Issue link: https://industrialengineer.epubxp.com/i/905872
the frontline 16 ISE Magazine | www.iise.org/ISEmagazine the front line More photons, please The U.S. Department of Energy recently reported about research that could convert more sunlight into chemical fuels by harvesting more energy from highly energetic photons. Conventional harvesting of photons from the sun loses excess photon energy, but scientists recently enabled greater than 100 percent external quantum efficiency by using a technique called multiple exciton generation. Prime Number Familiarity doesn't breed enough contempt in medical de- vice inspection, and the common ISE tool of job rotation might help. That's the upshot of research from Indiana University, the University of Wisconsin and the University of Minnesota, which found that plant inspections worked well when con- ducted by someone new rather than by an investigator famil- iar with the manufacturing site. "Do plant inspections predict future quality? The role of investigator experience" in the journal Ma ufacturi & Ser- vice Operatio s M ageme t found a 21 percent increase in the risk of a future recall the second time a FDA investigator inspected a plant. That risk rose to 57 percent by the third visit. The findings were independent of whatever score the FDA investigator gave the plant. The authors speculated that increased familiarity between plant management and a repeat investigator lets the plant re- lax its standards. Two solutions were tested: Rotating investigators so they never visit the plant more than once, and sequencing investi- gators so they never visit the same plant two times in a row. Rotation provided the most benefit, and the FDA seems to have enough inspectors on board that they don't have to re- visit the same plant. Spending an extra $800,000 on travel costs could lead to about 100 fewer costly medical device recalls per year, about a 20 percent decrease. Fresh eyes can curb medical device recalls Familiarity between inspectors and manufacturers could be a factor For lean manufacturing expert Chris Mosby, one-piece flow can be a tool for getting rid of company forklifts. Mosby, of material handling equipment company Topper Industrial, told the news website Digitaljour al.com that "fork truck free" can be seen as a quality improvement. Instead of producing batches of parts and using forklifts to transfer mate- rial, one-piece flow moves one piece at a time between opera- tions within a work cell. This has the benefit of turning every employee into an in- spector. He or she makes sure each part meets specifications, which prevents forklifts from carrying batches of defective parts to the next manufacturing process. In this manner, Mosby said, one-piece flow keeps WIP (work in process) low. It also encourages work balance, better quality and lower costs. After all, the cost of scrap materials from defective batch manufacturing can exceed manufactur- ing profit margins. Lean out the forklifts One-piece flow adds numerous benefits to your manufacturing facility