Rachel Humphrey, Master Blackbelt at General Cable, talks about how InfinityQS® ProFicient™ helps General Cable manage quality. Since 1927, General Cable has manufactured cable products for a broad range of applications. Humphrey guides the company’s Lean Sigma projects. During the company’s search for a Quality Management product, personnel were working on Lean Sigma projects, and although they used offline analysis tools such as Microsoft Excel and Minitab, they sought a tool that would give them real-time feedback on how their processes were performing. Key aspects of any quality improvement tool would be ease of use for operators as well as ease of configuration. They analysed a number of potential solutions and InfinityQS scored highest on their evaluation.
Humphrey says that for General Cable, one of the key aspects of ProFicient is its ability to connect to gauges including diameter gauges, weight measurement instruments, and other equipment. ProFicient pulls data directly from gauges, which eliminates mistakes due to fat fingers or typos. For General Cable’s operators, this was a big selling point. In the past, they would take a measurement and write it down on a piece of paper; with ProFicient, they just hit a button, making it much easier and faster to use.
Humphrey also points out that ProFicient has allowed visibility into data that helps the company choose projects more wisely for their Black Belts and Green Belts. They can quickly identify the products they’re having problems with and that require improvement. They can then place other projects on the back burner and focus their attention on more critical quality improvement projects.
General Cable is using ProFicient in 16 of their facilities. As the solution was rolled out, Humphrey says they saw increased stability, steady improvement across their processes, decreased material usage, and improved quality.
Typical return on investment for General Cable has been less than six months across their plants. ProFicient has become an integral part of General Cable’s Quality Management initiatives.