Manufacturing
From large-scale batch processing to custom-building machinery and parts, Woodside Quality Solutions has solid experience working with many types of manufacturers. We have effectively used Six Sigma to improve all aspects of manufacturing, business and logistics systems with great success.
Coater Yield Improvement
Pre-Project Situation
Client had long been plagued by yield loss from several seemingly uncontrollable factors in a mass film-coating process.
Project objective was framed to “increase overall yield from 53% to 73%.
Project Highlights
Detailed Process Mapping and Value Stream Mapping revealed a number of potential areas for improvement; Six Sigma Black Belt's data collection and analysis validated several key drivers.
Designed experiments on film cutting, key electronic feeds, regulation of air over key airfoils and redesigned airfoils yielded viable solutions.
Results
Rolled Throughput Yield increased from 53% to 73%.
Several other projects spun off from this one—these projects promise further yield enhancements to critical subprocesses.
Lessons learned in this project were promulgated to several other coating processes at the company; those implementations are expected to reap similar benefits.
Cost of the project was less than $220,000.
NPV for the project benefits: $8.4 Million
Supplier Quality Projects
Pre-Project Situation
Executive team made Enhanced Supplier Quality and Relationships a strategic objective
Project Highlights
Vendor representatives contributed to the Six Sigma improvement teams.
Teams quickly learned that quality problems were not vendor quality problems, but resulted from mishandling, improper assembly and testing procedures within the client’s plant.
Delays that had been blamed on the piece-parts vendor were actually caused by poor within-plant communication and scheduling, also within the client’s plant.
Results
Project was completed within six months.
Cost savings due to improvements in scheduling: $32,000 per month.
Documented cost savings due to lower defect rates: $62,000 per month.
Total savings documented: over $1,128,000 per year.
Wood Processing Yield Improvement
Pre-Project Situation
In a pilot project for Six Sigma, the executive team met and reviewed strategy, then set criteria for project selection.
Management champions selected a project to improve yields in wood processing, based on those criteria.
Yields in this process had been averaging 70 percent.
Project Highlights
A Six Sigma team discovered wasted steps, and an automated system creating bottlenecks and materials waste.
Data collection and analysis debunked long-held assumptions about the process.
The team tested new procedures, gaining a 25 percent reduction in cycle time, a 20 percent reduction in incoming materials used, and a five percent gain in yield.
Other yield gains came via new procedures for grading incoming materials and in new processing procedures.
Results
Most analysts felt that realized savings were the “tip of the iceberg,” and didnt’ include unknown, long-term dollars in opportunity cost, capacity improvements, and market penetration.
Project was completed in 3 months at a total cost of about $60,000.00.
Due to reduced incoming material costs, machine usage costs, and processing costs, the team documented over $1.6 million in savings .