[Leica] See the video about the M9 at Solms? (long & boring)

[wbabbott3 at comcast.net (William B. Abbott III)]

Hi Dick,

Thanks. Amen, I quite agree, and that is partially what I meant by the  
word "managing an interface," but I resorted to short hand.

I have long believed that Leica has great in-house design and  
manufacturing capabilities but lacked effective supplier controls  
experience. I hope that has changed.

In critical areas, I think much more than awareness of suppliers'  
activities is needed and I sense that we could talk about that for a  
week or more.

Supplier controls is what is required to insure that as far as is  
humanly possible, no changes creep into the production line, i.e, that  
the products of serial production are identical to those development  
items (or the initial production items) which passed tests to verify  
that they meet the desired development goals and specs, sometimes  
called qualification tests, i.e, qualified for production.

By "managing an interface" I meant, for critical components,  
contracting with a supplier to meet the entire design disclosure of  
their product and to give the buyer "change control authority" over  
all of it, i.e., all changes must be approved by the buyer. This  
includes,

- engineering product design disclosure documentation,
- quality assurance plans and procedures
- material specs and material sources,
- manufacturing tooling and fixture design, processes and procedures,
- test equipment design, maintenance and calibration, test and  
inspection procedures,
- material receipt, storage, shipping, packaging and handling  
procedures and practices
- etc.

The precise meaning of "change control authority" has to be negotiated  
in some detail for obvious reasons and can mean many things. In  
addition, suppliers have to flow these requirements down to its  
critical suppliers to whatever degree makes sense and the buyer must  
routinely conduct audits to verify compliance with the contract.

Obviously, many items cannot be procured this way, and other measures  
have to be taken to insure homogeneity in production, such as incoming  
inspection, lot testing, increased supplier testing, etc.

If this sounds like a mouthful, it is, and I believe that Leica  
routinely does all of these things in regard to its own internal  
processes and for their piece part and material suppliers, or else  
they would not have had the success they have had. Extending that  
awareness and control to major suppliers requires a considerable  
management effort.

A final note: The thought of finishing a development model and  
"engineering" it for production, that is, the old way of throwing the  
engineering design over the transom for the production department to  
build, is anathema to me.

IMHO, from day one, the product design and development testing, as  
well as the manufacturing flow, have to start maturing in tandem, so  
that a tested and proofed production line, including suppliers lines,  
can be ready when the product design matures.

I was very happy to see in the M9 video that the activity in view  
"seemed" to be taking place in a full production environment, not in a  
lab, which tells me that Leica developed the M9 and its production  
processes in tandem, together, and not serially. If I am right, they  
deserve a lot of credit for bringing the production on line this way.  
I just hope they have brought their suppliers up to speed along with  
them.

All the best,

Bill






On Sep 16, 2009, at 9:14 AM, Richard Taylor wrote:

> That, unfortunately, is not sufficient.  You have to understand and  
> verify your supplier's processes, hardware and software sufficiently  
> well to assure errors and omissions on their part will not  
> compromise your own product.
>
> Regards,