Define Phase Kinks Reduction

 

Monday, February 1, 2016

Introduction

 My name is Pamela Considine and I work as a Manufacturing Associate in a Medical Device Plant. We manufacture Catheters for less invasive surgery. The type of project I am working on is yield improvement where we are focusing in on reducing kinks on Cath X which is our highest runner. For the end user a kinked catheter may rupture during the procedure causing vessel trauma or tip detachment during steering manoeuvres. The main area of focus will be the Moulding, Coating and Tip Form processes. I will be using the 5 step DMAIC process and associated tools and I will be documenting each of these steps through this blog.

 

Define Phase

For the period November 2015 - January 2016, kinked catheters on the Cath X product accounted for €20,132 of the total scrap €583,403 attributed to scrap code "C632 Kink" during processing through the Generic area of the Catheters Value Stream. This equates to 3.5% of the total scrap value.

Below some of the tools we used to define the problem:

SIPOC Developed

Critical to Quality Requirements Defined

 

 

Our project charter has been completed and Cross Fuctional Team assembled we are now ready to move onto the Measure phase.