Process Parsimony — Automation’s Secret Key for Scale and Quality

Automation is thought to be the secret to improving quality in manufacturing. What if I told you it was something else?

by Miles Free III

Director of Industry Affairs, PMPA

Published March 31, 2025

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The volume of messages in my email inbox extolling some kind of automation solution to improve my quality continues to grow. These emails all tend to make the same claims: “(Fill in the blank) automation solution will ensure that you 1) Avoid operator error; 2) Ensure more repeatable and reproducible results; 3) Speed performer time to complete tasks; 4) Reduce cost of failures.” These claims are logical consequences of an automation solution. But are the consequences actually the result of the automation? Or are they the result of process simplification and engineered error proofing?

Our contract precision machining shops are tasked with producing no-fail quality for many human safety critical applications and other capital applications — regardless of batch size/order quantity/release quantity. And while inspection is known to not be foolproof, in small batch production, often it is the only economically feasible way of taking steps to ensure that the product the customer receives meets their specified requirements and functions as designed. But as lot sizes increase, so too do the opportunities for systemic as well as random causes to trigger a nonconformance in your work product. As well as exceed the ability for humans to inspect reliably.

Blindly automating — which could also be called “throw a robot on it to remove the human factor” — is an often heard but hardly proven approach to process improvement.

At best, it reduces challenges to our performers by simplifying their task  and cognitive burden, but at worst, it is a straw man, as those random causes may not in fact be due to human failures. As quantities increase, so do opportunities for random fluctuations, as well as the appearance of rare but conceivable systemic anomalies. The 99.72% covered by plus-or-minus three standard deviations of process capability are a solid assurance when the lot size is in the double or triple digits range. But when the quantities scale up into the thousands, hundreds of thousands or millions, our enterprise volumes are in the medium to high double-digit millions. Then that 0.28% residual  suddenly becomes a real possibility — 0.28% of 1 million results with 2,800 “normally expected” deviations from the control limits.

Now how many million parts does your shop produce over the course of a year? Multiply that by 2,800 and tell me how many opportunities for rejection, failure to meet specification and increased chances a claim is possible based on your volume, even if you are statistically capable at plus-and-minus three standard deviations?

If it costs your shop just $100 per reported occurrence from a customer (a very low estimate to be sure, but suitable for the discussion here) how much “risk” could you be facing? Keep in mind that I define risk as the destruction of capital. The product of 2,800 times $100 is $280,000. That is the potential capital that you could waste should your process just behave normally for every million parts sold.

Again, how many million parts does your shop produce over the course of a year? My guess is that you do not have $280,000 built into your pricing per million parts sold for “just in case.”

The point is, every step, every operation that you can eliminate reduces (by a multiplicative factor) your odds of a nonconformance. If the tag is already filled out by the system, then a human error creating the tag will not happen. How many steps does one of your products take to get from order to shipment to customer? 25? 50? 100?

My guess is the number of discreet steps is higher than these round numbers for the typical, highly complex precision engineered component that you make in your shop. I am talking about each and every step from order acceptance, order entry, engineering review, material and tool ordering, scheduling, set up, quality, production, further processing/outside processing, mark, pack, load, release and ship. Every phone call, conversation, written note or computer entry is a step. Does your order entry software preload the engineering and quality software with the data, or must there be redundant manual entry of critical inspection notes or other must-have factors? How does this double entry affect the potential for error occurrence now that your millions just got doubled by this additional (and every other repeated) nonvalue adding step?

Continuous Improvement
Continuous improvement is not the result of automation per se. Continuous improvement of processes and systems is the direct result of process simplification reducing the opportunity for probable occurrences to appear as we scale our production to ever-higher volumes. Reducing redundant steps — in all systems — is the real power underlying an automation solution. It is removing the opportunities for variability. Removing the opportunities for non-compliance. If you do not have to do a particular step, eliminating it reduces your odds of failing when you do (or fail) to do it.

As our sales and volumes grow, I hope that we are smart enough to recognize that the opportunities for risk grow as well. When you are working in volumes of millions, a simple doubling of potential opportunities (from one needed step to two steps — one needed, one not) will be multiplied by those volumes of millions. Expected occurrence is only 2,800 per million, right? So, what is your potential risk (capital destroyed) by having to investigate, solve and remediate these unneeded failures? More than you can afford.

