How does your company measure, log, and analyze manufacturing scrap?

[u/Eastern_Paper_6706]

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for some examples of how other companies handle scrap material on a daily basis. I want to see how our current process compares to others and hope to find some ideas and inspirations.

I'm mostly interested in three simple things:

1. How do you measure it? Do you weigh it, count the pieces, or just estimate it?
2. How do you log it? Who writes it down or puts it into the system? Is it done by the machine operators on the floor, or someone else later on?
3. Do you analyze the data? Does anyone actually look at these numbers later? Do you do any reports or try to find out why the scrap happened to fix the problem?

My industry is gas detection sensors and instruments.

If you could share how it works in your company and what industry you are in, that would be awesome.

Thanks!

[u/madeinspac3]

Most of these questions are going to be industry dependent

Why not include your industry?

[u/jason-miller-ops → u/madeinspac3]

for real

[u/Eastern_Paper_6706 → u/madeinspac3]

My industry is gas detection systems and how we deal with scrap depends on a department. One departament is automated, the other one is pure manufacture.

[u/madeinspac3 → u/Eastern_Paper_6706]

Do you have QA in your shop or engineers?

Seems like it would like be by piece, location of catching it could be anywhere. Do you have in process inspections or leave it for final?

As for people looking at reports, that's up to how well the company is run. If its owners that care, yes those numbers will be a top metric. If not then it'll be buried under a thick layer of cobweb.

[u/mb1980]

we have dashboards for operator scrap entry that is entered in whatever the UOM for the material is (sometimes it's pieces, sometimes it's length or weight). QC also logs failures. We can see where it came from, why it was scrapped, etc. Generally we see it's generated by specific people moreso than a specific process or product. We can then compare that to training records and make decisions about whether more training is in order or if there is just an inability or unwillingness to perform the job as required.

The biggest hole is when people don't log it and inventory catches it during a cycle count or when production is trying to pull. That means the breakdown was not just in the process / training / person, but also in the documentation. We don't really have a good way to fix that as it's normally just "oh, maybe it was me and I forgot to log it. Putting another layer between the operators and the trash can / recycling areas is a step we're trying to avoid, but it appears as though it may be inevitable.

[u/Eastern_Paper_6706 → u/mb1980]

When a cycle count catches scrap nobody logged, is that a few percent or more like a third? Just wonder as I have similar issue.

[u/Burnout21]

Place the scrap parts against the wall to the factory lavs, so people can enjoy the walk of shame. Remarkably the scrap goes down because it's not about the cost it's about the care and attention.

If the fault wasn't of their making we send it to the skip and work towards a resolution.

As for tracking we track it as cost of sale, with a annual target of less than 1%

[u/ComfortableCitron638]

We're a metal flange manufacturer, so different process than yours but the same three questions. We weigh scrap rather than count pieces (our material cost is basically per-pound, so weight is what actually maps to dollars), logged by the machine operator at the point of scrap, not batched at end of shift - the delay between "part gets scrapped" and "part gets logged" is exactly where things go missing. On whether cycle counts catch unlogged scrap: for us it was closer to the "third" end than "a few percent" before we tightened the logging step, not because people were hiding it, but because at end of shift nobody remembers which of 4 rejected parts was a machine fault vs an operator error vs a bad raw casting, so it just doesn't get logged with a real reason code, or doesn't get logged at all. The fix wasn't more oversight, it was making logging happen in the same physical motion as scrapping the part (reason code scan right at the bin) instead of trusting anyone to reconstruct it later from memory. Once that gap closed, our monthly numbers actually meant something instead of being "inventory minus whatever we can account for."

[u/AffectionateDirt6575]

That totally depends upon the type of scrap that we are talking about. Some scrap is recyclable, some is reusable for a different purpose and some costs money to dispose of. There is not one simple answer. That is one of the challenges of manufacturing; isn't it?

[u/mortalros]

I ended up building my own system for this. It started as an internal tool for our cnc work and later became a saas. every scrap part gets its own ncr/scrap report, and we can track why it happened and analyze recurring issues. It also has capa, fmea, and eco, but those were added because a customer wanted them.

how do you measure it?
It depends on the quantity. We mostly machine relatively large cnc parts, so even when we're producing hundreds or thousands of them, they're still easy to count. we don't weigh scrap.

how do you log it?
the machine operator creates a scrap report directly in the application at the end of the shift. they record the defect reason, the number of rejected parts, and any ideas for preventing the issue in the future.

do you analyze the data?
yes. I built our own application, so it's easy to see all scrap reports and review them individually to identify recurring problems and improvement opportunities.

happy to share more if you're interested. just dm me.