Recently, due to the company's expansion of production lines, many new personnel have been recruited successively. At first glance, with more people, production capacity should increase accordingly, but in reality, things are often not as simple as they appear on the surface.
For production units, the addition of new recruits is a good thing, representing that there will be more manpower to share the workload in the future, and also indicating the company's confidence in subsequent orders and development. However, before new recruits can truly work independently, they must go through a period of learning and adaptation. In addition to completing their own tasks, experienced employees must also spend time guiding newcomers, teaching operational procedures, precautions, and various practical experiences. Therefore, in the initial stage of personnel increase, overall efficiency may not improve immediately and could even temporarily decline.
As a Production Controller, my work focus has also shifted during this period. Normally, I closely track the production progress of each work order, but during times of significant personnel changes, I need to pay closer attention to whether any processes are experiencing delays. Although the tolerance for certain idle times may be higher than usual, the prerequisite remains that final shipments are not affected. In addition to confirming schedule progress daily, I also proactively check which abnormal models are currently on the production line and how many units are impacted, providing this information in advance to Production & Sales and PM so that relevant units can grasp the situation early, rather than discovering issues just before shipment.
Many people who have never been exposed to the manufacturing floor may wonder: "Since the product is already in mass production, why are there still defects?" In fact, for production units, having zero defects is an unrealistic situation.
Especially with electronic products, there are far too many factors affecting quality—differences in components themselves, subtle variations in the manufacturing process, environmental conditions, or even unpredictable special circumstances. As product quantities increase, even if the defect rate remains at the same level, the absolute number of defective units will still rise. Therefore, when problems occur, what the production line can do is not make the issues disappear out of thin air, but continuously test, verify, analyze the causes, and then perform repairs and improvements through various methods.
Sometimes, sales units hope that products can be shipped in full quantities and that all orders can be completed on schedule. From the customer's perspective, such requirements are entirely reasonable, as customers only care about receiving the needed products on time. However, from the production side, we see another aspect—we know how much time each abnormal unit may require for troubleshooting, and that every repair needs repeated verification to confirm whether the issue is truly resolved.
In reality, many people assume sales are pushing for shipments while production is delaying, but in my view, this is mostly not the case. Sales want customer satisfaction, PM wants projects to proceed smoothly, Production Controller wants schedules to stay on track, and the production line wants problems resolved as quickly as possible. Although each department stands in a different position and sees different issues, everyone's goal is actually the same: to ensure products are smoothly delivered to customers.
Honestly, the production line often wants full-quantity shipments more than anyone else, because those unfinished work orders, defective units awaiting repair, and materials piled up on-site waiting to be handled all create pressure for frontline staff. No one likes seeing work pile up, and no one wants problems to remain on the production line. However, some matters cannot be resolved simply by saying "it must be on time"—they require time, experience, and cross-departmental cooperation to resolve issues step by step.
After working for a while, I have found that many inter-departmental conflicts actually stem from differing perspectives. When we are willing to understand each other's positions, we realize that we are not making things difficult for one another, but rather working toward the same goal from our respective roles in different ways. This makes it easier to understand each other and continue moving forward in both mindset and work.