February 1, 2011 
Until the next gigantic wave of RED alert strikes, the production lines carry on a hectic and busy day.
A situation
It was just quarter past seven earlier in the morning, but the director’s office already packed with people from technical departments discussing the night-shift’s excursion. Somebody must have pushed the RED button sending the production lines to alert state; that means another day of dramatic factory life. Sounds like a notoriously unpredictable volcano had unleashed its most powerful eruption late last night.
One of the top runners was reported yields loss and failed the functional tests, and that sudden drop in yields had caused a severe setback to the shipment schedule. Late in the midnight, the technical staff had been called to the factory to attend the problem when it was found. Alas, the engineering staff who had worked extra hours the whole night trying to recover the situation had failed to do so. Until the problem had been solved, the assembly line superintendent had to shut down the problematic lines, and put thousands of HDDs on hold.
Texts over texts swamped in the respond team’s mobile, and the office’s electronic mail box was from time to time topped by the alert messages and latest reports about the progress. Many department routine meetings had been called off for the management staff to give attention finding a way out.
First thing in that morning, the top quality officers, and directors were already on their phone getting a first-hand report from their subordinate direct from the “crime” site. The degree of loss could not be anticipated simply based on the chronological data since it could be a new problem which inconsistent with the recent explanation. In the mind of these decision makers, extra credence must be given to bring the losses overall to the minimal.
Being the company’s quality and reliable advocate, the QC department’s role was decisive in assuring the action plan carried out was reliable and foolproof. For sure, Mr AA, one of my coworkers, was leading his squad along with his camera rushed to the “crime” site.
A thorough screening must be carried out at all potential problematic areas. To eliminate any possibility of defective products skipped the final inspection gate, and went into customer’s shipment, extra inspection on others products must be done.
The analysis reports released by Analytical Services (AS) department revealed that the component cleanliness was the root of the problem, and that problem came from the material cleaning process, mainly those materials out from the recycling centre. Audit findings finalized and presentations summarized suggested a number of potential mechanisms whereby the tools might significantly affect the part cleanliness by altering mechanical function, tighten inspection, and increased cleaning frequency. How these effects contributed to, and whether they were related causally to the problem was unclear.
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EIS and its negative aspect
Engineering Integrated System (EIS), software integrated with the assembly tools and external database, was designed for data storage, analysis, monitoring and out of control trigger. The system itself was a complicated one because different parts applied different decision loops supporting thousands of combo matrixes, codes, assembly routes, and the unique product characteristics.
Behind this complicated EIS was an analogous assembly line from which the data were archived. The raw components combination that used to build the HDD was unique for OEM customers, and intended to achieve optimize performance in each HDD. For cost reduction purpose, some combinations were designed to allow HDD to be built with reused components, the so-called recycling parts.
After an out of control has been observed in EIS, a short acronym message would be sent to the handset of every respond team member. Some of the assembly stations and test stations had their own auto-shutdown system; the machines would be auto-shutdown and placed in idle mode when sufficient data had been collected, and the idle units were verified faulty.
It was never been an easy task precisely pinpoint the root of the problems unless the failure was so intense that it had paralyzed the whole production lines. Sending a wrong signal to the trigger system was common in EIS. Repeatedly receiving false alarms had caused people started to ignore all alarms, knowing that each time it would probably be a fake one. The system might by some means signing a potential hidden crisis, but it failed to make a reliable causal connection between the trigger and the crisis.
For that reason, human engineers played a pivotal role to counter-check the data, and validate the trigger. Each failure must be carefully analyzed, matched and categorized according to the root causes, failure modes and fault buckets. If there were false alarm, abandoned it. If there were true alarm, another manual system would be activated to quarantine the in-process parts.
Ironically, that extra effort has little help to the whole problem solving and decision-making process because of those hazy and fuzzy clues. The concept of this could be traced at least as far back as the start of the first version of EIS. I rather illustrate the whole dramatic incident as a fishing operation. Imagine yourself in the middle of the sea, not knowing what fish species will trap into your fishing net. If it happened that somebody had caught a large fish, he could try to make an impression with his lucky catch. After all, it would just another day of the fishing trip.
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Who raise the RED flag?
It was all rested on the shoulder of an engineer – the interpreter and the data owner. Valuable data for them were data seemed essential to them based on their expertise and experience. Occasionally the alarm had signed a hidden, yet to discover crisis. They had their own rationale to do that besides the routines they usually followed. Indisputably, their decision was frequently inclined to meet own department’s goal and objective.
Most cases the alert was sent by either the quality engineer, the reliability engineer or the Analytical Service (AS) engineering to other engineering departments and the production floor. The engineer who pushed the RED button was also the character in play directly connected to the crisis and the one who made the most out of the entire drama.
Down to the production line, the local alert system was usually handled manually, and that only made available to production staff and local engineers. Production issue normally prompted to notice the top management even no flag was raised. Once it gone companywide, the mechanism would gear up the entire workforce right away to clear the backlog in utmost velocity. Till the backlog had been cleared, the GM would never abandon the flag though numbers of “RED” alert bombarding his office.
When more than tens of thousands of parts were being put on hold at the shipping bay, a massive traffic congestion in the logistic system would soon create a wreak havoc to the inbound and outbound system, and the crisis would cause a widespread disruption across the entire business operation. That could upset the factory’s General Manager if the issue remained unsolved for days.
Finding evidences at the physical “crime” site among thousands of production stations was challenging. After the issue had been bought up in the production daily meeting, the General Manager would appoint a CRISIS team to track down all possible illuminate what happened, and point to what did it.
Paradoxically, another instruction would be given by him concurrently to the manufacturing folks to revamp the production lines before the CRISIS team entered the site which supposedly be preserved untouched for analysis. This made the goal of finding evidences relevant to the problem impossible. The dead body has been removed! All essential evidences associated with the root of the problems were eliminated. To be honest, I did not know who did it, how it happened, what caused it, or when caused it. It was a misery!
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Business strategy
The top management who were following the whole progress since the beginning had several programs entailing a more advanced and collaborative technique, and automated machines in their long term business strategy. The rest of the works were rested on the middle management who exercising the projects, collaborating different sections that have a direct relation to the issue, and looking for a perfect ground for the plan to commence.
Before the preceding problem got to the bottom, and we were just about to see the shed of light and reach the core of the issue after so long rummaged around the issue, the quarantined stations would resume operation by the order of the top management. The decision was merely based on an irrelevant connection observed between the surfaced problem and the product’s functionality. The activity would continue with a different objective – further improvement to enhance the quality of the product.
The ultimate results of this approach were often backfiring, and the problem would re-emerge. Once the issue was tagged secondary, less attention and almost no priority given by the members since it was less critical to the overall operation. Then soon later, everybody seemed to forget how we got it so far.
Seeing that the story was about to end with applause, the top officers approved the team endeavor. The team had pushed the quality and reliability to the highest possible level and to the point that the top management felt it would be the biggest investment the company would spend in that product.
Obviously, the hero who responsible for all these hard slogs would soon be renowned, and a new star was born in the organization.
Until the next gigantic wave of RED alert strikes, the production lines carry on a hectic and busy day trying to max up the shipment schedule set by the business unit. If it strikes another time, it usually carried powerful waves sweeping the whole production floor and bringing up an old issue but a wholly new story to the spotlight.
Wai Ping Lee/Feb 2011
wpL 
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