Manufacturing Improvement – Managing Risk in Manufacturing
Risk is defined as something that creates or suggests a hazard with the possibility of loss or injury. In manufacturing, all kinds of risks threaten the key performance metrics of cost, quality, and speed, so identifying and lowering risk is critical to improving operational performance.
Let us have a look at the risk management method ‘Failure Mode Effects Analysis (FMEA)’. It is straight forward and works well for team-based problem solving. Here are the basic steps:
1. Form a problem-solving team: a handful of people from various backgrounds is a good start.
2. Decide on the manufacturing process to be improved with a simple flowchart of the operations.
3. Identify the ways that a failure could happen in the process. These are called Failure Modes and will have potential Effects. Rate the SEVERITY(S): ‘1’ if insignificant to ‘10’ if catastrophic
4. Identify the causes failure and rate each cause OCCURANCE(O): ‘1’ if the failure rarely happens to ‘10’ if almost certain to happen.
5. Identify the current process controls and rate the DETECTION(D): ‘1’ if almost certain to detect to ‘10’ if almost impossible to detect.
6. For each of the causes multiply the Severity, Occurrence and Detection together. The result is the RISK PRIORITY NUMBER (RPN).
7. Sort the RPN from highest to lowest. The highest RPNs, since they would have the most significant impacts should be considered as top candidates for improvement.
For more detail about FMEA, including chart examples, refer to the American Society for Quality website.
Matt.