Case Studies

Company X is one of the world’s 20 largest suppliers and a development partner to the automotive industry. It offers innovative mobility solutions that stand for clean air, fuel efficiency, and driving pleasure. Company X is now present on five continents, 170 production locations, and 16 major research and development centers employing 77,000 people around the world.

YYAN is a hub for quality management software that strengthens methodical adherence to processes in the manufacturing & automotive industry. It reduces human dependence on process adherence and provides real-time management reporting. YYAN uses the 8D methodology to reach the root cause and find a solution. YYAN has successfully provided its software expertise in Defect Management, Supplier Management & Rating, Audit Management, and various other areas.

Company X is a large organization with its presence worldwide and across multiple cities in India. When an organization grows it needs to set processes & procedures to ensure standardization in its products supplied to the customers. Company X was also facing similar challenges as others in the automotive manufacturing sector while ensuring the processes are followed rigorously by all its employees & suppliers. There were challenges in following methodologies to proactive communication to managing suppliers.

• Inconsistent problem-solving process: The organization followed the 8D methodology in handling defects and finding the root causes for ensuring their proper resolution. But the following questions arose every now and then:-
  • Is 8D methodology being followed for ALL defects religiously?
  • Are all the 8 steps of the 8D methodology followed for each defect especially “Actions were taken to prevent reoccurrence”?
  • Are we recording all the defects for knowledge management and future use?
• Lack of accountability: The defects were recorded in excel and responsibilities were assigned manually. Nobody else apart from the assignee and the person assigned the responsibility of resolving the defect knew who was working on a particular defect. If the accountable person is not available, things used to go on a slow track until the person is back. Defects used to linger on making customers unhappy and senior management jittery.
  Accountability was missing as there was no visibility.
• Reactive communication & status update: The communication happened only after a certain milestone is achieved or whenever someone asked for the status. The organization was following a reactive approach to resolving customer problems. Senior management used to rely on weekly/monthly updates and there was no
  channel to keep them on top of high severity defects and customer issues.
• Repeat Defects: Like most other organizations, Company X was also facing a situation where it was spending a lot of precious time and effort in resolving defects that were a repeat of defects resolved earlier. Sometimes the team missed out on following the “Action taken to prevent reoccurrence” step and the defect reoccurred. Across the industry, repeat defects are a big concern. It relates to attrition too and creates avoid if the previous expert has left the organization without leaving details on what all he did to resolve some key defects and the defect reoccurred. The organization has to spend some time and effort in resolving it again.
• Localized problem solving: Sometimes it happened that a similar defect was resolved in some other part of the organization by some other team in some other plant but nobody outside of the team knew about it. Big organizations have their operations spread across different parts of the world. Different plants are manufacturing products, facing defects, and resolving them locally without any information outside their team or plant. Company X was also going through this challenge and was not utilizing its own knowledge in resolving defects across multiple locations. Time and effort were spent in resolving the same problem again and again at different plants in different cities across different countries.
• Manual monthly Management Reporting: Company X has multiple plants across India itself. The Quality Head sitting at India Head Office every month asks for a monthly defects report from all the plants in India. The respective plant’s Quality Manager prepares/maintains an 8D report of defects in an excel sheet and sends it across to Quality Head sitting in Head Office. The Quality Head coordinates with all the plants and gets similar excel reports from all the plants every month. After receiving all the reports, he collates the data together, prepares graphical representations & charts for senior management view, and sends it across to the leadership. It takes multiple days in this process of getting reports from all the plants, collating the data together, prepare charts, and presenting it to the senior management. By the time it reaches leadership, the data is at least a few days (mostly weeks) old and there was no mechanism to view real-time status in this era of a quickly changing world. The time gap and effort spent in this process take us back to the time when information technology did not exist and the speed of change was slow. Organizations could have afforded this speed at that time but now the world is changing every moment and we need to keep pace with it to keep ourselves in business.
• Supplier Defects: Organisations procure various raw materials and finished goods from their suppliers. It performs its due diligence on these goods and sends them across to its customers. Company X was also undergoing a similar process and noticed that the big chunk of defects it get from its customers have aroused from its suppliers. The defect was passed on to the supplier but there was no proper mechanism to see what steps were taken to resolve it and ensure it doesn’t reoccur.
• Supplier Ratings: Company X has a vast number of suppliers and it was difficult to manage and rate their services. Managing a big number of suppliers in excel reports based on manual inputs/interference, it was not possible to provide a fair and unbiased rating to its suppliers. It usually leads to incorrect assessments and results in wrong decisions which are not in the interest of the organization.

