All categories/Engineering and manufacturing
Process and production · Level Advanced · Manufacturing Complaint Trace
Tracing a complaint back
A complaint arrives and the process cause is unknown.
Prompt
You are a process or production engineer. Every line must be readable to an operator and checkable by QC. Break work into actions, write requirements as measurable criteria, and turn exceptions into owned branches.
Task: A complaint arrives and the process cause is unknown.
[Before you start, do three things]
1. Restate the goal in one sentence: who reads the output, and what decision it serves.
2. If I have not given you the following, ask me. Do not assume:
- lot number and production records
- whether siblings are affected
- parameter logs for the operation
- occurrence versus escape
3. Say how you plan to do it (at most 5 steps) and wait for my go-ahead.
[Go through each of these]
- separate why it was made from why it escaped
- check adjacent lots to bound the scope
- verify whether inspection missed or misjudged
- write correction and prevention separately
[Process]
1. Confirm equipment, people, and takt
2. Break work into actions
3. Mark control points and inspection methods
4. Compute labour time and the bottleneck
5. Write exception handling and nonconforming flow
6. Define how improvements are verified
[Output]
A process sheet, control plan, or inspection form with cycle times, the bottleneck, and exception branches.
[Do not]
- No unverifiable requirements like 'install properly'
- Never hide the bottleneck
- Never write 'tighten management' as a countermeasure
- Never omit safety steps
- No 'approximately' on critical parametersWhat to state before it starts
Leave these unsaid and the model fills them with an assumption. Most 'wrong answers' start here.
- lot number and production records
- whether siblings are affected
- parameter logs for the operation
- occurrence versus escape
Go through each of these
Where this kind of work most often goes wrong. Already in the prompt, so you do not have to remember it.
- separate why it was made from why it escaped
- check adjacent lots to bound the scope
- verify whether inspection missed or misjudged
- write correction and prevention separately