Schneider Electric standardizes internal defect system to increase customer satisfaction with better overall quality and flexible sourcing.
Disparate Systems Mask Problems and Solutions
As the Operations Quality Manager over ten plants in the ETO Equipment Cluster of Schneider Electric, Jeff Fletcher oversees the quality of the product leaving the plants. And his primary metric was customer feedback and complaints. When they received customer complaints, “it was difficult for me to understand which plants were doing well in certain areas, and which plants were not doing well”
Each plant labeled defects in their own way. A “missing part” in one plant was “part missing” in another plant – two different defects! On top of that, each plant had its own home-grown system to track internal defects. Fletcher needed to interpret reports and try to determine how plants were doing based on different data sets.
When a customer placed an order they didn’t care which plant fulfilled it, but they expected the same quality whichever plant it came from. Fletcher knew that a lack of standardization meant that he didn’t know how well a plant was doing. “I couldn’t guarantee their quality.”
Flexible Sourcing Model Forces Standardization
Continuing to use their existing disparate systems created risks associated with inconsistent product quality leading to frustrated customers. Schneider Electric wanted a flexible sourcing model, shipping products from whichever plant had capacity.
Actionable Data Creates Opportunity for Continuous Improvement
Fletcher turned to GainSeeker to help solve his problems. Instead of custom reports from home-grown systems, he could now access the data in one central database. Standardizing their defect system forced them to clarify their defect definitions so that “missing part” meant the same thing.
Now when Schneider Electric does have a quality issue, anyone can log into GainSeeker to view all the plants, and with just a few clicks get all the way down to the operator level. Fletcher said, “Our executives could not believe you could drill down all the way to the employee who made the error in a matter of seconds.”
This visibility into the data creates opportunity for continuous improvement across all of the plants. They can easily compare one plant to another and leverage systems that work in one location in another location that is struggling. As Fletcher explained, “The return on investment is really the things that are actionable from the analysis of the data. You want to know: What actions have you taken?” GainSeeker provides that visibility.
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