Joyce’s Program Helps Stop Errors Before They Happen
In a perfect world, everything works well and mishaps are picked-up before they occur.
However, in a major manufacturing environment, mistakes can happen. And when they do, it’s important to learn from them.
As part of Joyce’s continuous improvement approach and our determination to exceed our customer’s expectations, we’ve developed a comprehensive Corrective Actions Program.
The aim of our corrective actions program is to:
● Anticipate errors and correct them before they happen.
● Identify and record errors at every stage of our product process.
● Make our processes more efficient, reduce waste and avoid any loss of production time when errors need to be fixed.
● Maintain our customers’ trust in our ability to deliver as promised on all orders.
● Remain competitive by offering superior products and services.
Sarah Burley, Joyce’s National Customer Service Manager, had been involved in the implementation of such a program in her previous workplace.
“The company I worked for previously had a corrective actions system as part of their ISO 9001 accreditation, and I was part of the compliance team. I saw the importance of capturing any issues experienced and developing preventive measures to ensure they didn't recur,” explained Sarah.
“There were times when a number of small issues arose. As standalone incidents, they didn't seem significant. But when we had a system to track all of these minor issues, it became clear we needed to make improvements.”
As we developed the program, we recognised that its success would take the commitment of every department at Joyce. That’s why the compliance team includes senior staff from production, customer service and sales.
Diego Florez, Production Manager at Joyce’s Moorebank headquarters, confirmed that there are many corrective actions programs used in modern manufacturing environments. These include Lean Manufacturing, Six Sigma, 5S methodology and the Continuous Improvement method.
“The common goal of these models is to reduce waste and production errors, while increasing productivity and customer satisfaction,” said Diego.
“Joyce’s corrective actions program is part of a bigger continuous improvement system. It not only identifies production issues, but it also works as a communications system. The system allows different departments to work together in order to provide better products and services to our customers.”
Here’s how the Corrective Actions Program works
The Customer Service department drives the corrective actions process. Once an incident is reported, they enter all available information into the corrective action system to provide an overview of the issue.
The Customer Service representative allocates the corrective action to the manager of the department responsible for the issue.
The manager investigates the matter using the ‘5 Whys’ technique to determine the root cause of the problem, and then develop a preventive measure.
Once this has been done, a report is completed and distributed to senior management and department heads.
The agreed corrective action is implemented to prevent the error from reoccurring.
Bolstering our Quality Management System
Our aim is to reach zero level of corrective actions. So far, 99.8% of orders were delivered error free, so we’re confident we’ll reach our goal in the near future.
The Corrective Actions rate is linked to other quality metrics we track, such as our national Delivery in Full on Time (DIFOT) and average lead time. During the previous quarter, 99.2% of orders were delivered in full and on time, while the average turnaround time was 2.1 days.
There’s no doubt our Corrective Actions Program will help us provide better service to our customers, supporting our strong focus on quality every step of the way.
For more information on the corrective actions program, contact Customer Service at 1800 021 304 or email sales@joyce.com.au.
