Six Sigma at Camso

It pays to use the data strategically.

Camso produces tires and tracks for the off-road market. At their Plattsburgh facility in Northern New York they focus exclusively on snowmobile tracks. If you have a snowmobile there is a greater than 90 percent chance that your tracks were made in Plattsburgh by Camso.

In the fall of 2017, Camso sent their QA Supervisor, Michael McCarthy, and QA Tech, Rory Bond to CITEC's Lean Six Sigma training, which includes working directly on projects in their workplace value stream.

McCarthy and Bond focused on their extruder which producing too much out of spec material, causing material over usage, raising the cost of track construction. Their track production also suffered from a higher defect rate than they were comfortable with. Inappropriate material ranges were also causing disproportionate machine wearing.

The two used the define, measure, analyze, improve, control (DMAIC) process to better understand the problems and develop solutions. Better data analysis showed them that their defect rate may not have been a problem after all. Another big discovery was that the incoming material was not consistently within spec. Improvement plans were made that addressed that as well as machine improvements, different maintenance schedules and more. Control plans were also implemented. The results were impressive.

The extruder is producing better quality material (in spec, and faster) and creating 26 percent less scrap. Yield performance on width improved from 48 percent to 80 percent after three months and 92 percent three months after that. Track scraps were reduced by 32 percent.

Contact Steve Lockwood for more information.
lockwood @citec.org
315-777-0556

Workers at Camso executed Lean Six Sigma processes to solve spec and quality issues at Camso.

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