LPA is a stand for Layer Process Audit. LPA is Quality technique that focus on how well the process is working or following by the manufacturing Industry at the shop floor. LPA is not just an fault finding audit but it is a process improvement audit as it is audit where changes (Observation Closure) can be done during audit only. By LPA, rejection and other waste is reduced and work towards continual improvement.
It is one of the important part of IATF16949 (Clause no. 9.2.2.3) and OEM customers (CSR) requirement.
LPA is not only confined with Quality department, rather it include all departments and all level of management and supervisor. Supervisor do LPA at their own function and frequency of doing may be weekly. Middle management do LPA at their function and other functions also but for them frequency of doing audit may be monthly. Senior management do LPA to any one function and frequency is quarterly.
LPA in one of the Audit where supervisor and operator learn about process and also learn from audit.
An Effective LPA will reduce the defects of the company with more than 50% in just few months of its starts. Main reason for this is that senior management is involved and participate in audit which can easily analysis the high risk of the process and guide the team to correct the process and if required redesign the process.
To build an effective Layered process audit a company should follow PDCA Approach, i.e., PLAN, DO, CHECK, ACT.
In Plan Phase: Learn about the LPA and give training to the employees and then create team that will do audit and then make Question for auditing.
In DO Phase: Schedule the audit plan and check how well audit plan will conduct on time.
In Check Phase: Check what is outcome of the project and how well audit answers are noted and analysis these points.
In Act Phase: In this phase, any change in question bank, delete or add, which is found during audit or relevant to the audit, and audit schedule can be change according to effectiveness of the audit.
On the basis of PDCA we can broke LPA process in six major steps, to perform LPA effectively.
STEP1: Learn about the LPA
STEP2: Create LPA Audit Team
STEP3: Prepare Questions for LPA
STEP4: Prepare Schedule for LPA
STEP5: Execute the LPA
STEP6: Measure & continuous Improvement in LPA
STEP1: Learn about the LPA
Before starting LPA in the company and senior leaders should understand about the LPA, Best way is to hire a consultant or trainer, LPA is taught from guidelines given by AIAG in CQI-8, CQI-8 is about layered process audit.
Once Senior leaders understand about the LPA, and decided to perform LPA in the company, after this Plan training to other employees of the company (it is not necessary that team that perform LPA should get training, other may also get the training), so group training should be provided to the employee so that awareness about LPA should reached to the shop floor.
STEP2: Create LPA Audit Team
Before creating LPA Audit team, it is important to create a team that will lead LPA Team from the front. Now, this team should a create a LPA Audit team that will audit, it is important to know that, members of team that will perform LPA should come from different departments, like, Quality, production, Maintenance, HR, Sales, Marketing, etc. It is not important that team members should technical knowledge. This will help us to notice those points also which technical person don’t give importance. LPA audit team is also from different hierarchy such as, Functional Heads, Department Heads, Section Heads, Supervisors, etc.
STEP3: Prepare Questions for LPA
To perform LPA it is important to have checklist through which LPA Audit team will perform audit. For one process question bank should be same for each hierarchy.
Question bank / checklist should be simple, so that every one can understand it, as in LPA audit team members are from non-technical background also. Checklist should be short also so that audit should finish within 15-20 mins. Complex checklist will divert the purpose of audit and outcome of LPA will not be so effective.
Question can be select from last years non-conformities or from FMEA. Questions that should be part of checklist should include, severity of process, or that effect critical parameter, TPM, Safety, interaction with operators, etc.
Important to note that, answer of the question should be YES or NO only. Technical details should be specified in the audit checklist. Question should be easy to understand and have close loop.
STEP4: Prepare Schedule for LPA
Once LPA Audit team is created, LPA audit questions or checklist is prepare, now it’s time to perform audit schedule for LPA. Each hierarchy should include in schedule and frequency of each hierarchy should define in the schedule. Usually frequency of higher hierarchy is less than team from lower.
Team from supervisory level should conduct audit on weekly basis.
Team from middle management should conduct audit on monthly basis.
Team from senior management should conduct audit on quarterly basis.
Point to be note that, overload schedule may dilute the purpose of LPA. If schedule too overloaded then team will start doing for formality and actual LPA will not be performed.
STEP5: Execute the LPA
Once LPA audit team is prepared, LPA questions /checklist is prepared and LPA schedule is prepared now its big and important part of LPA is to execute LPA as per schedule. Execution of LPA is know as Roll out of LPA program. Practically hundreds or thousands of layered process audits will conduct. To Manage such bulky audit list some LPA software is useful that will also help to send the schedule thru auto generated mails to desired auditor and auditee to perform LPA.
It is important to follow up the schedule with auditor and auditee to conduct the LPA.
Point to be remembered that LPA is not blaming the other department, but it is to improve the system together. Some points during the LPA will be closed at audit time only, Auditor should allow auditee to close that point but marked it as NO in the checklist and in remark write close during the audit.
STEP6: Measure & continuous Improvement in LPA
Last and important step is to analysis and measure the LPA. Non-conformities during LPA should close within week or so, delay in closer may remain in the papers only, so it is important to take fast action on non-conformities and close within target date.
There should be record of every thing about LPA, like number of audit conducted by each employee, number of non-conformities, number of non-conformities closed.
Once, LPA process is over, it is important to revalidate the LPA schedule, question, etc. Continuous improvement in the LPA process is very important to make LPA effectively in the organization.
Implementing LPA is very tough but if LPA is implemented successfully, quality culture will seen all over the organization. It will reduce the rejection in the company and improve the production. Effective LPA make the process robust and operators will make more particular to work as per the system. LPA software should be used to make it more effective the execute the process.
Why to conduct the LPA?
LPA help us to improve following points in the company:
- There is fast change in the technology and process, so it is important that all changes should implement with the process and everyone should aware about the same. LPA help us overcome this issue.
- LPA increase the quality culture in the organization.
- LPA reduce the rejection trend of manufacturing process.
- LPA increase the customer reliability on the organization.
- LPA help us to get awareness about all the risk and opportunities in the organization.
- LPA help us to strengthen the process and identify the error proofing system, improve POKA-YOKE system.
- Increase the overall involvement of all employees of the company.
- Senior management will also be aware about the condition of shop floor and understand requirements on shop floor.
- Increase the interaction between senior management and people from shop floor, which help people of shop floor to understand the requirement of the senior management and they work accordingly.
- LPA help us to identify the error before that actually occurred, that help us to prevent the rejection and reduce any NG product reach to the customer.
Comments
Post a Comment