You arrive at a production workstation. The operator performs a measurement. A caliper is lying on the table, the Control Plan is next to it, and the measurement results from the last few hours have been entered into the inspection record. If the audit ended with checking the documents and records, we could already move on. The problem is that we would have checked very little.

Start of Production is sometimes humorously referred to as the “Start of Panic.” There is a reason for that. It is a real test of an organization’s ability to manufacture and deliver parts to the customer at the required level. From this milestone onward, customer volume requirements typically increase week by week, effectively telling the organization: “Now prove that you are ready.”

The documentation may appear correct, while the actual process on the shop floor operates differently. Learn how to conduct a Go&See audit step by step, what questions to ask the operator, what evidence to look for, and how to distinguish facts from assumptions. If you want to assess processes more effectively where the work is actually performed, this article will help you structure your audit approach.

A 0 km complaint can turn the whole day upside down within minutes. The customer is waiting for a response, production is asking whether to stop the line, and logistics is checking shipments. See what to do in the first 24 hours to protect the customer, reduce the risk, and manage the problem properly.

At project meetings, the Reliability Plan is often discussed like just another item to close. In practice, it is a much more important document because it shows which problems may come back after the start of mass production and whether anyone tried to reduce that risk early enough.

It sounds simple, but in practice, production quality often fails on exactly these simple standards. See what Check-Do-Check is, how it differs from final inspection, and how to implement it at the workstation so it works on the shop floor, not just in the instruction.

If you know English but sometimes get lost in abbreviations used in projects, audits, or launches, start with this list.

An FMEA moderator is not the person responsible for filling in the form. Their role is to guide the team through the risk analysis so that the discussion leads to practical actions, not just more entries in a table.

The phrase “8D report” usually does not come up when someone wants to read about the theory behind the method. Most of the time, it appears when there is already a problem on the table. That is exactly the moment when you need to respond to the issue, contain the process, and prepare a report that is more than just an empty document sent back for the sake of it.

They may look clear on paper, but in practice, the biggest problems usually appear during implementation. A company updates documents, runs training sessions, closes actions in the system - and then an audit, a customer complaint, or a PPAP issue shows that the process is working differently than expected.