Can you follow instructions?: Inspection Efficiency

Do you process existing jobs the same way every time?

If not, you may be throwing money away every time those jobs are run by having to reinvent the process over and over. If a few weeks or months go by in between runs of the same part, you may forget some nuance, whether it’s a specific cutter, a dedicated fixture or a unique method for locating the part.

For new jobs, do you plan how to process them? When quoting jobs, is the process engineer involved? If you don’t have a process engineer, whoever quotes a job should be involved during initial part setup and production. It’s also important to meet with the person who does quoting and agree on the processes used to machine and inspect each part. I call them “work instructions for the machining process” and “quality plans for the frequency of inspection and the characteristics that need to be inspected.”

The work instructions should include:

■ The bill of operations, or routing;

■ The bill of materials;

■ Images of the setup(s), special tools and fixturing arrangements;

■ Tooling and fixturing documentation; and

■ Anything that helps set up and run the job efficiently and with high repeatability.