You Can’t Manage What You Don’t Measure: A Fox Valley Tool & Die Story Part 1

At SyteLineCon 2016, Stacey Chmielewski, IT and Stephanie Kruse, Quality Coordinator at Fox Valley Tool & Die (FVTD) shared their experience using Shop-Trak and Doc-Trak, along with SyteLine and QCS to solve their internal quality challenges. As a result, they became one of our Better Your Best Award winners.

In case you missed SyteLineCon 2016, this year’s conference brought SyteLine users together from around the world to learn more about solutions designed specifically for discreet manufacturers, to make face-to-face connections with industry colleagues, to observe and discover new technologies, and to share ideas and experiences that have propelled their organizations forward.

Our Better Your Best Contest encouraged our customers to share their experiences with other conference attendees. To our pleasant surprise, the atmosphere was electric and buzzing with unbridled enthusiasm as participants shared their amazing stories.

This is the first of a 2-part post that features FVTD, an incredible Wisconsin manufacturer that introduced their quality initiative and the challenges they overcame to be successful. Here is a recap of the story presented at SyteLineCon 2016 by Stacey and Stephanie.

In Search of Better Quality

Like so many companies looking to improve, FVTD employed Infor SyteLine’s Quality Control Solution (QCS) in 2011. Prior to 2011, they did all of their quality tracking on a triplicate defective material report (called a DMR) that was filled out by hand. One copy was filed in the file room and then in so many cases was never seen again.

According to Stacey Chmielewski regarding the DMR, “We never tracked anything off of it. It was filled out and was filed.”

With the addition of Infor’s QCS in 2011, FVTD completely eliminated tracking quality issues on paper. Over the course of three years, they made gradual changes and adjustments to make it work to fit their business needs. FVTD realized that they finally had the capability to get concrete data to show exactly where their quality issues were and what they could do to fix them. Their quality team was successfully tracking data and they even provided a quarterly quality report to management and project managers.

Chmielewski says, “We had never had anything to assess our quality so it was a completely new thing to get together every quarter and sit down with managers. The reports were a reflection of what the quality issues were and how to fix them.”

Repeating Quality Issues

Measuring quality at FVTD turned out to be quite revealing.

“Through our reporting we discovered that we were having a lot of repeat issues and we couldn’t understand why this was happening,” said Stephanie Kruse. “We were logging MRRs (Material Review Reports), we were logging CARs (Corrective Action Reports), we had customer complaints that were resolved – everything looked fine and dandy on paperwork, yet we were still having the same issues.”

FVTD decided to take a closer look and found that they not only had a problem with the information they were collecting, but also with that information being delivered to the machinists.

Kruse said, “We were logging all the data, it was getting filed and it was getting signed by the machinists. They knew of the issue because it happened while they were working on a part. However, they didn’t realize that this paperwork was just going to be filed away never to be seen again.”

Apparently there had been a breakdown in communication on the intent of reporting. FVTD is a busy job shop running countless jobs, with dozens of machinists working in multiple facilities and multiple work shifts. Circumstances dictate that it could be days, weeks, months, or even a year before a particular machinist saw the same type of run on a given product.

The machinists on the shop floor do not have access to SyteLine, so how were they supposed to remember or even be aware that a particular issue occurred when running a particular job?

“When the signed copies of reports were filed in the file room, the machinists didn’t know to go look for it. They didn’t even know that was something that they should be going to look for,” said Kruse. “Well we had to bridge this gap. We had to make sure that we had a better system of communication, not only to our operators, but also to our management.”

The FVTD quality team realized that a solution was needed. They debated several options, from outsourcing to doing modifications, but then they discovered a better solution that they had been working with all along.

Chmielewski said, “We decided we were already having success using virtual rules in Doc-Trak, so we thought, what if we can scan the signed document that the machine operator and project manager already signed off on, and attach it to the item screen using the virtual rule?”

This would work as anyone who had SyteLine access could easily see it, but that didn’t solve the problem for their machine operators who didn’t have access to SyteLine. However, the operators did have access to Shop-Trak.

“What if we could access that document that was attached via Doc-Trak in their Shop-Trak session? Eureka! That was the solution we were looking for,” said Chmielewski. “Using a combination of both Doc-Trak and Shop-Trak, we would be able to provide up-to-date information to our machine operators. The same day it was signed, we’d have it scanned into our system. If there was a job running in the shop for that same part, they would instantly be able to see if there were any noteworthy issues and the operator would be advised to avoid the same process or implement the previous operator’s solution.”

Implementing the Shop-Trak & Doc-Trak Fix

So how did FVTD implement this?

First, they created a virtual rule to allow in-process MRRs to be attached to items, jobs, and current operations, so machine operators had view of this. Next, they saved it so the MRR number was first and foremost with the information that the machinist would get because that was the document they were looking for.

Then, the job number and the item number were included so it could be linked on the jobs and the items. A note would be added to the item itself and the current operation that it happened on. This note was the month, year, and MRR number. This information told machine operators when the issue happened and what document they were looking for. This gave them the visual clue when they were looking at a job traveler if there were any issues that occurred that warranted further examination so mistakes would not be repeated. Machine operators had to make sure to take it upon themselves to look at Shop-Trak to make sure that they didn’t have the same issues.

This solution wasn’t a mod and it wasn’t a drastic change in the system. FVTD simply had to educate their machine operators to click the “documents” button in Shop-Trak prior to starting a job or while other jobs were running.

“By clicking the documents button, they were able to view the actual copy of the signed MRR, which had the exact details of the past issue, and it helped ensure that the same error didn’t happen again,” said Chmielewski. “If it was their night shift partner or if it was somebody else running the job, that person could look and see what their problem was and what did they do to fix it.”

“Plus, it also gave them the ability to go seek out that person to make sure the issue was corrected, make sure that the program was updated for them, and make sure that they had the proper tooling to complete the correct operation on it.”

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Read part 2 in this blog series where Fox Valley Tool & Die sees the results from deploying their quality program and shares some quantitative data.

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Fox Valley Tool & Die is based in northeastern Wisconsin. Founded in 1966, FVTD’s original focus was the design and building of compound and progressive dies for the lawn and garden industry. Fox Valley Tool & Die has since evolved into a precision job shop that supplies critical machined components for a range of customers and offers services in precision machining, jig grinding, wire and sinker EDM, tool and die, fixture/specialty machine, waterjet, and design engineering services. They service a variety of organizations, from Fortune 100 companies to local paper mills, and employ over 170 employees at two 65,000 square foot locations in Kaukauna, Wisconsin.