----------------------------------------------------Business Index & ASAP------ TITLE(s): Measure for measure. (statistical process control) (Large Plant Management) illustration photograph Summary: Current Inc has gained huge benefits from its total quality management (TQM) program. Its application of the statistical process control (SPC) has resulted in cost-effective quality control of products. The company tries to strike a balance between quality and price for its clientele. SPC is employed throughout the printing operations, making quality assessment as objective as possible. In its effort to further promote TQM, employees have also been given the opportunities to take part in the decision-making process. American Printer p59(4) Jan 1993 v210 n4 DESCRIPTORS: Total quality management_Evaluation Statistical process control_Evaluation Participatory management_Analysis SPC achieves concrete results for this direct mail marketer Spoilage reduced by $1 million. Rejection rate cut from .85 percent to .48 percent. Cost per sheet pass down five percent. Customer complaints down to less than 0.1 percent. These are among the major benefits resulting from the operation of a Total Quality Management (TQM) program during the fiscal year ending June 1992 at Current, Inc. Based on the application of statistical process control (SPC), quality process control and participative or team management concepts, the TQM program is enabling the company to continuously improve quality while lowering costs. Current (Colorado Springs, CO) is the nation's largest direct mail marketer of fine paper products, cards, gift wrap and gifts. Its multimillion dollar catalog operation serves more than seven million customers nationwide. The facility consists of a design group, graphics department, plateroom, pressroom, finishing department and quality assurance department. The company has six MAN Roland sheet-fed presses, including two 40-inch six-color coater-equipped units, one with a perfecting unit. Additional equipment includes a 50-inch four-color, two 49-inch four-colors and a 50-inch two-color. In addition, a new Mark Andy 10-inch six-color web flexo press recently was installed. Finishing operations include diecutting, guillotine cutting, buckle folding, saddlestitching, automatic padding and in-line folding and gluing. According to Steve Tait, director of manufacturing and fulfillment, Current's TQM program is designed to build quality into products at the start of the printing process rather than sort it out at the end. Moreover, quality is driven by internal customers--departments that receive work from other departments--as well as the external customers who buy products. "Our goal is to achieve continuous improvement in creating an optimum balance between quality and price for our external customers," Tait explains. "We want to provide them with maximum value, based on their quality and price perceptions. "Current always has been quality and customer oriented," he continues. "Whenever there is a complaint about product quality, we replace it without question." Now, Tait adds, the TQM program gives Current the capability to achieve the best possible match between quality and price to meet the expectations of customers. Focus group research tells management these expectations are for high, card-shop quality at lower-than-discount prices, so that's what management aims to produce. Current's program is based on the use of SPC throughout its printing operations, from prepress through the plateroom and pressroom to the finished product. "Printing still is a craft, but we want to take some of the subjectivity out of it," Tait notes. "We run the same greeting cards, for example, up to four times a year. If four press operators run these jobs, there will be four different perceptions of quality. "By contrast, statistical process control makes it possible to quantify quality in terms of the print attributes of density, dot gain, contrast, hue, grayness and trap," he points out. "Press operators then can run to these absolute numbers instead of their relative perceptions, making the measurement of quality as objective as possible." To develop its SPC capabilities, Current worked closely with George Leyda, manager of the Print Technology Group of 3M's Printing and Publishing Systems Div. Under Leyda's direction, the 3M group performed a quality audit at Current as part of its value-added service to customers. The supplier also conducted process control workshops and seminars for management personnel and consulted with operators on the shop floor. In addition, the Print Technology Group provided Current with a software copy of its Porta-Print System. Used with a personal computer, densitometer and plotter, the Porta-Print automates the recording of densitometer readings, develops summaries of the means of multiple measurements and produces plots such as X-bar charts and frequency histograms. X-bar charts provide a graphic picture of the printing process performance, while frequency histograms show how measurements vary around means. To implement SPC, Current developed optimum quality standards based on customer expectations for each of the print attributes using test forms made with 3M's Matchprint II color proofing system. The Matchprint-based standards were developed for each of the attributes by each of the four process colors--yellow, magenta, cyan and black. Also, standards were developed for each of these colors by four different stock types--coated, matte, uncoated and textured. The standards then were used to comprehensively fingerprint all of Current's presses, explains Gary Benson, supervisor of training/R&D. "We had done a lot of fingerprinting in the past, but this time it was in much greater detail," he explains. "We made measurements on each unit