How to Address Wastes from Poor Quality Through LEAN Manufacturing

Waste #5: Poor Quality—Part 6 of 8: Addressing the Seven Wastes in LEAN Manufacturing with Corporate Kiosk

Next up on our waste “hit list”: quality problems. If you’ve been following along, you know we’ve been revisiting seven wastes identified in LEAN manufacturing, a very popular post when published a while back. Nothing can damage a business or frustrate its managers more than defects in products or mistakes made while producing them.

Whether they occupy an office or manufacturing facility, companies design production systems to work efficiently and produce quality output. But problems occur. Something as simple as an inaccurate keystroke can create havoc. Other mistakes can lead to massive product recalls. LEAN manufacturing practices seek to eliminate the possibility of such occurrences.

LEAN Manufacturing Points Out Wastes from Poor Quality

Let’s start with a look at just how quality problems can disrupt a business.

Quality problems, even when detected quickly, slow down or stop systems and require correction. This, of course, creates waste as work is redone. Employee morale also takes a hit.
Damaged or incorrect products waste even more time. The entire system must be halted until the problem is detected and rectified. This impacts productivity and costs many employee hours.
When defects reach the end user, the most damaging results occur. First, your company must deal with all the problems as noted above. In addition, you have created an unhappy customer who needs to receive satisfaction. Finally, the event diminishes your corporate reputation, with potential long-term consequences.

LEAN Principles Help Protect Quality in Printing

Virtually every business uses printed pieces. Companies use order forms, receipts, and a hundred other kinds of commercial forms many times each day. Often, employees in different offices must recreate these forms (and edit them as needed), with little experience in doing so. There is an increased risk of errors, requiring (at the very least) the extra time and expense of reprinting.

Quality-related snags can also create costly waste in more sophisticated printed pieces including reports, flyers, catalogs, brochures, sell sheets and more. Again, getting these things printed is not your (or your employees’) core competency. You don’t have the experience to identify qualified suppliers, recognize relevant experience, or provide oversight throughout the project. As a result, the final product may contain errors that require revisions, reprinting or premature replacement. Even if the final piece is merely less impressive than desired, an opportunity has been wasted.

Corporate Kiosk Means Quality. and Control

Corporate Kiosk™, the e-procurement (and print-on-demand) technology from Superior Business Solutions is LEAN manufacturing’s best friend in the areas of print and promotional products. The system stores all your pre-approved business forms behind an online portal; designated employees can then access, edit, order and obtain those forms as needed. No chance for errors to enter the system because “do-it-yourself” efforts are unnecessary.

Corporate Kiosk accomplished the same valuable objective in promotional products. You choose the item and the design imprint up front. Others order from a “foolproof” menu with options already determined. No mistakes. No runaway pricing variances.

On major “one-off” printing projects, Superior Business Solutions provides the necessary experience to handle a project and a network of nearly 2000 quality print resources. That means your project goes to the supplier most qualified to deliver the quality you need on your timeframe. (Those materials can then be ordered and fulfilled through Corporate Kiosk so that everyone in the organization can obtain them as needed.)

Let LEAN Manufacturing Solve Your Quality Problems

I’m excited about this series of posts. The seven areas of waste identified by LEAN manufacturing could be impacting your business in multiple ways. We’d like to help you locate threats to quality and other wastes in your operation and eliminate them.

The series continues next week. But I’d love to talk with you about LEAN Manufacturing, and maybe get you started eliminating waste right way. Call Superior Business Solutions or contact one of our expert sales reps directly. Today’s post was about eliminating mistakes. And I think it might just be a mistake to wait.