I work for an advertising agency and would like to start tracking capability index" Cpk" by the number of errors produced every month. I am using an Individual and Moving range chart because the sample sizes from month to month vary by more than 25%. I currently have the chart set up to calculate the Cpk index using the calculated control limits. I do not have ZUSL and ZLSL specifications because this is actually attribute data. I am able to get variable data from it using the moving range chart.
My question is, Can I calculate Cpk using the calculated UCLl and LCLl instead of ZUSL and ZLSL?
Thank you
Bill
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Comments
shelly 9/21/2004
Not sure if this is what you are looking for, but here goes:
It seems like this type of an organization would have to lean very heavily upon resource management, training, planning and skills evaluation. I don't know what kind of business you are talking about, and that could make all the difference in the world. Maybe customer order review and final inspection. More specifics might lead to better, more timely answers?
gramu 9/22/2004
Shelly,
This magnitude of scaling up and down has been common in the Hi tech world during the last 4 years. Iam talking about any organization that went through this cycle. Main challenge during the scaling up is maintaining the consistency of the process effectiveness across various product lines as the organization expands exponentially. At the same time, during the downsizing due to lack of resources, many supporting functions can get dropped or consolidated. This may result in losing the effectiveness and integrity of the processes.
Economy boom and downturn is almost a cycle in the last couple of decades. What are the lessons learned in terms of preparedness? In the next year or so, economy gets back to where it was in 2000, is our QMS robust enough to handle this fluctuation is business?
Regards,
GR
shelly 9/24/2004
Your basic quality system should not have to change, but your job responsibilities would have to be well defined to handle the changing functions an employee would have to be competent at. Your training/cross training program should be your best defense. Training in your case should be quick and effecient to meet your ever changing needs. Leadership skills should be robust for your core group. Work instructions will probably be very detailed, no? Remember, make your system work for you, you don't want to change high level documents every time there is a shift in your market cycle.
gramu 9/26/2004
Shelly,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Your reply matches with mine in the ASQ discussion board. Here is a gist of my reply from the other board.
Scaling up is a pleasant challenge.
Resource Planning & Process Management: The challenge is replicating the cells with consistent processes. Resources have to be planned for replicating the Cells (assuming multiple variance of product within the family and multiple products).
Training: Common processes to majority of the products have to be standardized, documented, lesson plan created, trainers trained, employees trained, effectiveness verified, Recertification plans scheduled and followed.
Cross function: I have seen cell approach competing with each other rather than working with each other to share best practices. Cross function, approach becomes a big issue as every cell try to re-invent a wheel by themselves seeking credit. Critical process issues across the organizations should be shared as lesson learned. SME from various cells, functions to exchange ideas on a periodic frequency on issues common to the organization.
Outsource strategy: This is has to be thought in advance and partnered with the right organization, qualified and develop relations well ahead of scaling up. Outsource reason should also be a better and consistent quality.
Scaling down is an unpleasant challenge.
Morale: From my experience, most difficult part of this exercise is watching very talented professionals let go because their product line is no more economical to manufacture in-house. These are the professionals who you worked with side by side when the organization was scaling up multi folds every year. These are the very same professionals who took off the time from their family to put long hours to keep the organization’s promise to their customers.
This affects the morale among employees.
Knowledge Management: Hence keeping the employee morale is a very big challenge for the organization. Cross-functional interaction becomes a challenge when most needed. Everyone tend to hold the information to maintain an organizational importance. The knowledge and experience which were previously never documented will be lost with the leaving employees.(or in no mood to share once laid off). A good knowledge management system has to be developed and maintained to avoid any risk to supporting the legacy products / processes.
Process Management: Now in scaling down, cells are not any more economical. Resources have to be pooled. Functions have to be consolidated. Since with lesser employees, they have to be retrained to be multi skilled. This will cause a challenge among employees to be willing to train others. Also the process quality start to deteriorate for a period of time until the Quality gets to the acceptable, stable level.
Regards,
Govind.