thomas sabo bracelets store Trek Bicycle Corporation uses a Web-based SPC solution to gain real-time visibility into quality on its suppliers' plant floor thomas sabo bracelets uk

When Alberto thomas sabo bracelets store Contador and Lance Armstrong stood on the podium at the end thomas sabo bracelets uk of the Tour de France this year, one of the biggest Cheap Thomas Sabo sale winners not standing beside them was Trek Bicycle Corporation. The Waterloo, Wis.-based manufacturer provided the bicycles that Armstrong rode to seven consecutive Tour victories, and they were back again this year with the thomas sabo chains online carbon-fiber marvels that helped propel Contador and Armstrong into first and third place, respectively, in Paris.


Trek started out with five cheap thomas sabo chains uk employees cheap thomas sabo rings sale making hand-built steel touring frames in a rented barn in Waterloo in 1976. Today, Trek has long since expanded beyond the barn into modern research, engineering and manufacturing facilities in Waterloo, where the company still produces high-end carbon frames. At the same time, like many manufacturers, Trek has formed partnerships with overseas suppliers in Taiwan and the People's Republic of China that provide components, frames and some Thomas Sabo Australia cheap fully assembled bikes.


Quality is of supreme importance in thomas sabo charm carriers online the bike industry, thomas sabo charm earrings of course--no one wants to thomas sabo necklaces uk online think about defect issues while they're riding on a sliver of rubber at 40-plus miles per hour down a twisting mountain road--and Trek has been working to drive quality back thomas sabo bracelets uk store into its supply chain to ensure that every product coming into its facilities from overseas is up to cheap thomas sabo pendants spec every time. To that end, the company has ramped thomas sabo pendants cheap up the involvement of its supplier quality group with all the new products being developed in Asia. As cheap thomas sabo watches uk part of that effort, the company has been working with key suppliers to thomas sabo charms sale deploy a system that will give the quality team in Waterloo real-time insights into product quality before a component or frame even leaves the thomas sabo carrier factory in Taiwan or cheap thomas sabo earrings Mainland China.
Quality in Real Time

Julie Wilhelm, supply chain quality thomas sabo bracelets manager with Trek, says that, in the past, the thomas sabo charm pendants bike manufacturer did not have visibility into quality issues until products arrived at its U.S. facilities, when it was too late to thomas sabo earrings uk store take corrective action. "It was the same cause all the time," Wilhelm says. "We hadn't reviewed what the supplier was doing thoroughly enough, and we didn't always provide them with the best specification." Trek was already using discount thomas sabo necklaces a quality solution called ProFicient from InfinityQS International for cheap thomas sabo rings uk statistical thomas sabo charm carriers sale process control (SPC) thomas sabo rings within its own thomas sabo charm carriers store facilities, but the company had no way thomas sabo watches online of extending the quality process out to its suppliers' plant floor.


That changed when Wilhelm learned about the eSPC solution that InfinityQS launched in 2006. thomas sabo watches sale eSPC is a hosted solution that can thomas sabo rings store connect disparate, far-flung manufacturing discount thomas sabo charms locations within a single enterprise or across a supply chain to a shared database of quality data. That allows quality managers and engineers at a central thomas sabo necklaces online location to analyze supplier quality data and evaluate incoming thomas sabo watches uk online materials prior to delivery. "Because eSPC is Web-based and was meant to work with suppliers, I latched onto it," says Wilhelm, who had worked with the solution provider's offerings both at Trek and in a previous quality role at Rayovac Corporation.


The functionality that drew Wilhelm to eSPC included the potential to gain real-time access to all key dimensions of Trek's products being manufactured by suppliers. The company's engineers would be able to view those data as they were generated in trend chart format and do cheap thomas sabo necklaces sale uk capability thomas sabo rings uk online or other analyses, or download the data for cheap thomas sabo charm carriers sale uk further processing. The solution also provided for real-time alerts via cheap thomas sabo chains sale e-mail so that Trek's quality staff on the ground thomas sabo pendants sale in Asia could learn about developing issues immediately, allowing cheap thomas sabo charms them to show up at the supplier the same day if necessary to deal with problems before any product left the plant.
Cultural Awareness

Beginning in late 2007, thomas sabo earrings cheap Trek initially thomas sabo necklaces sale targeted four thomas sabo chains cheap suppliers to begin working with eSPC--two in Taiwan, two in Mainland China. The company chose to start with suppliers of higher-end product and focused initially on just one parameter, weight, which is thomas sabo earrings crucial in its top-end bicycles. "We sold it to them from the angle that cheap thomas sabo watches sale they were key thomas sabo necklaces vendors and that weight is crucial, so they could thomas sabo pendants store get onboard with us and start collecting the weight data to stay at the high end of our business," Wilhelm explains.


