Beware of Document Conflicts in Your QMS

Ford’s “can’t rather than don’t” should apply to work instructions

In “Why Companies Fail Quality Audits” (Manufacturing Engineering, May 1996), Robert M. Bakker cites control of documents as one of the three major sources of QS-9000—now ISO/TS 16949—nonconformances, and there is indeed plenty that can go wrong, even with an electronic system. Conflicting instructions in different documents are likely to be the greatest source. We will begin, however, with a discussion of why documents are so important.

The role of documents

A common misperception of ISO 9001:2008 and similar standards is that they are mostly about documentation and paperwork. Documents are an indispensible means to the actual goal: standardized control of the system that delivers products or services. This is the foundation of what Frederick Winslow Taylor in 1911 called “scientific management” (see the 1997 Dover reprint of The Principles of Scientific Management), and which Henry Ford deployed on a massive scale during the 1910s.

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Comments

Ford invented TPS? Really?

"We reconstructed Ford’s methods from his books and those of
his contemporaries, but if the company ever had a comprehensive written set of
guidelines and procedures for lean manufacturing, we have not been able to find
it. This is why Ford Motor Co. did not even recognize the Toyota Production
System as its own invention until the past decade or so."

A decade ago Ford recognized they invented TPS? And they made this determination based on standardized work flow? I don't get it. Why didn't Ford publicize this discovery? I thought TPS was way more than standardized work flow.

Based on my expereince as a supplier to Ford, and by what I have read and studied about TPS, and based on my experience as a supplier to other Japanese auto comapncies, Ford and TPS are not even close to similar in approach and philiosphy.

I would love to see a white paper on Ford's recoginition of inventing TPS!!!!!

Ford and TPS

Ford's "My Life and Work" (1922) describes Just In Time manufacturing very explicitly and adds the need to eliminate variation in material transfer time to avoid the need to carry inventory. Ford's workers at the River Rouge plant were empowered to stop the line in the early 1930s, long before this became a Toyota hallmark. Design for Manufacture also was practiced at Ford, and the same can be said of many other elements of TPS. Taiichi Ohno, in fact, made no secret of the fact that he got most of his ideas from Ford. I was actually the one who recognized that Ford developed TPS; a decade ago, its vice presidents thought they were importing Japanese methods and getting their workers to forget everything Henry Ford had taught them about making cars--when they were actually teaching their workers how Ford said to make cars.