Product Engineering - Quality Management
Incidents in the 8D problem solving method
8D-1 | Team Formation
Quality Management assumes that a QC department (team) is responsible for managing the process around incidents, define and maintain measurement templates, process measurements and take follow up actions on registered measurements.
8D-2 and 3 | Incident creation and containment
An incident is created when a measurement template has been found in the item -, item category -, standard task – or service group template. Alternatively, incidents can be created manually through the “Create Incident Wizard”. The wizard will also allow you to create incidents of the type Man, Machine and Method while the automatically created incidents are always of the type Material. When the items are serial, or lot controlled, the information card is blocked to prevent items from being selected in other processes. The program then checks if the “Automatic create measurements” setting in the Quality Management setup is on. When true the measurement is created as per the Measurement Template.
8D-4 and 5 | Analysis and corrective actions
The Measurement specifies how the analysis must take place by setting the sampling method and creating the check sheet from the question set. The sampling method determines if a physical inspection is required and how many samples must be analysed. Several sampling methods are available from simple fixed or percentage-based quantities to more advanced statistical AQL or Zero Defects methods. The check sheet specifies the criteria that need to be met (questions to be answered) in order to determine if the samples are Accepted or Rejected. Different types of questions (Boolean, Lookup, Numerical and Text) are available each with specific types of answers, from a simple Yes/No, through multiple choice type Lookups to Target values with different tolerance levels. A rating system with scores per answer and weights per question helps the inspector to determine a Good, Average or Bad result. When the check sheet is reported complete the inspector might decide to apply the result to the remaining lots in the same measurement (First Lot/Serial Approval) or to create the next check sheet in the same measurement (Recurring check sheets)
8D-6 and 7 | Verification/Registration and follow-up actions
Once check sheets are completed, they can be verified before being approved. When necessary re-tests can be triggered for a “second opinion”. When approved the measurement is ready to be registered. From the registered measurement follow-up actions can be started like creating a return order to the vendor, move the goods to a quarantine location or create an engineering change request.
8D-8 | Closing the incident
In the final step the incident is closed. Closing is only possible when all related measurements and to-dos are completed.
See also