She adds thomas sabo ring that Trek chose these specific discount thomas sabo watches suppliers in part because they were more proactive in seeking new ways to work with the bike thomas sabo chains store manufacturer. "There are other companies that would have been tougher to work with because they are thomas sabo charm very much inspection-based and they didn't thomas sabo carriers cheap see the value in investing money upfront to prevent defects," she says. "We purposely picked companies that were more willing to work with us and do what we cheap thomas sabo necklaces sale need. So knowing the culture of the thomas sabo charms cheap company you're dealing with is very beneficial."


Deploying the SPC software and having it pull data directly from thomas sabo charm chains the suppliers' production line did present some minor difficulties specific to the locale. For example, the relevant Cheap Thomas Sabo Australia gauges were manufactured in Asia, and the manuals were in Chinese, so it took some time to understand how to connect the equipment thomas sabo charm necklaces into the software. More Thomas Sabo Australia online significantly, progress in getting discount thomas sabo charm carriers the deployment fully rolled out was affected by the amount thomas sabo earring of time that thomas sabo bracelets cheap Wilhelm was thomas sabo bracelets online able to spend on the ground at the suppliers' facilities thomas sabo earrings store making adjustments or improvements.


Wilhelm, who travels to thomas sabo pendant Asia to visit the suppliers at least cheap thomas sabo bracelets five times a year, says that, in retrospect, she would have recommended training Trek's staff in Asia to provide more of the front-end support for the deployment of the software. "We cheap thomas sabo watches sale uk relied too much on me being there to fix small issues that came up, or to make improvements," she says. "Our people could have handled that if thomas sabo pendants uk online we had given them the thomas sabo rings uk store training upfront, although we're working on cheap thomas sabo earrings uk that now."
Protecting the Brand

Trek started the project by collecting data on product weight from thomas sabo bracelets uk online the suppliers' discount thomas sabo earrings assembly lines, but the company thomas sabo charm carriers uk has since expanded the data they are managing through eSPC. thomas sabo bracelets sale For example, the thomas sabo carriers quality team developed a test to proof load all the forks--the part of the bicycle that holds the front wheel and permits steering--to ensure zero construction defects before this critical component leaves a supplier factory. Data from these tests are fed into eSPC, alerting Trek's quality and engineering staff to issues with a given part, but also allowing them to access data on every single fork at any time. "It helps us sleep thomas sabo earrings online better knowing that our thomas sabo charm carriers uk online bikes are undergoing these tests, that we're tracking them and that we cheap thomas sabo charm carriers know exactly what happened to each one," Wilhelm says.


The company's plans call for further using eSPC to manage the key thomas sabo charm rings dimensions on components and bikes coming in from suppliers, as well as data from additional tests that will be put in place to cheap thomas sabo charms sale ensure compliance with applicable consumer safety cheap thomas sabo bracelets sale uk requirements. Trek also is looking to thomas sabo chains uk store extend use of the solution to additional high-end vendors with more critical products, such as the carbon components, and eventually to any key supplier for OEMed or aftermarket products.


For companies looking to extend their quality management programs out onto their Asian suppliers' plant floor, Wilhelm recommends carefully considering the cheap thomas sabo pendants sale uk infrastructure thomas sabo charms uk store within the vendors' facilities. "Their Internet connections are generally a cheap thomas sabo charms sale uk lot slower than ours, they don't always have their buildings wired like we do, and obviously access to thomas sabo chains uk online the Internet is key with eSPC," she notes. And she repeats her suggestion to ensure that local team members are trained up on the solution prior to the deployment. "Getting the Thomas Sabo Australia sale support staff trained on the ground before you implement would help move the project a lot faster, changes thomas sabo chains sale could be made faster and you cheap thomas sabo chains sale uk could expand its use a lot faster," discount thomas sabo rings she advises.


The benefits from the project for Trek have been two-fold. First, it has prevented defective product from leaving discount thomas sabo bracelets the suppliers' facilities--many of those products would have been uncovered during a check thomas sabo earrings uk when it reached cheap thomas sabo charms uk Trek in Wisconsin, but two months would have been lost while thomas sabo pendants uk the goods were thomas sabo charms store in transit across the Pacific. The system also is preventing products intended for the aftermarket--products that go directly into a warehouse and then thomas sabo carriers online onto the dealer's floor--from reaching the market, which helps protect the Cheap Thomas Sabo Australia online Trek brand name.


Wilhelm further believes that using the eSPC solution will have cheap thomas sabo chains additional cost benefits down the road. "If the vendors buy thomas sabo necklaces uk store into thomas sabo carriers sale it thomas sabo watches and start using it even further upstream in their processes, they'll end up saving money and hopefully pass that along to us, and then cheap thomas sabo necklaces uk we can pass that on to our cheap thomas sabo earrings sale uk customers as well."