Internal NCR Meetings

Hello Quality Colleagues,

I'm excited to make my first post!

A little background first: I'm in a new position at my current company, it's a very exciting time in my career as this company I'm working at is a very old style, heavy engineering company that is modernising and going LEAN. As part of that journey they've hired a Quality Engineer (me).

I've been asked to set up an NCR meeting. I've attended and led, many different NCR meetings before, where internal NCR's are dealt with however, in my opinion they aren't always effective. I don't want my NCR meeting to be a repeat of my previous meeting that was styled by my former boss. It was basically a long "list" of all the open actions on an NCR and me asking my colleagues every week where they were up to; It got stale very quick. My previous firm before that was the same, although those meetings were more of a show down, blame game, dragons den set up and instead, we went through the new NCR's.

I've been dragging my feet about setting this regular meeting up. I want it to be an engaging meeting, focused around evidence, and problem solving.

My question: What in your experience is effective for these types of meetings? And how can I inspire my colleagues to do their own Quality investigations?

What method/structure are you using to address these NCR's?

I've been part of a couple different decent NCR meeting structures. What gaps do you see in the current NCR process? That could drive how you structure the NCR meetings.

For example, we have a daily "triage" meeting with Manufacturing, QA, and any other relevant SMEs from other departments present where we go over potential quality concerns reported since the last triage meeting. Mostly, these are deciding whether a deviation occurred and assigning an owner for the NCR or whether the issue can be resolved per the relevant procedure. Even when we have a fairly large volume of concerns reported, this usually only takes 5-10 minutes per day.

On the other end of things, we do a monthly meeting where we review trending information for deviations. We look at things like extensions, recurrent deviations, effectiveness checks, Pareto charts of deviations by operation or by root cause of deviation, etc. We tailor it over time to whatever our most pressing issues are.

Scanton said:

What method/structure are you using to address these NCR's?

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The current method the company uses is that they write an NCR, the employee then prints off the NCR form and gives it to the department they believe has caused the NCR. The department either applies a "patch" and contains the problem, Or they receive the NCR and do nothing with it; the latter is the norm!

I'm starting at ground zero.

Zero_yield said:

I've been part of a couple different decent NCR meeting structures. What gaps do you see in the current NCR process? That could drive how you structure the NCR meetings.

For example, we have a daily "triage" meeting with Manufacturing, QA, and any other relevant SMEs from other departments present where we go over potential quality concerns reported since the last triage meeting. Mostly, these are deciding whether a deviation occurred and assigning an owner for the NCR or whether the issue can be resolved per the relevant procedure. Even when we have a fairly large volume of concerns reported, this usually only takes 5-10 minutes per day.

On the other end of things, we do a monthly meeting where we review trending information for deviations. We look at things like extensions, recurrent deviations, effectiveness checks, Pareto charts of deviations by operation or by root cause of deviation, etc. We tailor it over time to whatever our most pressing issues are.

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I really like the Triage format- that's a great idea

Have you thought about using a more structured method? I have automotive customers so I use 8D, however I use this for all customer NCR's and internal NCR's (regardless of industry) as it has a starting point, logical steps to complete and a end that congratulates the team that completed the work.

I support the team/department in the completion the NCR's using 8D and the corrective actions implemented seem to be effective, and once implemented, stay in place.

I'm sure many people in here (including myself) have a template they could share with you if you are interested in trying this approach, and I have found it much more engaging than throwing a problem at someone and asking them to fix it.

The 8D also acts as a record of the steps taken, and the analysis & assumptions made to conclude the root cause and implement an effective corrective action. So if it isn't 100% effective, you can re-visit it and see what you missed and/or overlooked, which of course will be valuable information if you have a repeat NCR.

Yes I have used the 8D method for large (high value and repeat) NCR's but unfortunately there is that many NCR's (hundreds, they equate to about £500K loss a year) there is no way I can possibly do that level of investigation for every one of them.

Trouble is, that with the culture here and lack of Quality awareness I'm having to do training and baby step them through the process steps. It's not a problem per-say but I'm the only person in the Quality department. The idea long term is to have people well trained enough so that they can conduct their own quality processes and I will govern it.

I agree I like the 8D format, I will be looking back on my 8Ds as I progress through this company. Happily, I'm not the kind of Quality person to throw a problem at people and ask them to fix it

When I started at my current company 11 Years ago, they got 1 or 2 NCR's a week (over 100 a year). The lack of structure in the response to these meant that they were always fire fighting and permanently fixing almost nothing.
The resource available to deal with these was one guy, me.

I adopted the 8D method (originally as a single A4 page template) and started working through these issues (as others came pilling in) to find effective and permanent fixes for each one so I wouldn't have to re-visit them.
Some of the fixes were directly translatable to other process and/or departments so we got a double whammy.

Last year we had 1 customer NCR (caused by a stupid oversight that should never have happened, it's fixed now).

If you want to chop down the most trees shortest time, you have to start by sharpening your Axe

Another thought on the triage format, if you decide to use it: It's critical that people bring the right information to the meeting. Some basic questions might include: What happened? Who reported it? When did it happen (if known), and when was it found? What product is affected? How was it found?

Scanton said:

When I started at my current company 11 Years ago, they got 1 or 2 NCR's a week (over 100 a year). The lack of structure in the response to these meant that they were always fire fighting and permanently fixing almost nothing.
The resource available to deal with these was one guy, me.

I adopted the 8D method (originally as a single A4 page template) and started working through these issues (as others came pilling in) to find effective and permanent fixes for each one so I wouldn't have to re-visit them.
Some of the fixes were directly translatable to other process and/or departments so we got a double whammy.

Last year we had 1 customer NCR (caused by a stupid oversight that should never have happened, it's fixed now).

If you want to chop down the most trees shortest time, you have to start by sharpening your Axe

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Thankyou, that's genuinely filled me with lots of confidence that I'm on the right track. Great advice