Introduction to problem solving

In the current world market, customers have a wide variety of options for products and brands to choose. In order to survive, companies must offer products with high quality and value for the customers. However, even the companies with the greatest level of excellence have sometimes, quality issues, that could be design related or process related. Companies must have defined a series of problem solving techniques to be able to detect root causes and take the necessary actions to avoid reocurrence. 

What is a problem?

The most simple way to define a problem would be a gap existing between the current situation and customer satisfaction, that is, a discrepancy between the standard or expectation and the current situation.

Our focus to the problems must be identifying in them opportunites for the continuous improvement growing to the excellence.

What is problem solving?

It's a structured approach which identifies, analyzes and eliminates the existent discrepancy between the current status and the standard, and prevents the problem to happen againg by identifying its root cause.

Problem solving must be done by a multidisciplinary working team. It's worth to know that the more people is involved in the problem solving, the more problems are solved and more stability is created. As more stability is created, more resources are "free" and more people can be involved in the problem solving.

Steps for the problem solving

Each problem should have an standard report for problem solving that would include the following steps:

1. Problem definition

First of all a brief description of the issue that is occuring must be done.

Afterwards, problem definition is carried out in which the following questions must be completed to understand what's happening:

• What should be happening? (Standard)
• What's really happening? (Deviation)
• How long has been occurring?
• How often does it occur?

2. Containment

After finishing the first step, we must go activity by activity to find the point of cause, this is, the place in which the problem is occurring. We must start the investigation beginning downstream in the process, this is, since the last to the first process.

Once the point of cause is encountered we must determine the best method to contain the problem, in other words to carry out actions for mitigating the effects of the problem detected and avoid its recurrence. It must also be reviewed:

• Data of last parts reviewed with ok result in the characteristic in which we are having the problem.
• Begin containment procedure and establish a potential quantity of suspecious material to verify, ensuring that the problem is "captured" on time and the final customer is protected. (See containment procedure).
• Through containment procedure ensure that all the areas are covered including final customer facility.

3. Root cause analysis

The process of root cause analysis is used to find out the cause of a problem or incident. To carry out the mentioned analysis there are several tools available and we must choose between them depending on the complexity of the process and the type of failure mode. Below you can find the links to different posts explaining these methods:

• 7 Diamond process, based on an exhaustive analysis of the processes ensuring that tools and machinery are working properly.
• 5 Whys, in which continously is asked the question "why?" until reaching the root cause of a problem.
• Ishikawa Diagram, also named fishbone diagram or cause-effect diagram.

4. Implementation of corrective actions

For the implementation of corrective actions the people from the different areas must join to a crossfunctional meeting and by using a "brainstorming", the most effective, efficient and economical solution will be selected.

Sometimes it's necessary to make a production trial run to validate if those actions solve the problem or not. For that purpose an small batch with these actions implemented must be produced and the result would be evaluated afterwards.

After that, a timing must be developped. This timing should show the different steps and the breakpoint in which the problem will be solved, this is, when the root cause of the problem will dissappear.

5. Verification of the effectiveness of the actions implemented

After the implementation of the corrective actions, its effectiveness must be verified. For this, we must choose a person who whould be responsible of coordination and follow-up activities with below tasks:

• Verify effectiveness through data analysis
• Establish a verification period and make the follow-up in a calendar.
• Make layered process audits to check that the changes have been done in a consistent way.

6. Institutionalize

In this phase it must be identified products and processes that could have a similar failure mode and problem must be added to a database with all the lessons learned.

In case of being a big company with more than one facility the standard procedure must be shared in the organization to avoid that it happens in any plant.

Also, the quality documentation will need to be updated taking into account this failure mode in:

• PFMEA
• Control Plan
• Error-Proofing Systems verification, because maybe red rabbits that were being used to verify them were not taking into account that failure mode.
• Standardized Work, because in many cases it's possible that method or sequence of work elements need to be changed.