MMI ENGINEERED SOLUTIONS: Supporting Ongoing Quality Improvement With Training

When engineers and manufacturers have a problem with their critical components, they come to MMI Engineered Solutions. For more than 42 years, MMI has provided custom engineered solutions using the most advanced technology to optimize design and functionality. Offering services from in-house tooling to design and engineering support, every project at MMI is driven by their world-class process of applying innovation to create advantages and deliver performance. MMI has 145,000 square feet of manufacturing space at their Saline, Mich., headquarters where they employ 160, with additional locations in Troy, Michigan, and Mexico.

MMI aims to maintain and improve on the quality their customers have come to expect. To support this initiative, MMI partnered with the Michigan Manufacturing Technology Center (The Center), part of the MEP National Network™, to provide their quality training needs.

The Center has supplied MMI with mentoring and several quality trainings over the last two years to support the company's quality goals. First, risk management through failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA) helps workers better define, manage and reduce risks. This training broadened participants’ knowledge of FMEAs and their applications using real-world examples and exercises. As a result, the process of creating and filling in an FMEA became less intimidating. The Center then built upon that foundation with 8D problem solving, ensuring employees can solve problems quickly. Key plant managers and engineers attended this interactive course where they used actual company problems in exercises to effectively learn 8D problem solving tools. The Center also assisted in maintaining MMI's IATF 16949 certification. Ten newer quality team members attended this training to gain the skills needed to continually audit their quality management system and make improvements. As a result of comprehensive geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T training), which helps control variation, MMI was able to begin producing components for medical ventilators to support the fight against COVID-19. MMI’s strategic partnership with The Center is ongoing, with further training already planned to continue maintaining and improving quality.