It pays to search for the root cause.

Situation
A leading manufacturer of safety-critical automotive components was experiencing high internal reject rates on machined parts. Over 10% of these rotating components failed to meet customer specifications for static and dynamic balance. The parent company had determined the problem to be unsolvable, so manual inspection was employed to sort parts, and repair or scrap non-conforming product.

Our Approach
We helped the plant management team understand that sorting, repair and scrap costs were unacceptable and would limit future business opportunities for the company. They accepted the challenge to determine the root cause of the unbalance problem with the ultimate goal of eliminating manual sorting. An interdisciplinary team of design, engineering and manufacturing people was assembled and experiments were conducted to determine the effect of all upstream processes on the unbalance problem.

Results
Through innovative thinking and unprecedented cooperation among functional groups, rejects were reduced to less than 3% and a promising in-line balance detector is being evaluated.