How I Reduced the Defect Rate in Production by Getting Rid of the Measurers' Fingers

Hello everyone! This is Sasha, and now I am going to tell you how I managed to reduce the percentage of defects in our small #production with simple and free solutions. I need to add a little context - for several years I have been developing the production of cabinets for parking spaces, roller shutters and gates. In this article, I will talk about the #measurement process. And yes, everything is fine with the measurers, their fingers are intact.

What Does a Measurer Do?

The client leaves a request, and our specialist goes to the client. Specialist's task is to research the future installation site of the cabinet, take photos, measure the parameters of the installation site, document the presence of various communications, and compose a plan, drawing, configuration of the future product in relation to a specific place and considering the client's wishes. It sounds complicated.

Working without a Regulation

We started working without any sort of regulations, and our measurer freely described what was needed and sent the information to our office. We somehow lived with it. Something worked, some problems arose, but the volume was small, and the problems did not bother us much.

What Do Fingers Have to Do with It?

The next iteration was the requirement of a drawing for each measurement. But there was no clear regulation at that time. We received them from the measurers. The collection of drawings with fingers deserves separate attention.

Working with some of the drawings was difficult, while others did not raise any questions.

Interim Summary

With the growth of the number of clients and requests, the percentage of defects began to increase, situations arose when the quality of the information provided did not allow us to fulfill the order in the form in which the client expected.

Problems arose in the most unexpected places - starting from the physical dimensions of the structure, ending with the presence of options that the client expected to see. And it took a long time to figure it out every time.

Development of a Measurement Form and Unexpected Problems

The next iteration was the introduction of a measurement form. By the way, the first version of the measurement form immediately solved the problem of standardizing the delivery of information in the universal form that allowed to describe all tasks and needs of the client. It also conveyed all the constructive aspects.

The measurement form removed many questions in terms of equipment, dimensions, and positioning of the product in space, but we revealed another problem.

Due to the fact that the measurer needed time to prepare this sheet, the delivery time of the measurement results to the manager increased. Delays reached up to 1 day. In some cases, the client waited for a #commercial offer (CO) for several days. This is too much, and we had to work on it.

Electronic Form

I came up with a two-level system for sending measurements. What does it mean? For each measurement, a unique form is generated within the Yandex.Forms service. The measurer comes for measurements, takes a photo of the place and draws a sketch of the product on the spot. So far, everything is unchanged. But as soon as the measurer finishes the measurement, he has the opportunity to transfer all the information to the office in a standardized form within a few minutes.

Based on this information, the manager can provide the client with an accurate calculation and commercial offer.

Futher, within a few hours, the measurer sends the drawing and the final configuration, which was already described in the form. This is about the measurement form that I mentioned earlier. The measurement form is not needed for the CO, so we can proceed without waiting for it.

Thus, the client receives a CO almost in real-time, and the Terms of Reference (TOR) in the form of a sheet is "rolled out" a little but later. Our task technically is to store all this information in one place and use it in further production.

Now the Conclusion

This approach allowed us to increase the speed of processing an application at the measurement stage before reaching a commercial offer, as well as reduce the amount of defects and errors due to standardized and unified form.

The measurer always sees what he needs to ask, what to offer, what to note, and what is important, and the customer from the other side sees a professional approach and positively evaluates our work.

What I Used

This functionality is implemented using the #PlanFix system and #yandex.Forms. Everything is integrated without any external services. Yandex.Forms can send data via #Webhook directly to PlanFix, and PlanFix can process this data.

I implemented the linking of the form to a specific measurement through a hidden field, into which I enter the request number. And this hidden field is set using a GET-parameter, which is generated when the measurement request is made. Everything is ingenious and simple.

When we receive a measurement request, the measurer already has a form that needs to be filled out and that automatically attaches to the request and the task in the e-mail.

Moreover, I record time the form was filled out. This information allows us to check how quickly we receive the results of the measurement.

This information is used for decomposing the sales funnel among other things, but I am going to describe it in my future articles.

Thank you for your attention.