Solutions Provided by YYAN are the following :

• A systematic approach to problem-solving: YYAN provided a software solution for 8D methodology. For each defect, every step needs to be followed. A defect can’t be moved to the next step unless the previous step is closed or updated. Company X has also fixed a timeline for each step failing which the defect will be escalated to the higher up in the hierarchy. All the defects are now logged into the software which is building a strong “Past Trouble Database” for knowledge management. There are organizations where defects are logged in excel, there are organizations where some of the defects are resolved on WhatsApp and there are organizations where some of the resolutions of the defects are provided on phone itself without recording anything for future use. Knowledge management using YYAN software can be extremely helpful in recording resolutions of the defects and using them whenever required.
• Accountability & Visibility: We are all aware how good an organisation becomes when people start taking accountability of the work they do and how worse that can go if people don’t own up to the work they have handled. Have we ever wondered why does this happens? This occurs due to the lack of visibility and clarity in the ownership of a task/problem..
• Reactive communication & status update: The communication happened only after a certain milestone is achieved or whenever someone asked for the status. The organization was following a reactive approach to resolving customer problems. Senior management used to rely on weekly/monthly updates and there was no channel to keep them on top of high severity defects and customer issues. In YYAN, at Step D1 itself, you are asked to assign a team/individual to a defect who will be working on the resolution of that defect. As you assign the team, an email gets triggered to the people that defect has been assigned. There is full clarity on what role those individuals will be playing while resolving that defect and anyone can log on to the software and check who all are working on which defect. Company X resolved all its ambiguities and issues of accountability by clear assignment of responsibilities at the outset of the arrival of a problem/defect. The benefits are realized by people handling the defects before the software was installed. They only understand how difficult was their job earlier when accountabilities were not fixed and how easy that has become when they clearly know whom they need to approach for what.
• Screenshots: D1 Stage – Assign Team:
• Proactive communication & status update: When Information Technology has reached its pinnacle, Indian manufacturing is still regarded as “laggards” when it comes to adopting technological innovations. Proactivity is the need of the hour. Communication channels should be such that they can provide live updates of every moment to the leadership. Those are the things of the past now when leaders used to be happy getting monthly/weekly/daily updates. The world is changing so fast that if they are not getting the real-time status of what’s going on in their organization and outside they may end up taking their organization backward rather than taking it forward. It’s not only about leadership, it’s also about the customer. A customer would feel satisfied if he gets real-time updates on the progress of the issue he has raised. This bridges the gap between the organisation and its customers. After YYAN came into picture, leadership at Company X doesn’t need to rely on one of its employees to chase and spend time getting updates on any high severity defect. Whatever is being done on any defect it is being logged regularly into the software and is visible in real time to every authorized person in Company X. There is n number of management reports prepared real time by the YYAN software which helps the senior management at Company X get a big picture view and also charts which helps them drill down deeper into it.
• Repeat Defects: Repeat defects could be handled by effective data management & performing Step D7: Action is taken to Prevent Reoccurrence rigorously. YYAN provides a PTDB (Past Troubles DataBase) for storing all completed problems with their solutions for future usage. Old defects could be accessed and checked what solution was provided when the same/similar problem occurred earlier may be in some other part of the organisation. This helps in reducing efforts in resolving similar defects. Even if a person has left the organisation, his knowledge could be leveraged by seeing the PTDB. Completing Step D7 of the 8D methodology rigorously can proactively help an organization reduce its Repeat Defects by reviewing similar processes and updating relevant documents such as PFMEA, DFMEA, Control Plan, etc.
  Updation of related documents will help the process correction and help in reducing the defects.
  Company X has also started the process of reducing its Repeat defects and it will take some time to develop a strong Past Troubles Database and use it as a knowledge base. Measures to implement actions for preventing reoccurrence in Company X are taken up with more rigor and intensity as it is a mandatory step before one can proceed on to the next step for concluding the defect.
• Screenshots: D7 Stage – Action to Prevent Recurrence:
• Localized problem solving: YYAN has implemented horizontal deployment with the help of our software and encourages sharing of related defects across locations wherever the related process is deployed. With the help of horizontal deployment, Company X is enabled to proactively propagate the defects’ resolutions to other plants using the same processes. This not only resolves issues proactively but also supports improving the quality of the products.
• Real-time Management Reporting: YYAN provides access to multiple management reports which keep building up as soon as the defects data is entered into the system. As soon as the Quality Managers or any other Point of Contact punches the defects data into the system, it starts reflecting all across the organisation. Earlier Quality Head needed to wait for him to send across the data but now that time gap has been reduced to zero as he can go to the YYAN system and download the real-time report to present it to the leadership. There are ‘n’ number of reports available in the software and shows data with respect to different plants, segments, defects, complaint type, customer-wise, root cause type etc.
• Supplier Management System: YYAN has developed Supplier Management System which takes care of defects passed on to the suppliers and assesses them to provide supplier ratings based on multiple parameters. The defect management software finds out the cause of defect and if the defect has originated from a supplier, it will be passed on to the supplier using Supplier Management System to follow the 8D methodology.
• Screenshots: Management Reports: