Several years ago, when I was visiting an apparel factory in Asia, I witnessed a manufacturing mix-up. Because of an error during a dyeing process, the factory had produced thousands of shoes with blotchy, purplish soles instead of pink soles. Of course, this isn’t a unique situation in manufacturing. When you’re dealing with complex systems operating in an even more complex world, you can’t completely eliminate errors. Every day, companies discover errors in finished products, from material defects to error-laden labels.

Understandably, businesses don’t want defective products on the market. Defects can pose a signficant risk to brands whose reputations are built on delivering safe, high-quality products. Even functioning products with cosmetic defects, like the shoes with blotchy soles, can pose financial risks. If a defective product is unmarketable – if there’s no demand for it – it doesn’t make sense to sink more money and resources into packaging, shipping, warehousing, and using retail space for it.

So, millions of tons of fuels and other material resources are used to reprocess defective products. – read more –

Tagged as: Business, errors, manufacturing, Measurement, quality, Resource Performance, Waste

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