Tag: one-off

The quality connection

Recently I wrote about quality rankings for automotive manufacturers and the perception of these rankings in the market. While the marketing teams at these companies must shoulder the burden to convince consumers about their products’ quality, there is a very real connection between product quality and configuration management.

In many industries where products have grown over time with constant additions of new features and flexibility to allow customers to build to order, the level of complexity is staggering. Often the number of configurations sold on an annual basis is surprisingly close to the total units sold for that same period. This “snowflake” situation is one of the worst possible scenarios in product complexity as each unit has its own signature. Obviously, the production of these products also requires flexibility in manufacturing. This may result in reduced use of automation, and often it leads to units being reconfigured where components installed during one step are either removed or modified in a later step due to a unique situation.

These one-off manufacturing processes open the door for product quality issues due to fewer controls during production. Put simply, if I can reduce the number of different things that must be done during production I should be able to do those things better.

So product management teams have direct input on product quality via product complexity. Managing the product option mix to reduce the overall number of configurations can promote the increased quality that all manufacturers are looking for.