Automation is not the answer. Process parsimony — simplification is. Continuous improvement is driven by eliminating the waste of unneeded process complexity. Automation is the cover story. The real power is to eliminate the unnecessary steps in your process. Show me a team focused on eliminating steps in process and I will show you a team that will continue to succeed in scaling up their business as they reduce the opportunities for anomalies to occur.

Author

Miles Free III is the PMPA Director of Industry Affairs with over 50 years of experience in the areas of manufacturing, quality and steelmaking. Miles’ podcast is at pmpa.org/podcast. Email Miles

Bridge the Generation Skills Gap: Smooth Shift from Cam to CNC

Tajmac-USA’s Mori-Say 620TM CNC helps bridge the gap between the old and new worlds of machining, enabling performers who grew up with a smart device in their hand to interface with cam technology in a new way.

by David Wynn

Director of Technical Services, PMPA

Published March 1, 2025

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Tajmac-USA has introduced the Mori-Say 620TM CNC, the company’s next evolution of the traditional six-spindle cam machine, which is said to provide the power and speed of a cam machine with the versatility of CNC controls. 

The industry is facing a major shift with experienced operators retiring and new operators seeing our industry as dark, dirty and dangerous. This new machine helps bridge the gap between the old and new worlds of machining, enabling performers who grew up with a smart device in their hand to interface with cam technology in a new way.

The 620TM CNC reduces setup times dramatically, allowing operators to focus on high-value tasks. Operators can do what only they can do while the machines complete repetitive tasks. Combining CNC and cam reliability provides ease of use with modern controls. No longer do you have to retool an entire job to make a change. Redesign the cam with a few keystrokes introducing rapid improvements to the process.

As companies start to make the shift from cam to CNC, the Mori-Say TM620CNC makes that change more seamless than ever, providing cam quality, efficiency and stability. The machine also features Industry 4.0 support, future proofing the platform for years to come.

Author

David Wynn is the PMPA Director of Technical Services with over 20 years of experience in the areas of manufacturing, quality, ownership, IT and economics. Email David

How’s the Water? From Business As Usual to VUCA to BANI

Do we even have the words to describe and/or make sense of how business circumstances have changed?

by Miles Free III

Director of Industry Affairs, PMPA

Published March 1, 2025

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One of my favorite ideas to think about is David Foster Wallace’s famous “This is Water” commencement speech. In the speech, he talks about a couple of young fish swimming one way, and a slightly larger fish swimming past them in the other direction. The larger fish says, “Morning boys, how’s the water?” The two younger fish ask themselves, “What the hell is water?”

To the fish, water is the most important aspect of their very existence — it supports them, provides them thermal and respiratory resources, as well as total environment for their activity. From outside, it is easy to make fun of the fish’s lack of understanding the water. They take it for granted.

In business, we start out as those younger fish in David Foster Wallace’s story. As new hires, we just try our best to deal with “business as usual.” We try to learn the tasks that need to get done, we figure out the best way to do those tasks with the tools given to us, and eventually we start to learn some other context stuff about our job, our customers and business. How’s the water? It’s fine once we figure out our place in it. Business as usual.

In the fish metaphor, “business as usual” is our “water,” and we are the fish. Business as usual is our all-too-obvious environment, support system, policies and procedures, assignments, tools and other available resources. We just take these all for granted.

Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity (VUCA)
But the water can change. Perhaps a rainstorm carries more run-off into the stream, making it murky, difficult to navigate and hard to keep oriented. The fish have to put their noses down and swim as hard as possible just to stay in one place. Storms can impact the quality and conditions of the water, and in our business, one storm that can change our “water” is called VUCA.
Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity (VUCA) is the storm that changes conditions in our stream, clouds our vision, destroys our confidence, establishes variable behaviors to cues and confuses our certainty.

Volatility. Just think of prices of inputs. As consumers, we think of gasoline prices as volatile. So are materials and other energy prices.

