Our company is going to start having a quality inspector do all the IN-PROCESS checks on all parts on all machines. Operators have been doing their own IN-PROCESS checks and a quality inspector doing 1st, middle, LP or a different variations, but always 1st and LP. We are being told its because the machines need to keep running so we can make more parts. They got a new system that shows machine run times and why the machine is not running, which is apparently is only for IN-PROCESS quality checks. One of the biggest problems we have is operators taken breaks outside of break time. So if one operator leaves the machine, then they all take a break until the operator returns. With QC doing their checks, they are now paging QC and waiting until QC comes to do the check, watches them do the check, gets the ok that the part is good, then continues to run. Management has informed the operators that they are to continue running, don't wait for QC.
My question is, who should be doing IN-PROCESS checks and why?
Btw, we are unstaffed in the quality department already. If the quality inspector is off we have no backup....oh yeah we do, manufacturing engineers.
