Page 236 - How To Implement Lean Manufacturing
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214 Cha pte r F o u r tee n
First Time Yield
100.0
90.0
80.0
70.0
60.0
50.0
40.0
Mar-01 Apr-01 May-01 Jun-01 Jul-01 Aug-01 Sep-01 Oct-01 Nov-01 Dec-01 Jan-02 Feb-02 Mar-02 Apr-02 May-02 Jun-02 Jul-02 Aug-02 Sep-02 Oct-02 Nov-02 Dec-02 Jan-03 Feb-03 Mar-03 Apr-03 May-03 Jun-03 Jul-03 Aug-03 Sep-03 Oct-03 Nov-03 Dec-03 Jan-04 Feb-04 Mar-04 Apr-04
FIGURE 14-2 Alpha line, FTY.
aspects of the business. And judging by the results as shown in Fig. 14-2, it is obvious
that this effort and leadership not only persisted, it succeeded.
Some of the Results
As you can see in Fig. 14-2, yield climbed significantly and the entire effort was a huge
success. Though it was a success because the yield
climbed, the effort’s success went beyond that.
“Create constancy of pur-
As it turned out, demand for the plant increased
pose toward improvement of dramatically, largely due to the process improvement
product and service with the efforts. The customer of the plant had three alternate
aim to become competitive suppliers (each of the four now had 25 percent of the
and to stay in business and to demand) of this product, but the customer’s stated
”
provide jobs. desire was to reduce that to only two suppliers. One
—(Point 1) would be the primary supplier; the other a backup
W. E. Deming supplier. The purpose was clear: The customer
wanted to reduce his variation—that meant fewer
suppliers for each product, which meant the plant needed to be the best supplier or lose
some or all of the business.
Because of its efforts, by the end of the first year this plant had outperformed all
others. At the annual “Give me your quality improvement ideas” meeting called by the
customer, we were able to finesse the following information from the customer. This
plant was the only plant of the four that was meeting the customer’s goal of less than
500 ppm field failures—the plant was at 220 ppm. The other three suppliers were at 700,
1100, and 3300, respectively. It was no surprise that by the end of year one, the plant
