One Company's Solution to Reducing PRR's and Controlled Shipping
The following is the first of a series of articles written by a Quality Engineer of a $400 million automotive component supplier who successfully took his PRR's from 515 to 14 in a few years, resulting in over $10 million in cost avoidance savings from Controlled Shipping Costs.
A bit of history - my company was in a world of hurt in quality. We had just launched 3 new car line products and our PRR's were out of control. We were paying out hundreds of thousands of dollars in quality sorts and there didn't seem to be an end to it. Then I got together with my people and we devised a system utilizing Customer Quality Representative (CQRs) loacted at our customer.
Customer Quality Reps
Who are they? - The CQR is my company's ambassador. The CQR regularly visits my customer and is my company's "face" with my customer. What do they do? - The CQR sees my customer on a regular basis, minimum of weekly. They do not wait for the customer to call them with a problem. They are proactive, not re-active.
How do they do it? - First of all they live near my customer. Often they cover several plants in their area. They are usually retirees from the customer they are servicing, so they have a number of relationships in the plant and knowledge of the inner workings of the plant.
They interface with my customer on Quality issues and any other issues they may have with my products (engineering, scheduling, transportation, etc.). We have found that without our own rep on site, the problem may be a customer issue and yet we end up paying the price for their mistakes!
When there is a problem the customer calls the CQR, who responds in person, handles the situation and thus you avoid a PRR or customer complaint.
Successfully Appeal PRRs
We have all been there…you know that you have put “X” amount of parts on the skid each time and labeled it correctly and all of a sudden you get the phone call that says you are getting a PRR because the skid has the wrong label...Improve Response Time...
In the global-based world of manufacturing today, hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles separate component and parts manufacturers from their customers. The lines of communication are stretched...
