements.

Taguchi Methods of Quality Control

Quality can be therefore defined or measured in terms of these characteristics.  Quality also can be related to loss to the customer or society caused by a product during its life cycle. One of the methodologies which help in addressing quantity is Taguchi Methods. This can be applied in two main areas such as offline and online Quality control.  Each of these methods are cost sensitive and have their own decisions to be made.

Offline Quality control refers to the initiation during product development stage in ensuring the right quality of product and processes related to it.  Taguchi methods are proven to support quality improvement in early stages of product development. In contrast, online quality refers to the monitoring of real time manufacturing processes to validate and confirm the quality level of products produced.  Statistical process controls and six sigma methodologies can be used for online quality assurance and real time correction of any deviations from specifications.

Majority of those who work in engineering and quality domains and familiar with setting up tests to model actual field usage conditions and the cause -effect relationship of design to performance, their knowledge of a proper testing strategy is found to be very limited.  The reason is that they work on full-factorial designs. They are not aware of most efficient testing strategy and potential savings in test time and money spent. The design of experiments method – DOE process helps people to easily understand how to utilize the quality improvement method.

Taguchi uses a specific cost model for product characteristics which places more emphasis on reducing variation.  More particularly, when the total product variation is within specification limits for the product.

Principles of Taguchi methods of quality control

1. Reduction in various which improves quality of a product or process which in turn reduces loss to society.

2.  Proper development strategy can help in systematic reduction of variation. The key outcome expected is to achieve higher quality at lower costs.

Japanese companies have implemented some basic testing and development strategies that allowed them to successfully become world economic forerunners in Quality revolution.  Since 1960s, many Japanese engineers were trained in Taguchi’s methods.  Nippon Denso, one of the earlier Deming Prize winner has used over 2500 experiments in automotive electrical product design.

Seven Steps Academy of Excellence conducts both in house and public training programmes on Quality and some of the sought after programmes are Lean Six Sigma green belt and Lean Six Sigma black belt programmes as training partner for ASQ South Asia in Bangalore, Ahmedabad as Weekend programmes.  Inhouse training programmes on Six Sigma Green belt and blackbelt are offered all over india. Our customers are from locations from Bangalore, Mysore, Hosur, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune, Calcutta, Gurugram, Neemrana, Pant Nagar, Nagpur, Visakhapatnam.

Some of the Key Topics that are Covered in Quality Management Training are:

• Economics of reducing variation.
• Design of experiments process.
• Orthogonal array selection and utilisation.
• Conducting tests.
• Analysis and interpretation methods for experiments.
• Confirmation of experiment.
• Parameter design.
• Tolerance design.

Some of the topics covered in Quality Management Training programme are:

• Definitions 
  • Measures of Central Tendency
  • Measures of Variability
  • Normal Distribution
  • Standard Normal Transform

• Probability Density Function
  • Cumulative Distribution
  • Inverse Cumulative Distribution

• Discrete Probability Distributions
  • Distribution Selection
  • Hypergeometric
  • Binomial
  • Poisson
  • e-dpu Rational
• Normal Approximation of Binomial
• Process Capability
  • The Basics
  • Definitions
  • Principles
  • Precision and Accuracy
  • Shift
  • Capability and Inspection
  • Calculating Capability
  • The Standard Normal Transform
  • Using Z to Calculate Capability
  • Exercises
  • Using iGrafx to simulate process performance
  • Using Minitab to calculate Capability Analysis
  • Capability Examples
  • Continuous Data
  • Attribute Data

• Rolled throughput yeield – RTY
  • The importance of using RTY
  • The use of e-dpu to estimate RTY
  • How to calculate RTY
  • The impact of complexity on RTY

Also, learning and experience application of the following types of charts:

• Normality tests
•   Histograms
•   Capability analysis
•   Marginal plots
•  Run charts
•  Control charts
•  Matrix plots
•  Draftsman plots
•  Dot plots
•  Box plots
•  Pareto charts
•  Cause and effect diagrams
•  Scatter plots

Gauge R& R

•  How to quantify measurement variation (error)
•  How to identify the sources of measurement variation
•  How to assess measurement system stability
•  How to assess measurement system capability
•  How to improve the measurement system

Lack of training or ineffective training results in ineffective and suboptimal results. This results in too much firefighting which is not only time consuming but also results in loss of effectiveness and energies.  This further leads to no time for training. This becomes a vicious cycle. We have to start with small investment of time in right training which inturn can give back multiple fold time to the organisation.

One of the Toyota’s principles mentions:  Develop exceptional people and teams who follow your company’s Philosophy.  Many organisations claim that they give importance of developing people within the organisations with a slogan on everywhere “People are our most valuable resources”. However, on ground the reality is people are ill-equipped to perform their basic jobs.  There are no structured talent development plans and no skill matrix of operators too. We have seen many organisations who keep doing firefighting at senior management levels struggling to make on time dispatches/ order fulfilments even after having state-of the art manufacturing facilities and best in class machines. The missing link here is not having right skill of direct value adders – shop floor associates. Every company must have an effective method to train people.  Rather than self-learning of key job roles which is very unorganized, the training courses should have direct reflection on key day to day jobs. This is where the so-called Human resources development members can facilitate the transition. Training job skills through On job training is one of the starting point to improve organisation performance. Job instruction method… one of the elements of Training within Industry will certainly be very useful for improving organisation performance.