Full Time to Volume in New Product Introduction

I spoke last time about using PLM (Product Life Cycle management) design information and transferring this into the product delivery phase.  The use of PLM systems has become more common in aerospace and medical device sectors, in the medical device sector they have to manufacturer products to exacting standards and approved processes, quality is designed in at the design phase which has given rise to the term "quality by design”,  the implications of this are that you have to operate to these exacting standards.

We visit many medical device companies who are using systems to help control the many key process and production parameters which were initial understood in the design phase but don’t managed to produce high yield and low reject rates.  This becomes especially important when a company is a new product introduction phase and needs to achieve high product rates.

The logical approach is to apply KPI’s and statistical process control techniques to control the individual production and process variable and gaining a greater understanding and tighter control limits, but still many companies still tell us they care controlling these limits in the complete process but still can’t achieve the product volumes needed.

Lately we have been developing some “magic” that allows you to understand the many complicated interactions and dependencies in a process.  It’s not an analytic tool but an enabler for your process expert. 

An important feature is understanding why bad product is made rather than a focus on controlling an individual variable.  Why do I call it “magic”, well the first time I saw it in action I was amazed.  I could see and understand the inter-dependencies that effected the final product quality, what we gained was a set of “patterns” that you can use to start and predict when things are likely to go wrong and make adjustments. If you are having these issues I would love to hear from you so we can share some “magic”.  Contact: info@emspt.co.uk

Richard Stone, Business Unit Manager, Enterprise Manufacturing Systems (EmsPT)