in each press to get them to print as closely as possible to the standards." Measurements are taken on each of the 7,000 jobs Current runs annually. The measurements are made using eight wideband Status T densitometers, including six handheld units and two X-Scan densitometers mounted respectively on the 50-inch four-color press and one of the 49-inch four-color presses. Press operators pull and measure one of every 100 sheets, date and time-stamp the sheets and, if there is a problem, hold them for the quality assurance department to determine acceptability while taking steps to correct the process. In addition, the Porta-Print system is used to sample measurements on 12 to 20 jobs run on each of the four types of stock on a weekly basis. The system provides means summaries of these readings and prints out X-bar charts and frequency histograms for further review. Densitometer measurements also are made before and after maintenance is performed to assure presses remain in control. Furthermore, SPC techniques were used to qualify the Mark Andy web flexo press at its installation. "Every operation involved in the printing process now is using SPC to improve quality," Benson says. "One major result is that we have been able to produce 161,000 more salable pieces to date in 1992 versus 1991." Quality process control also is playing a major role in Current's TQM program, relates Ralph Moreman, superintendent of printing. This involves continually checking to ensure that pressroom machinery and environmental controls are functioning properly. Equipment such as densitometers, sheet cleaners and dryers, for example, are inspected twice a week. Further, all incoming materials get the once over, including paper, ink and chemicals. "We verify that we are getting the best product for the money," says Rudi Hammer, supervisor of material services/ink lab. "We continually test random samples of paper, ink and chemicals using laboratory equipment and procedures that are as good or better than those employed by our vendors." Another goal of the firm's quality process control is to comply with EPA and OSHA regulations. In recent years, the company has made dramatic changes in this area, resulting in significant improvements and substantial cost savings. More than 99 percent of all process inks now are soy-based, for instance, except for specialized metallic and heat transfer inks. Providing quality equal to or better than petroleum-based products, the soy-based inks eliminate the use of solvents and heavy metals. As a result, hazardous waste is reduced greatly and waste ink disposal costs are cut 25 percent. Current also has developed an in-house process for recycling 90 percent of all waste process inks collected at presses. Waste inks are recovered and blended back into original CMYK process colors. Press operations are alcohol-free due to the use of substitutes. Blanket washes with no carcinogens now are used in place of previous washes at a savings of $2 per gal. In addition, aqueous-base coatings are applied instead of ultraviolet coatings, providing greater environmental friendliness. Underlying Current's TQM program is a participative, or team management, approach that has been in place for a number of years. A team steering committee sets the direction for employee involvement in decision making and problem solving. Under this committee are 40 to 50 problem-solving teams that meet at least one hour a week. In one case, two action teams spent a year investigating ways to improve make-readies. The end result was a 50 percent reduction in make-ready time. Other teams in the finishing department help determine production schedules and handle problem-solving tasks. "The teams have helped us achieve a 17 percent increase in finishing productivity," reports David McCann, finishing superintendent. "This is the result of giving the people who do jobs an opportunity to do them better." In another case, a platemaking team devised ways of reducing remakes of 3M Viking GM plates returned by the pressroom due to problems such as missing, inverted or switched images, improper layout or incorrect sheet size on plates. "Two of the platemakers devised a process involving attaching a quality checklist to every job," recalls Laura Perkey, supervisor of manufacturing support services. "Use of the checklist, which requires platemakers to check off 12 items for each job color, has reduced remakes from three percent to one percent." For example, in one recent month a total of 1,600 plates were made, with only 16 needing to be remade. During the same month, the pressroom experienced problems with only one percent of plates, but these were plates that had been run once or twice before and stored between uses. Perkey also is using SPC to help improve operations. Bar graphs based on the Pareto approach, for example, recently were used to cut internal waste from three percent to 1.9 percent. In addition, the number of plates produced is being charted to achieve a goal of 22 plates per person per 12-hour shift. The team management approach requires a major emphasis on training, which Current provides through ongoing seminars and workshops. Recently, the pressroom was shut down while all 16 press operators attended a two-hour problem-solving seminar on SPC. "Some might say that we should keep operators working at all times," Steve Tait offers, "but we want to give them the best training possible. "In the future, we will strive for continuous improvement in our ability to use total quality management to provide the optimum balance between quality and price for our customers," he concludes. "Every decision is evaluated in terms of how it will affect our customers. Moreover, if there is divided opinion as to what decision to make, our customers always are the tiebreakers."