John Bova, Thule quality coordinator, acknowledges, “Last year was a phenomenal year for us. We were so busy; we set all kinds of records. The size of our workforce tripled. The ratio of new people to experienced people was four to one. That brought in a whole new array of challenges for training and quality control.
“We received complaints from customers about missing parts and hardware. At that time we were doing what we called ‘dock audits.’ We would go out to our shipping area a couple of times a day, open random boxes, see what was inside to make sure everything was there. If something was missing, packers would have to take apart the whole skid of boxes. It meant shutting down the line so they could go through every box, count the parts, re-pack and re-tape. If it was a big issue, we might ask them to go to the warehouse and check everything they had packed that day. We pack thousands of boxes a week. So the likelihood of us finding something just by random checking was slim.”
Thule was determined to give their customers a product that presented the best buying experience. The Thule quality control group determined the cost of labor alone in one year to investigate customer complaints, find the missing part, write the order, and send to shipping was about $30,000. Thule created some unique package-identifying procedures to reduce costs but were still not satisfied.
John Bova’s team decided to look into a checkweighing system that would also record product ID for traceability. John Russo, Jr., integration specialist with Progressive Scale & Software Solutions, Bethel, CT., designed the first system using four scales running off the 920i® digital weight indicator. John Bova says, “We tried that for about six or eight months to work the bugs out. During the six months prior to installing the system, we found 120 boxes with missing parts. Once the system was installed, the drop in missing part complaints was immediate. After we tested it, my plan was to spread the application through the entire plant, and I had a year to put together the plan, get capital funding, and marshal equipment.”
Thule corporate folks interviewed the distributors and end users at trade shows. When asked about product concerns, the most outstanding complaint involved missing parts in packages. Several distributors objected to the cost for them to replace the part and meet customer deadlines. The package checkweighing solution became an obvious answer to the problem. Checkweighing 100% of the packages makes the best buying experience for Thule customers.
