Well, let’s say I have a lot of product that is underweight. I could find line time or send the lot to a third party to remove a percentage of the product with an online check weigher to raise my average weight. Or perhaps, I will just co-mingle the low weight lot with another lot of product to raise the overall average weight of the lot enough to be acceptable. Of course, there is the consideration that now I have two different code dates in a lot that will affect my ability to quickly trace the product and make shelf life management more difficult for my warehouse as well as the customer. But I did get the lot of the held stock list and I am closer to my bonus now.
Maybe I would like to increase the effectiveness of my rework crew, the second lot of product has a percentage of dented cans present due to a rotary retort “wreck”. As we are feeding the cans into the low weight lot we are inspecting the cans for dents. Are we going to remove all the dented cans? Just the double seam dents or maybe include side seam dents? We will leave the cans will little dents?
Will we take the time to create a picture chart of unacceptable dents for the rework crew to constantly reference or actual defective cans? I would believe that the crew of new employees on third shift will need to have all the help they can get since they may have minimal supervision at that time of night which is the only open line time we have available.
You come back into the plant in the morning and find another addition to your held stock list. Some sample cans of a product were sent to you from an outside warehouse that is a little swelled. The product is a high acid food so, no incubation period. Just make sure the fill temperature is above the minimum and the divert valve is working correctly. The cans have been stretch wrapped so you can see the top of all the cans and you really don’t want to run the product through the line again and lose the packaging. Let’s hand tap each can while it is in the case. Great idea, you find only 1 percent of the product is swelled, removed from the cases and destroyed. Happy days, ship the product to your distribution centers. Until you start getting customer complaints that product will swell two weeks later. You find out from some of the rework crew that works with the cooks that frozen ingredients are being added to the kettles and as soon as the kettle reach temperature, the product is released to the filler. Bad day in Red Rock, not all the ingredients center point temperatures are being checked and the frozen ingredients were not tempered properly.
Sooooo –
What do we learn about rework? How can we use the information to improve? What is the cost of rework? Does it make sense to rework? When to second sell product versus rework? When does business decisions affect the availability of rework of held stock?