For manufacturing managers, quality problems are like a genie with a bad attitude that must not be allowed out of the bottle.

At Time Manufacturing Co., the Waco manufacturer of truck-mounted bucket lifts used in the construction and power-utilities industries, it’s a worst-case scenario when a poorly made part makes it all the way to the customer.

It rarely happens, but fixing such a problem means repairing or replacing it at the expense of time, materials and money, Time Manufacturing plant manager Don Fratus said.

Quality inspector Amanda Barnett tags a box filled with rolled quilt batting at Hobbs Bonded Fibers.
Rod Aydelotte/Waco Tribune-Herald

“Your cost increases 10-fold if that happens,” he said.

To head that off, Time, which manufactures its Versalift equipment line in Waco for sale around the world, uses all 231 people at the plant to handle quality control.

Workers are responsible for the parts they handle. Once parts are built, product testers run the hydraulic lifts through their paces as a last line of defense before shipping.

Employees almost always stop production problems from going that far, Fratus said.

Toyota troubles

Toyota is feeling the pain of what Fratus talks about firsthand. The recent recall of millions of Toyota vehicles because of possibly sticky accelerator pedals means expensive repairs at the manufacturers’ cost and a huge ding to Toyota’s public perception. Since then, there’s been a further recall of Prius for brake problems.

Other automakers have also had problems lately. Honda is recalling vehicles because of air bag problems that could cause injury or death after earlier recalling nearly 646,000 of its Fit model worldwide for problems with an electric window mechanism that could cause fire.

The reports of repeated quality problems with Toyota vehicles could mean the automaker, whose cars have become known as the epitome of quality in the auto world, will face a long road back to favor with customers.

Mechanical problems, chiefly the sticky accelerator recall, must be addressed, said Dr. Mike Umble, Baylor University management professor.

Then comes the perception problem.

“It is going to take some time,” Umble said. “I don’t think they are going to be able to repair their quality issues all that quickly. It’s going to take some promotion and marketing and public relations work to repair some of the damage, too.”

Toyota broke into the U.S. market by making lower-priced vehicles, and buyers also noticed they were well-built and reliable, Umble said.

Toyotas have become pricier than some other models, but customers have remained willing to pay more for lower repair costs and less time at repair shops.

If quality isn’t there with the price, the incentive to buy is not there, either, Umble said.

“They got the brand loyalty based on quality. But if you lose your quality it won’t be long before you start losing market share, too,” he said.

‘Quality is universal’

Fratus said whether it’s cars or lifts, a slip in quality reputation can be disastrous.

“Quality is universal. Without it, you can’t compete,” he said.

Miguel Cortes measures one of the fiber sections at Hobbs.
Rod Aydelotte/Waco Tribune-Herald

At Time, bar-coded documentation and diagrams that workers can use to check parts follow the parts through assembly, and each worker is charged with stopping a part that’s bad. Stampings on welded parts even show who welded them.

“I can tell you who did the welding on this for 10 years,” Fratus said, standing by a part in Time’s plant.

It’s a challenge to keep standards up over time, said Homer Gray Jr., Time’s director of quality assurance.

The challenge grows when a large order comes in and is filled, and then no other orders for that product are received for a year or more.

When a new order does come, managers and workers must get back up to speed on that model, studying drawings and meeting to make sure the details are straight, he said.

Other manufacturers can attest to the constant effort it takes to keep standards up.

‘An obligation’

At Allergan, a maker of pharmaceuticals that employs 500 in Waco, quality is the top business priority, Dermot Manton, vice president of operations, said.

“In health care and pharmaceuticals, it is an obligation,” he said. “I would say we spend a predominant amount of time on quality.”

That means constant inspections and sampling from raw materials to the finished product as well as the packaging, he said.

“Probably 25 percent of the staff is related to quality control,” Manton said.

Hobbs Bonded Fibers makes cotton and polyester fibers for use as matting in automotive interiors and batting for items such as quilts.

As streams of materials rolled off of machinery, quality control supervisor Christina Anderson said one of the difficulties with the company’s product is that the fibers can change in the middle of the process.

Adjustments to equipment have to be made to assure the fibers are the right thickness or meet other specifications. An inspector keeps a sample showing how it should look and periodically pulls a box of product to check that it looks right, she said.

Hobbs quality inspector Amanda Barnett said her task is not a difficult job, but it takes the ability to stay focused, watch the production continuously and to work safely.

“It’s just paying attention to what’s going on and making sure I’m not doing anything that’s going to hurt anybody, and making sure we are doing what we are supposed to be doing,” Barnett said.

Curbing complacency

Barnett was referring to her own daily attention, but Peter Andress, president of the American Society for Quality, said it’s easy for an entire organization to drop its quality focus, especially after meeting a high product standard.

“Complacency sets in,” said Andress, who works as a quality assurance engineer for Boeing in Huntington Beach, Calif.

Failures often result from conflicting goals of quality, cost and production scheduling, he said. Taking care of quality first will cause the other factors to fall into place, he said.

“If you do it right, you don’t have to go back,” he said.

bteeter@wacotrib.com

757-5734