SAS® early-warning analytics help manufacturers catch product defects, contain scrap costs

SAS® Quality Lifecycle Analysis helps protect customer confidence

The Premier Business Leadership Series, LAS VEGAS (Oct. 29, 2008) – All manufacturers want to create high-quality products at the lowest-possible cost. But, according to a study from Industry Week magazine and the Manufacturing Performance Institute, manufacturers spend an average of 4.1 percent of overall annual plant sales on materials and defective products that end up on the scrap heap.

A new solution from SAS, the leader in business analytics, helps manufacturers proactively address these quality and performance issues. SAS Quality Lifecycle Analysis uses early-warning analytics to flag potential failures and defects before they become costly problems that erode customer confidence.

Several years ago, Korea-based POSCO, one of the world’s largest steel manufacturers, implemented a Six Sigma performance management strategy to update business practices, reduce scrap and improve productivity. Using SAS, POSCO created a comprehensive enterprisewide data warehouse and automatic analytic reporting system to discover hidden connections between manufacturing processes that affect quality.

“SAS has directly contributed to an ROI of $14 million on Six Sigma projects and an additional $1.5 million on other projects,” said Ill-Chul Shin, Manager and Master Black Belt at POSCO’s Six Sigma Academy. “That’s an impressive result in less than two years, and we have anticipated ways to gain even greater returns in the future.”

“With SAS we successfully enabled our engineers to achieve their goals quickly, easily and independently,” he added. “SAS allows us to meet our KPI goals.”