An investigation into the quality of fluting-paper at papermills
Date
2010-09-08
Authors
Bheem, Vinotha
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Abstract
Fluting-paper produced to meet the same technical specifications at three of the
company’s mills, is viewed as unsatisfactory and inconsistent by some customers.
This study investigated whether the company’s fluting-paper met the customers’
needs and investigated the reasons for the customer’s differing perceptions and
claims of inconsistent quality. The hypothesis, investigated is therefore “the
company produces fluting-paper consistently according to technical specifications
that meet the customer needs”. The four objectives of this study investigated
customer complaints, related the customer needs to the technical specifications,
related the process measure of quality, cull, to the technical specifications and
determined the reasons for the customers’ claims of inconsistent quality. The
customer complaints investigation revealed differences at the mills and that fifty
three percent of customer complaints were technical. The technical category was
investigated to reveal “out of specification” paper, moisture, cracking, glueability
and winding operations as the biggest problems that contribute to complaints. A
customer survey conducted determined the customer needs and the importance of
each customer need. The most important customer needs determined were
consistent moisture, consistent weight and strength. The most important technical
characteristics were determined using a team of technical experts and QFD
principles, to be grammage, moisture and porosity. QFD also revealed that there
were technical characteristics to describe the customer needs and there were
specifications on all technical characteristics, except one new customer need. In
the investigation of the process, cull, was consecutively compared to the technical
specifications, customer needs and customer complaints using QFD. These
investigations showed that tensile strength, tear and porosity were technical
specifications for which paper was not culled and some mills cull paper for nontechnical
reasons which are not standardized across mills. These disparities are
envisaged to realize into the customers claims of inconsistent quality. The results
from these four objectives therefore point out that the company does not always
produce fluting-paper consistently according to technical specifications that meet
the customer needs, and this hypothesis is therefore rejected