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People who manage manufacturing operations have lived by transactional data since they first set foot on the manufacturing floor. Some of the data they use are:
- Efficiency by individual, line, department, and facility
- Machine speeds and feeds and thru put
- Inventory levels by location, part number, and category
- Quality levels by individual, line, department, machine, and cell
While cost reduction efforts will never stop, in most plants the opportunities to generate significant cost savings have probably leveled off. Without a major capital expenditure, significant savings opportunities are few and far between.
Finding cost-saving opportunities within the supply chain is also getting very difficult. How many times can a buyer go back to the same supplier and demand a 5% or 10% cost reduction for the same purchase volume? You can always change suppliers, but the risks associated with unknown quality or delivery make switching a risky option. But the need to generate savings has only grown as margin growth slows down.
Post-shipment data is the next place to look for savings.
Considering the 3 Types of Post-shipment Data
The three types of post-shipment that are extremely valuable for cost-reduction and repeat business are:
- Warranty data
- Customer feedback data (surveys and random comments)
- Technical support and field service notes and records
Warranty Data
Let’s talk about warranty data first. Typical data that is, or should be, collected includes:
- Total period warranty cost
- A pareto breakdown of item numbers and warranty cost
- Recent engineering or manufacturing changes that can affect quality
- Cause of the return or repair – A few of the most obvious information categories are which machine was used to produce, cell or line where it was made, raw material data, date when the product was produced, shipper, packer, and condition on receipt if there was shipping damage
When determining the priority in which items should be considered, part number and warranty cost are good places to start. But it is always useful to group part numbers by one or more of the manufacturing generated data like machine used, cell assembled, type of material, and material supplier or sub-contractor used – and then again sort by cost.
Customer Feedback Data
Many companies survey their customers periodically or after each interaction. These surveys generate both quantified and qualified data. If the survey is well constructed, you can get very insightful information down to a low level in the hierarchy of products manufactured. For example, someone manufacturing consumer products might receive a number of comments like “when I opened the box, I noticed the charger was missing” or “the batteries that were installed had a two-year-old date code and did not work.”
There is also another source of feedback that is often overlooked unless the customer was threatening to change suppliers or something else that would have a major business impact. This is the feedback that outside or inside sales, technical support, service, and anyone else who picks up an outside telephone line can hear from a customer.
It is not uncommon for a purchasing person to call a seller and say, “We found that 5% of your last shipment was missing these two screws. We put them in this time but if that ever happens again…”
Technical Support and Field Service Notes and Records
The people your company hires to speak with customers, either on the phone, through chat, or face-to-face, are professionals who are trained to document what they do and what they learn from customers. In the case of field service technicians, they also report on all costs and the part numbers they found defective and had to replace. Generally, they also return defective parts to the company where they can be tested and troubleshot to the lowest level to determine the root cause of the failure.
Depending on your company’s shipment and repair/replace activity, someone in service or operations can go through all records for a day, week, or month and find out which items are causing the greatest cost to you or the most significant negative impact on your customers. Next, you can go through your problem identification, understanding, and correction process just as you do with data from the two other sources.
Data is Key
Using all available data is important to improve your company’s overall fiscal performance. If you are not already using post-shipment data for this effort, you should start immediately.
Image Credit: bluedog studio / Shutterstock
