Technique for Problem Solving

I was brought in as a problem solving professional by a technology manufacturer that was struggling to find the root cause of a tough problem. This problem was eating up 15% of every batch they produced and had not been resolved in over a year. The folks on the team had pretty much accepted it as part of the process. They made several attempts but were unsuccessful. This is not uncommon in manufacturing. Tough problems fight back and you end up living with them.

With most problems, start with the measurement system. It is important to convince yourself that the measurement system isn't responsible for the failures. Their team had researched this and ruled it out.

After a thorough search through process records, I knew that we had to be missing something. I continued exploring what data we had and looked for new data that had not been seen, not yet considered. I used environment data from the government web site as well as test data from incoming inspection records but still no luck. While going through the test records, I discovered several new variables that had not been used in the previous searches. Data on temperature and humidity at the time of testing as well as a few other variables. I took some of those variables and created new variables out of them. As an example, one variable was a continuous measurement and I generated a new column showing the difference from one reading to the next. It was one of these new variables that showed a correlation with test results. When this variable was high, items tended to fail the test.

We determined that it was a component of the test system that had worn down. We replaced the worn component and the defect rate went to zero straight away.

This had eluded detection by the previous teams who worked on it for over a year and at great cost to the company. In the end, I was able to generate the right clue and a subject matter expert was able to interpret that clue.

How was I able to resolve a technical quality problem for this organization that their team could not? It's all in the methods.

Problem solving is too important, too costly to leave it to trial and error. You need to learn the techniques that work.

Industrial Problem Solving: Advanced Techniques is an online course that will teach you methods you haven't seen before.

Chris at Belfield Academy