FEBRUARY 20239MANUFACTURING TECHNOLOGY INSIGHTSimplying that it must have taken many years to ingrain such questionable quality mindset. This led me to study quality principles from the early industrialization era to the current practices. The 1920s can be recognized as the period of industrialization following Frederick Taylor's work and the dawn of the field of quality. Walter Shewhart of Bell Laboratories invented the concept of control charts, and H.F. Dodge and H.G. Romig developed acceptance-sampling methods. The 20s also saw the United States enjoying post-war prosperity as one of the victors of World War I. In those days, quality methods were considered trade secrets because they provided a competitive edge. After World War II, helping Japan rebuild its economy and infrastructure, we send our quality expert Dr. Ed Deming to Japan for guidance. Based on the inventor of SPC (Statistical Process Control), Dr. Shewhart's Out of Control Action Plans in the 1920s, Deming developed PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act, shown in Figure 1. However, the PDCA was developed for product control that depended upon Planning the quantity, Doing the production, Checking against the acceptable limits, and Acting to remedy the defects. This produced an `acceptable' product. Deming tried to change his model to Plan, Do, Study, and Act, however, people stuck to PDCA, the path of least resistance. A check is easier than studying a problem. Since then PDCA had become the norm to build and inspect the product and take corrective actions. In response, experts around the world have developed tools to support PDCA implementation. Such as Dr. Ishikawa developed a Fishbone diagram (4Ms), Dr. Taguchi developed Target driven designs, Dr. Juran focused on excellence in execution, and Dr. Deming emphasized using statistics to reduce variation. The original brain behind the work was Dr. Shewhart who invented statistical process control for ensuring 100% acceptable product in the normal distribution, where most of the product would be close to the target designs. To conclude my work, I integrated the work of these five Gurus into a 4P (Prepare, Perform, Perfect, and Progress) model to create and achieve excellence in manufacturing, shown in Figure 2. Instead of saying `just do it' we need to emphasize `do it well.' Excellence begins with defining the target and preparation or process set up to achieve the target performance. Results showed that the defect rate decreased from high percentages (tens of thousands) to a few defects in a million. In my current job in the packaging industry, our local manufacturers emphasized that industry practice was about a 2% acceptable defect rate. Then during my visit to China almost all manufacturing shops have a visible company goal of `Zero' defects. It is a state of mind that we need to adapt to `zero' defects or almost perfect products. As someone said, planning for a 2% acceptable defect rate versus planning for a `zero' defect requires a different state of mind. As we depend upon global supply chains, our responsiveness to customers is adversely affected. Thus, the primary reasons for reshoring are the proximity to customers and responsiveness. People are realizing that the benefits of onshore production outweigh the higher labor cost, besides ongoing geo-political instabilities.Through outsourcing for the last 40 years, we have learned to focus on the total life-cycle cost of an item, customer responsiveness, visible controls, and loss of competencies. We have realized that we need to be a country of tangible value creation rather than secondary value creation. No nation can achieve greatness without creating value internally, or manufacturing onshore. However, we must ensure as a society that we not only expect excellence but produce excellence to meet our needs. Acceptable, Okay, or Tolerable products are not globally competitive and cost more to make. We must learn how to achieve excellence in schools, a prerequisite to producing excellence in the industry. Irrespective of what we will be manufacturing we must remember what led us to outsource. The most important cause was our inability to produce high-quality products
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