Problems managing new product handover

[Hartridge]

We have a problem with the handover of new products from development to production.

The company is continually producing product add-ons or product variations which go into serial production. A major problem is that development end up nurse maiding the initial production through test until they are confident that Manufacturing can follow procedures. There is no statistical or practiced methodology for deciding how many need testing and at what point development let go. Its uncontrolled. Any ideas on a methodology or stats that can be used?

 

[MadMango]

Our company has a phase called Limited Production. This production run is about 25% of the estimated full production run. During this phase all components are manufactured with the same proceses that Full Production would use, and are assembled by the Asssebly Line, with Deveolpment oversight.

During Limited Production, Development trains the Assemblers, and records any changes are modifications that are required to streamline Prouction and Assembly. After the Limited Production is complete, Production stops until all the identified improvements have been implemented in the design. Once all the changes are complete (and any testing redone due to changes) Full Production starts up.

[green]"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."[/green]
Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943.
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[PSE]

Hartridge,

I can sympathize with your situation as it is occasionally similar to my own. I say occasionally as sometimes we actually follow a product release procedure. In a manner similar to what MadMango indicates, we have a pilot run prior to full production release. This is to test the product build with assembly personnel, evaluate and verify tooling, and see what happens once volume is thrown into the equation. The pilot run may be for a certain number of units or a length of time. The goal is at least a statistically significant # of units (>30) from which to evaluate Cpk. We are working on the Cpk level that is considered "acceptable" for full release. Personally I would prefer a minimum of 1.33 though with the typical pressures to get to market, it will more likely be 1.0.

Regards,

 

[IRstuff]

Pehaps, part of the problem is that manufacturing has no buy-in that a product is designed for and ready for production.

One of the original purposes of IPT structures was to get involvement from production personnel early in the design process so that they would already be familiar with the product, its design, fabrication, integration and test before transition to production.

Your choice of "handover" is significant in that regard. "Handover," in many companies, is the act of tossing a product over the wall to production. Your production people need to provide input into the process flow, procedures and documentation. This would significantly streamline the transition process so that the production people are not simply dumped on with a brand-new, sight-unseen production flow

TTFN

 

[Hartridge]

Thanks for the tips:
a. Need to sort out the Cpk
b. Need to sort out the Communication
c. Need to do it together

 

[Drazen]

This is the biggest problem of whole manufacturing business!

I think that there is no "one-fits-all" solution which can be applied for all types of industry. Working with plastic manufacturer for auto industry, we had some elements of handover procedure mandated by our client.

That is similar with already mentioned: 3-day of production run where people from development work together with operations people, and Cpk is measured. If it is found satisfactory, the process is considered released.

But it was not so simple in practice - even different processess (injection molding, thermoforming, extrusion) had different behaviour in this phase, and following this procedure didn't guarantee trouble-free production in future.

One thing that we found was that it is necessary that development and manufacturing together develop detailed changover and startup procedure for every new product.

Of course, you can use patterns from the past, but you also need to implement any new measure considered peculiar for new product, and you need to justify it as much as you can before actual start.

When trial run starts, it is necessary to follow these procedures strictly, otherwise your statistical control will be mostly useless.

The approach "let us do field-adjustments until we have good product, write down these adjustments and we have proper procedure" is often not satisfactory - you do some adjustments during production run and you think that you achieved stable process; but on next run you face with some problem from beginning and than you realize that your adjustments did not fully address your problems. When problems occur, often many adjustments are done and sometimes not all of them are noted and that increase the mess as well.

So, sometimes the better approach is to start from the beginning until you reach "typical" startup with all problems rectified. Sometimes that means that you will have to restart your production five times in one day instead of running full-day trial production, but, believe me, it can be much, much cheaper that incomplete product handover