Nashville Custom Guitars (NCG) is a small-scale manufacturing operation, producing fewer than 800 instruments a year. The company does not have a formal quality department nor has it consciously tried to apply the principles of TQM. Nevertheless, a tour of its facilities and operations suggests that many of the principles of TQM and Deming’s 14 Points are evident.

Although modern computer numerically controlled (CNC) equipment is used to manufacture minor parts of the guitar, the secret of NCG’s success lies in the small staff of 14 craftsmen, known as luthiers, who ap­ply care and attention to detail while hand­crafting the major components of each instrument. The shop floor is divided into six workstations at which the guitars are progressively assembled as they move from station to station. Experienced luthiers, who are empowered to make their own quality decisions, staff each station. The guitar does not move to the next station until the luthier and another more senior luthier are satisfied with the quality of the work. The manufacturing department inspects what it produces. The company recruits only those who desire to work in a team environment and have a passion for guitar making.

There are seven major steps in the process of making a guitar:

1. Selecting and Drying the Wood: The guitar-making process starts with the selection of the highest grades of tone woods. The wood is treated in an evaporative dehumidifying kiln that slowly and carefully removes bound cellular moisture from the wood. The target moisture level is 3 percent, but when exposed to the temperature/humidity conditions of the shop floor, the moisture content stabilizes at 6 percent. The shop floor is kept at a constant 47 percent humidity, which is optimum for maintaining the equilibrium of moisture conditions.

2. Rough Cutting the Wood: Once dried, the wood is worked down to rough usable forms using traditional woodworking tools. However, NCG uses a CNC machine for creating the necks.

3. Bending the Sides: To create the desired shapes, the guitar sides are first dipped into water for 10 minutes to condition the wood and then placed under gradual hand pressure on a hot bending template. At that point, the tension in the wood has been relaxed, and the wood eventually takes the shape of the template. This process is best performed by human hands because sides that are shaped by machines have a tendency to spring back when they are being forced into molds.

4. Cutting the Top and Back: The top and back of the guitars then are cut to shape, and braces are ap-plied to each surface. The thicknesses of the top and braces have the most influence on the final sound of the guitar. As the luthier shaves off ribbons of wood from the top and braces, he will tap the top to hear the tone that results from each series of shavings until the tone is perfect. Since the true sound of the instruments will not be fully realized until they are assembled, the luthiers write down what they did while building the top. After final assembly, if a guitar produces a sound so special it knocks the player’s socks off, the luthier who built the top will immediately be notified and asked to check his notes to see how this was accomplished so the sound can be duplicated in the future.

5. Cutting the Neck: About 60 percent of the NCG guitar necks are cut on the CNC machine. It is the only major part that is not hand-made. It is critical that the dimensions of the neck be consistent, and the CNC machine does that better than human hands. The 40 percent of necks that are hand-made are done that way because of a customer’s specifications. Ebony fret boards, which are inlaid with mother-of-pearl, are then glued to the necks.

6. Applying the Finish: The guitar body is finished with 12 protective layers of a specially formulated lacquer composed primarily of nitrocellulose and plasticizers to preserve the wood surfaces. The lacquer is thin enough that the sound is not dampened.

7. Completing Final Assembly and Setup: The neck is fitted to the body using a dovetail joint and glued in place. Then the bridge is glued to the body. In the next step, called the setup, the saddle and nut, which suspend the strings over the instrument and are made from bovine bones, are installed. Finally, the strings are placed on the guitar, and it is played for the first time. A technician then adjusts the neck or string height to optimize the feel and play-ability of the instrument.

NCG has a web page where guitar owners can have questions about their guitars answered. At NCG, workers are encouraged to further enhance their skills either by taking external courses or by a practice that allows them to build two instruments a year for personal use. These opportunities allow the craftsmen to explore new techniques in guitar building and become familiar with the entire guitar building process. NCG workers are even encouraged to go out on their own to open a luthier business someday.

2.0 Discussion Questions

Based on this descriptive tour of NCG, can you identify how the operations and quality practices reflect Deming’s 14 Points?

Answer rating: 100% (QA)

To identify how the operations and quality practices reflect Demings 14 Points we first need to know what those 14 points are In brief Demings 14 Points are a set of management practices that promote ... View the full answer