Scrap tickets, hold cages, and first-pass yield

Quality conversations stall when everyone points at a monthly scrap percentage. That figure mixes pieces dumped at the press, pieces found at packing, and pieces that sat in a hold cage until someone needed the pallet space. Each path has a different owner. Treating them as one trend produces a meeting about “culture” instead of a walk to the actual pile.

Ask for three piles, even if they currently share a ticket pad. First-pass fails at the station check. Rework that re-enters the line. True scrap that leaves as waste or scrap sale. Then look at the hold cage as a fourth location: pieces that are neither good nor written off. A cage that grows while the scrap percentage falls is not an improvement.

On a quality trend walk we photograph cage tags with permission, copy ticket dates, and stand at the first-pass check during the busiest hour. The question is not whether the inspector is “too hard.” The question is whether the fail mode on the ticket matches the fail mode on the piece in hand. Mismatched codes are as common as real process drift.

Throughput studies that ignore quality holds will overstate available time. Quality reviews that ignore starved stations will overstate process capability. The two walks belong together when the same line is both slow and noisy in the scrap column.

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