----------------------------------------------------Business Index & ASAP------ AUTHOR(s): Bergstrom, Robin P. TITLE(s): Nurturing quality in Charlotte. (North Carolina) (quality control in manufacturing) (company profile) illustration photograph Summary: Japanese machine tool manufacturer Okuma Machinery Inc (Charlotte, NC) successfully has used traditional Japanese techniques kaizen, meaning continuous improvement, and quality circles, a peer-review process, for quality control instead of the widely employed statistical process control (SPC). Okuma management believes the Japanese techniques work, even though they have failed elsewhere in the US because workers in the Charlotte area have had no experience with the metalworking industry, or kaizen and quality circles. Quality circles have been tried at other companies and discarded because they often degenerated into arguments. Despite the success at Okuma, as its customer base grows, the firm is facing pressure to conform to quality control procedures, such as SPC, because the procedures provide documentation acceptable to US firms. Production p78(3) March 1990 v102 n3 DESCRIPTORS: Statistical process control_Usage Amidst calls for formal quality systems, one machine tool builder thinks culture and attitude might be just as important. Okuma Machinery, Inc. (Charlotte, NC) has been in operation fewer than three years and has gone from shipping nothing to roughly 65 units a month. A pretty quick ramp-up for the Japanese transplant. But there are other things that are unusual about this manufacturer of machining centers and lathes. One is its philosophy toward quality, which is really quite simple and amounts to this: attitude and culture (or a lack thereof) can deliver consistently top notch quality products, and if that's the case, then don't mess with it. The message? Quality, like many things, is best governed by the old saw "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." What, no SPC? That's right. You won't find SPC being used in a formal way at Okuma. Further, there's no quality department. Nor, too, is there a quality manager. You might ask, how can this work, without process control verification and documentation, without charts, without trend information, without ... inspection? Well, according to Bob Boekhout, vice president of manufacturing, it works just fine. "We chose a philosophy here," he says, "that dictated that we not put the quality emphasis in any one area. Instead, we have a total orientation toward quality. And everyone of us is involved, from the bottom up to the top down, from the very first day of employment, to every day thereafter. And it's working. I've never seen a disciplinary action of any kind related to quality. If we've got a quality issue, it's because we've failed to provide the proper equipment, training, or workplace preparation." One of the things that Boekhout suggests about the difference in Okuma's approach as opposed to other manufacturers is its patent disregard for inspection. Inspecting the product, he says, is looking at manufacturing from the wrong perspective. "Inspecting a part and discovering that we've machined it incorrectly is already too late," he says. "You don't want to inspect your product; you want to inspect the process by which you make that product--in this case the machine tool." Boekhout points out that all the machine tools involved in the manufacturing process are routinely dismantled and given thorough preventive maintenance. He says that by focusing their inspection efforts on the machine tool, they can eliminate part inspection and, by and large, bad parts. Quality circles. Not only is Okuma a corporate transplant, it has brought with it a number of Japanese manufacturing philosophies as well. One, which has proven somewhat controversial and about which much has been written, is the quality circle. The other is called Kizen, which means simply "continuous improvement" and about which little has been written, most probably because the kizen philosophy is pretty much self explanatory and straightforward. Quality circles actually got some pretty bad press about a decade ago. Once thought to be an important key to product improvement, they soon became suspect and were later dropped altogether in many places--especially the U.S. auto industry. What had started out to be a peer review process and dialogue with an eye toward constantly improving the product often disintegrated into peer squabbles and finger pointing sessions about quality problems. Yet the circles work at Okuma. Boekhout: "We've four circles in the machine shop. They're chaired by direct labor, by machine shop personnel, and the chair rotates every two months. The circles meet once a week, and the interaction and results have been impressive." Why is it that quality circles can work at Okuma and not elsewhere? Boekhout has some thoughts on this as well. He says that the reason Japanese manufacturing philosophies work at Okuma is two fold. One has to do with attitude and the kizen philosophy itself. The workers at Okuma, Boekhout says, really believe in quality, day in and day out. The second reason is a bit unusual. "Culture," Boekhout says. "We were very fortunate to start this plant where we did. We had no culture to overcome." What Boekhout suggests here is that there was a distinct advantage to starting a machine tool plant in a geographic and demographic area which was relatively ignorant of metalworking. "When we decided to transplant some of these Japanese practices," he says, "no one could stop and think, `Gee, that's not the way we do things in the U.S.' So, things like kizen and quality circles were accepted." He also suggests that had Okuma located its plant in another area of the country, some things might not have gone as well. "I'm sure," he says, "had we located up north or in the rustbelt, we would have had problems with some of our programs, precisely because of existing metalworking cultures or biases. Here we had no culture. Here we had to create one, and that's proven a great advantage." Slow turning. This may sound like a nice story with nothing but happy endings, and that may very well be true. However, Okuma is undergoing a slow turning of sorts with respect to its quality program. Just like every other supplier to the major machine tool users in the U.S., Okuma is having to conform its quality procedures according to the standards of the GMs and Fords and Chryslers and Caterpillars. Boekhout says that right now Okuma is very fortunate in that it is a major supplier to Caterpillar, with something in the neighborhood of $20-25 million in orders. But he knows, too, that the time is coming for change. "We realize," he says, "that it's only a matter of time before they come in here--the GMs or the Caterpillars--and say, `Sure, we know Okuma produces a quality product, but you're just going to have to put your documentation in a format that's more acceptable to us.' Look, everyone else is having to do that. So, too, will we. And we can do that. It's just a matter of allocating the resources. Once you've got the attitude, the quality comes. And the rest is easy." PHOTO : The lathe assembly line at Okuma in Charlotte, NC. Okuma ships about 65 machine tools a PHOTO : month from the facility that's less than three years old. PHOTO : Japanese manufacturing philosophies--kizen and quality circles--work suprisingly well at PHOTO : Okuma and help produce a consistently top quality product.