The case study company was established in 2001. A needs analysis was conducted at the company and a high scrap rate was identified. The company made a financial loss of about R400 000 in 2013 and also in 2014 due to scrap. The company still faces a high scrap rate in spite of the quality management system in place.
Defects are still prevalent in the manufacturing industry despite the attempts by companies to implement measures to eliminate them. A contributing factor to defects is the absence or poor utilisation of a quality management system. Measuring the effects of these defects on productivity and their contribution to losses in monetary value is likely to assist the company to use the tools in the quality management system to eliminate the root causes of these defects.
An investigation into the root causes was conducted using a root cause analysis technique. Pareto analysis, Fishbone diagram and 5 Whys were some of the tools used to uncover the root causes of defects leading to scrap. The identified recurring defects were analysed to eliminate their root causes.