Four decades closing that gap — supplier quality, process capability, and root cause, brought to bear where it counts.
Real World Solutions is the independent consulting practice of Isiah “Mickey” White — a career engineer who spent four decades at Ford Motor Company, concluding as Senior Manager for North America Chassis Supplier Technical Assistance, responsible for quality performance across 245 Tier 1 suppliers.
That work covered suspension, steering, braking, and wheel components across cast, forged, stamped, and machined processes — the full arc from design intent through launch to steady-state production. Along the way came the technical leadership of an industry-first steer-by-wire four-wheel-steering system, from concept study through parts build and vehicle installation; a foreign-service assignment in Germany; and a turn as Chief Engineer Pro Tempore for pickup and commercial vehicles.
The through-line, shaped early by a W. Edwards Deming seminar, is a conviction that field quality is decided long before the field: in whether the process parameters a design depends on are the ones manufacturing actually monitors. Closing that gap — systematically, with genuine causal traceability — is the work.
Today that experience is available to manufacturers directly: remote, senior, and hands-on in the data, without the overhead of a large firm.
Senior-level engineering and quality support, scoped to the problem and delivered where the work actually is.
Supplier performance management, corrective-action support, and the day-to-day discipline of keeping a supply base capable — grounded in 245 suppliers’ worth of experience.
Advanced Product Quality Planning and Production Part Approval, from launch readiness through documentation, execution, and engineering-change integration.
Design and Process FMEA development and facilitation that surfaces real failure modes early — not a form-filling exercise, but a working risk analysis.
Statistical Process Control and capability studies that tell you not just whether a process is in control, but whether it is capable of what the design demands.
Structured 3×5 Why investigation that resolves a problem at three levels — the specific (what happened), the detection (why it escaped our controls), and the systemic (what in the system allowed it) root cause — rather than stopping at the first plausible answer.
Independent, section-by-section evaluation of a manufacturer’s systems and processes — a clear read on whether a site is a reliable partner, and a roadmap to compliance where it falls short.
Predictive Root-cause Integrated System for Manufacturing.
PRISM is an approach to precision-manufacturing quality that connects what a design specifies to what the floor monitors in near-real time — mapping dimensional variation back toward its causal source rather than simply flagging that it occurred.
It is the system a forty-year career kept wishing existed: a way to close the gap between engineering intent and production reality, systematically and with genuine causal traceability. PRISM is the independent intellectual property of Real World Solutions, LLC.
Remote engagements in supplier quality, APQP/PPAP, FMEA, SPC, and site assessment. Day trips when a situation calls for eyes on the floor.
Email Mickey White