All case studies
Manufacturing · Quality

Automated scrap and quality-cost reporting for a quality team

A quality-engineering team turned years of scrap detail into a monthly report with trends and top causes, generated in minutes instead of most of a day.

29 mo
of scrap detail reconciled
hours→min
to produce the monthly report
MoM·YoY
and 12-month trends, automatically
TOP 3
scrap causes surfaced each month
SCRAP / MONTHTOP 3 CAUSESMonths of scrap detail become a trend you can act on.
Background

The quality team tracked scrap in monthly spreadsheets. Producing the management report (trends, top causes, comparisons) was a manual job that ate most of a day, and the totals between sheets sometimes disagreed.

Leadership wanted several views at once: month over month, year over year, a 12-month average and the full-period picture, plus how the cause structure was shifting. That was too much to keep up by hand.

Business challenges

Months of inconsistent spreadsheets

Scrap detail lived in sheets that did not line up cleanly.

Many comparison views wanted

MoM, YoY, 12-month and full-period were heavy to build by hand.

Cause structure kept shifting

The top causes changed month to month and were hard to track.

Totals sometimes disagreed

Different summary sheets did not always reconcile.

Solution

We reconciled the full scrap history and generated a consistent monthly report: the latest month against month-over-month, year-over-year, the 12-month average and the full period, plus the top causes and how the cause structure is shifting over time.

The report separates real signal from noise (a one-off versus a trend) and never invents numbers: it reports only what the data supports, with a checking view so the totals are verifiable.

Scope
Duration

Built once, then every month in minutes

Rapid design & deployment

One expensive problem, proven before it scales. The A1 to POC method, run in weeks not quarters.

A1 · Confirm the goal
Find which views leadership actually uses.
A2 · Audit the data
Reconcile the months and the spreadsheets.
A3 · Design the report
Agree the comparison logic and cause structure.
POC · Regenerate the past
Rebuild past months and check against known numbers.
Handoff · Monthly run
Ship the monthly run and the checking view.
Before & after
Before
After
Monthly report
Most of a day by hand
Minutes
Comparisons
One view, manual
MoM / YoY / 12-mo / full, automatic
Causes
Tracked ad hoc
Top 3 plus structure over time
Totals
Sometimes disagreed
Reconciled and checkable
Return on investment

The report stopped being a chore and started being early warning.

Governance & standards

We design and deploy to the ISO/IEC 27001 (information security) and ISO/IEC 42001 (AI management system) frameworks. Data stays where it should, decisions that carry real cost keep a human in the loop, and every model call is logged for audit.

ISO/IEC 27001
Information security management
ISO/IEC 42001
AI management system

Designed and deployed to these frameworks. Not a certification claim.

Related use cases
Contact

Have a problem like this?

Bring your messiest operational problem. In 30 minutes we will tell you where AI would pay back fastest, and where it would not.

Discuss an operations problem