Bold Group
Inspecting plastics before the colour goes on.
A factory making automobile parts by plastic injection. Before this work, its production waste was worth about 180 million baht a year.
The situation
What a reject was worth depended on where in the line it was found, and every reject was found at the end.
The plant ran one quality-control station, checking finished parts before they went to the warehouse. Colouring happens earlier in the line, and it cannot be undone. A piece rejected before colouring can be melted down and put back in as raw material. The same piece rejected after colouring is waste.
The turn
Inspection stood past the point of no return.
Quality control belongs at the end of the line, on the finished part.
At what point on this line does a rejected piece stop being material we can use again, and is anyone looking before then?
The decision: the client added an inspection before colouring, at the last point where a rejected piece is still material the line can use again.
Before
- Injection moulding
- Colouring: cannot be undone
- Inspection at the end of production
- Rejects are waste
Every defect was found after the point where the material could be saved.
After
- Injection moulding
- New inspectionrejects go back into the melt
- Colouring: cannot be undone
- Inspection at the end of production
It required no expensive equipment.
Schematic, not to scale.
How we worked it
How the gap was found.
- 01
Walk the line
Go through production step by step and find the step at which a rejected piece stops being material that can be used again and becomes waste.
- 02
Name the step that cannot be undone
Colouring. Before it, a reject is plastic that can be melted and returned as raw material; after it, the same piece is waste. That one step splits the line into a part where a mistake is recoverable and a part where it is not.
- 03
Compare it with where inspection stands
Inspection sat at the end, where the product is finished. Every reject was found after the material had been committed, not because inspection was poor, but because of where it stood.
Saw the gap between where defects were found and where material could still be recovered. Our contribution was that observation.
Designed the second inspection, staffed it, installed it and runs it. Its accounting department built the cost model and owns its assumptions.
What came of it
With one inspection team added before colouring, the client’s accounting shows the annual cost of waste from rejected finished goods falling from about 180 million baht to about 45 million baht: about 135 million baht saved a year, after the cost of running the second station. A piece caught before colouring recovers three quarters of what it would otherwise cost as waste: half is the colouring never performed on it, a further quarter is the uncoloured plastic going back into the melt.
The figures come from the client’s own accounting after the change. We did not measure them ourselves. Physical waste and accounting cost are different measures.
How we label evidenceIs this your situation?
Signs
- A step in the process cannot be undone, and a unit rejected after it loses value it still had before.
- Inspection sits after that step rather than in front of it, because it was placed where the product is finished.
- Material rejected before that step can go back into the process as input.
Start here
Bring the result you need, and the thing you have been told cannot change.
One hour with a founder. You leave with a first view of where the answer may sit, and which engagement, if any, fits.
Teerasak WongpiyaCo-Founder and Managing Director
1 hour, in Thai or English, online or at your office.