Field note
Reading a scrap Pareto with your shift team
11 November 2025
A scrap Pareto is only useful if the people standing in front of it can act on it before the next shift starts. Many plants print a neat chart for the quality office and never take it to the line.
Start with one product family and one week of counts. Rank the defect codes by pieces, not by cost, when you are briefing operators. Piece counts keep the talk concrete: which fault appeared most often on this line.
Limit the briefing to the top three codes. Name the station where each code usually appears, and name the check that should catch it earlier. If the chart shows ten bars, fold the rest into an “other” group for the floor talk.
Ask one supervisor to open the next shift with the same three codes. Consistency across shifts matters more than a perfect chart layout. After two weeks, compare whether the top codes moved.
Keep the printed sheet near the line, not only in the quality room. Supervisors who can point at a bar while talking to an operator spend less time translating numbers into vague warnings.