Uncertainty. We have given our best price on that quote that we need to keep our shop full, but is it attractive enough to win the order? Did other competitors take a loss on their offers just to fill their shops, too?

Complexity. An old hand from 20 years ago would certainly be overwhelmed at the complexity of the parts and conformance requirements that the parts of today have. Not to mention supply chains and combinations of the different ways our materials might be produced.
Ambiguity. Here’s a line from a standard that I had to argue with many customers years ago: “Grades 5 and 5.2 bolts, screws and studs shall be heat treated (fully austenitized), oil or water quenched, at option of manufacturer…”

Despite the very clear “shall be heat treated (fully austenitized)” phrasing, I had many companies arguing that the heat treat was “option of the manufacturer” and that they wanted to purchase material to the mechanical properties specified by buying heavy drafted, not heat treated, cold drawn materials. And that is in a very common, agency-issued national consensus standard.

When circumstances change — at our suppliers, our customers, in the markets or in global transportation systems — our “water” quickly changes from the clarity of business as usual to the murky and almost opaque VUCA variety. How’s the water where you work?

Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, Incomprehensible (BANI)
Today, many of us yearn nostalgic for the good old days of VUCA. Business as usual is a luxury too distant to remember. In today’s “water”, Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, and Incomprehensible (BANI) describe the conditions in which we and our colleagues (our fellow fish) must work.

Brittle. Might best describe the reaction of some employees to losing their accustomed work-from-anywhere flexibility as they are mandated to return to office. Ask Amazon how that is working out. Or Tupperware — which recently filed for bankruptcy protection due to its failure to adopt an online sales model despite its in-home direct sales model failing to sustain company finances.

Anxious. Anxiety is almost certainly the result of the ambiguity and uncertainty of the prior VUCA model, but now it describes us as performers rather than our environment. With ever present uncertainty — whether unavailability of needed materials, late deliveries, late or delayed payments or customers suddenly ghosting our salespeople — anxiety is a common characteristic of almost everyone with a job with responsibilities that depend on others. And it is also a direct result of the nonlinearity of responses to events in our “water.”

Nonlinearity. This one is really easy to spot. Just look at the demands by customers for compensation far beyond the actual damages should a product or service fail to conform perfectly to the order requirements. With escalating penalty clauses, and threats of legal consequences, a failure to provide any aspect of a product could result in legal damages thousands of times beyond that of the affected part cost. It may even endanger the company’s continued existence. Anxiety is high when our people and organizations face the nonlinearity of our customers. Oh, and what if ocean shipping is delayed because the critical items that you must have to fulfill the contract are significantly delayed or unavailable? Or a mill closes?
Who can predict the costs of these high-impact scenarios?

Incomprehensible. There are many, many areas where the world can seem incomprehensible to our colleagues and organizations. For me, the rate of change of the rate of change is shockingly high. It seems like every day some new thing becomes a mandatory part of the environment. For me personally, the day that I am writing this, I learned how to print on the office printer directly from my cell phone. It never stops. No time to catch our breath, the next wave is already breaking above our heads. What will be the consequences of the election on our shops and businesses? How can we even start to know?

Better Together.
One of the ways that can help us remain effective, whether our particular water is business as usual, VUCA or BANI, is to effectively associate with our peers. At PMPA, we call this “Better Together.” PMPA and its participating members provide sensemaking on technical, operational, quality, financial, regulatory, safety and government affairs matters. PMPA members are not just willing but eager to weigh in on a way to solve that problem that is intractable in your shop. We provide monthly benchmarking for sales, lead times, profitability and employment prospects as well as hours worked and overtime.

Archimedes bragged that give him but a place to stand, and he could move the earth. I don’t think that fish can use levers, (sorry, Achimedes) but giving our members a solid footing when they face BANI, VUCA or just plain business as usual — through PMPA ListServe Communities, reports, staff consultations or expert training and networking at our local and national meetings — can surely take away the pain of surprises as well as the ignorance of unawareness.

Author

Miles Free III is the PMPA Director of Industry Affairs with over 50 years of experience in the areas of manufacturing, quality and steelmaking. Miles’ podcast is at pmpa.org/podcast. Email Miles