Steve Katz stevek@jmr.com said...
>Of course, we were
>building systems intended for zero failures (such as missile guidance
>systems) or extremely long life (such as telephone central office
>equipment), so reliability had to be designed in, down to the most basic
>parts. -WB2WIK/6
When I was at Northern Telecom (now NorTel) in the early 1990s, one of their
bravest quality initiatives was to pay some hefty bounties to employees who
would come forward with examples of egregious corporate waste, stupidity, or
inefficiency in customer service and in manufacturing. These reports were
written up in a widely circulated internal publication on a regular basis, and
the guilty parties were not punished -- they just had their processes adjusted
to correct the problem and prevent its reoccurrence.
Truly amazing how f***ed (where *** = oul) up they could get the simplest
processes ... like delivering phone switch documentation not to the Central
Office that controlled the remote switch, but to the switch house out in the
boonies. At that time, the complete documentation set was something like seven
PALLETS of paper, which occupied more volume than the entire remote site had
indoors.
There was also a case of a little bakelite jumper plug that was used in
practically everything they made. In about half the units, it self-destructed
before initial assembly was completed. So huge amounts of time was wasted in
rework, and in subsequent multiple replacements of the part. Finally somebody
got the good idea to _analyze_ the failure mode. The result? The molded
insulation material was re-specified. The replacement part cost LESS than the
old part. And it didn't ever fail. The report noted that the analysis took
less than a day.
I hope it helped. I dunno. They laid my brother off last week, and his
limited communications on processes suggested that "Excellence!" (their quality
program du jour) ran out of steam before he even got there.
I've thought about doing quality and process consulting. Anybody got an amp
they need tested?
Jim N6OTQ
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