The year was 2003. I was standing in the middle of a cleanroom production floor in Elpida’s new semiconductors wafer fabrication factory in Hiroshima, Japan.
Dressed up with a ‘bunny suit’, I looked ahead in this endless corridor of an automated, expensive production line, and saw a flashing red light. This light indicated where this massive production line had ground to a halt.
It was our monitoring device that had malfunctioned and caused the stoppage. The time was 5:20pm. I will never forget this scene.
Back then, I was working as a site manager for a semiconductor equipment company at Motorola Fab in Austin, TX in the US.
I had been dispatched to Japan by HQ to see what was going on with the Elpida site that had recently purchased a dozen of our expensive devices for their new production line. We had received several complaints that needed to be looked into.
After addressing the problem with the help of our local field service engineer, I was told by him that we were invited to a ‘hearing’ meeting at 12.
“Great,” I said. “So we have time to go grab some dinner, report what just happened back to HQ, and prepare for our noon meeting tomorrow.”
“Eitan-San”, he replied, “the meeting is tonight, at 12 midnight, in the vendors’ room!”
Boot Camp. This is the first thing that came to my mind right then. Though I underwent one when I was 18 years old, this chain of events brought it all back. it was a déjà vu moment.
In that meeting, we were asked to address our device reliability issues to meet a spec of 99.9% uptime. In addition to that, we were asked to escalate this to the top. Otherwise, we were out!
HQ took this very seriously. The quality system was reviewed and revised. A Ph.D.-qualified expert was assigned to lead a team to improve the reliability of our equipment to meet the required spec.
The company stock price went from $1.50 in 2003 to $146 to date.
The same scenario happened when I joined a medical device company at its early stages. An important client in Italy was experiencing frequent reliability issues that were escalated to the CEO.
We rethought quality. With improved design, we ran product marathons, put Quality Control points in every step of the production process, monitored everything — and the results followed.
The company was sold to a NASDAQ corporation and is now dominant in the US market with this strong brand.
Quality is preserved differently in different parts of the world. When William Edwards Deming tried to offer his new quality philosophy to the US car manufacturer industry in the 1960s, he was rejected. He traveled to Japan instead and met Toyota and other Japanese car brands. And the rest, as they say, is history.
When you sell your product in the US there are certain expectations for your brand quality which are different from the EU, China, Latin America, or any other country.
You need to make sure your product meets spec preserved by the local culture, industry, and standards.
While the two words ‘Customer Complaint’ bring to mind Regulations, Recall, and other threatening words for some companies, it should be translated as ‘Opportunity’ — Opportunity to strengthen your brand.
Having a solid Corrective And Preventive Action (CAPA) system in place, where input about your product is collected, analyzed, and converted into improvements of your product by R&D and Manufacturing, evolves to a more reliable brand, and is therefore more sustainable.
· Define your quality system each step of the way, from design, manufacturing, and post-sales.
· Put a process and software in place to track everything that you do — from product birth to its obsolescence.
· Build an effective CAPA into your organization from the early stages.
· Embrace complaints as an opportunity to grow.
In the long run, these actions will pay dividends, big time!
It is easier to market and sell a piece of equipment that is well accepted by its users.
Innovation and technology will get you so far, but reliability and enhancements are super important to help boost your brand across ‘The Chasm’.
