The client
FlexiForce Canada is a manufacturing company in British Columbia, Canada which serves customers throughout the Americas.
The need
The quality inspection process was largely undocumented. A set of drawings and checklists, and a few gauges, were all that existed. No inspections were being done at the supplier’s location.
The solution
I worked with our engineering team to understand the checklist items and wrote about a dozen inspection manuals. The first versions of each manual were completely devoid of any photos, as I feel that photos are often used as a crutch for bad writing. After getting the manuals to a point where the engineers and I were satisfied with them, I tested them out on a colleague who had no experience with the processes to identify any language that was not clear enough. Photos were then added where appropriate. Some additional gauges were designed and fabricated to simplify some of the inspection points.
We now had a good understanding of how to do inspections, but many items were not passing the inspections. Sending items back to the supplier was cost-prohibitive. I sent a set of manuals and gauges to our overseas colleagues in the supply country, and they went around to each supplier to perform the inspections before the items were shipped to us. They numbered and packaged the samples that they inspected in a separate box so that we could verify the results. When our engineers were satisfied that our overseas colleagues were performing the inspections correctly, and non-conforming items were being rejected before shipment, inspection activities at the destination location were discontinued.