“How conscious are your workers of quality concerns?”

“How conscious are your workers of quality concerns?”
“They are very aware of its importance. Every worker knows about our ‘Do it right the first
time’ philosophy. We have a suggestion program, and a quarterly quality newsletter
recognizing our best workers. In fact, your study here will fit right in with what we have been
doing.”
“Are your suppliers involved in your quality program?”
“No, and that is an occasional problem. We have had to step up our incoming inspections.
Our suppliers know that if we get bad material, we send it back. Their contracts require
replacement of bad material at no cost, so they are usually pretty good.”
“Are you concerned about quality costs?”
“Well, yes, to the extent that I am concerned about all costs. Our quality costs have gone
up a little through hiring of inspectors, and I have hired you, so you know I think of it as an
investment. We don’t get a lot of returned goods because we don’t ship a lot of scrap. Our
people know I won’t tolerate shoddy work; quality has always been part of our reputation.”
“How much of an investment in time are you willing to make in improvement? In other
words, how soon do you expect results from this study?”
“I know better than to expect instantaneous results. I also know that long-term change
takes a long time to accomplish. You told me your study would be complete within a month,
and I expect some concrete recommendations from it. Getting those in place, though, is
another matter. I expect major changes to take up to a couple of years to show results, but I
hope we can make some headway in some areas sooner than that.”
“That’s good. I wanted to be sure you were not expecting miracles. All the people involved,
but most especially the management, need to understand, and accept, that lasting
improvement means changing the processes. This invariably leads to someone’s duties being
changed, more responsibility given to the workers, and a perceived dilution of management’s
authority. These things don’t happen overnight.”
“I’m not sure what you have in mind on dilution of management’s authority.”
“Well, I start with the assumption that you have good workers and good managers, but they
don’t necessarily understand that what is best for a single department might not be best for
the company. Some companies have management systems that guarantee that individual
departments optimise their operations at the overall cost of the company. We have what
appears to be a fundamental contradiction. We would like to free the workers and managers
of constraints that limit how well they do their jobs, but central authority or management gets
in the way. If we proceed to give workers more authority, this dilutes management authority,
and it seems to mean that individuals, not departments, might optimise their own work at the
cost of the overall company. To coordinate these efforts, we need a system of operation that 4
lets each person know his or her role in the organisation, not just the position title and reporting
requirement. If all of your people are well trained, understand their roles, and work in an
environment that fosters cooperation to achieve common goals, you have that system of
operation. Of course that is a much simplified description of it.”
“And you are going to do this in a month?”
“That’s the key point. In a month, we can identify some process problems that can probably
be profitably improved in the short term. The training, reaching a new level of understanding,
and creating the environment to keep the system going can take a long time.”
“Is this the ‘change in corporate culture’ that I have read about?”
“Yes, it is. And this is the most difficult part of improvement to achieve. You hear terms
such as ‘cultural change’, ‘transformation’, and ‘continuous improvement’. They all mean
essentially the same thing. You eventually have to change the way you do business within
the company to a mode and style that not just allows, but encourages all of your employees
to participate in continuous improvement. The cultural change or transformation is what is
necessary to get to this stage. And it is you and your management who will be most affected
by it. Some of this change can be accomplished simply through correct training of workers
and management, to give them the tools to do the job. But a large part of it is the acceptance
by the management that the transformation is necessary.”
“I see why you are concerned about commitment. I probably have some managers who
will have trouble accepting all of this.”
“I would be surprised if you did not. This acceptance will really be your job, not mine. I
can help some, with training slanted especially for your managers, and with some good
examples of successful companies who are in this transformation. You can’t simply copy what
they do, because the system you end up with should be developed with your own needs and
environment in mind. This means the system will be created by your people, with some
coaching and help.”
“Should we send some managers to visit Japan, and see what they are doing?”
“Not right away, and possibly not at all. I think it is a mistake to think in terms of Japanese
methods. Many of the things that need to be done are common sense; they are difficult
sometimes because they seem to be contradicted by what we have been taught and how we
have practiced for years. We have the Japanese example to show us that what we have been
taught is not necessarily right. But the methods the Japanese used are not uniquely
Japanese. They had the benefit of some good teaching and coaching, from Deming and
Juran, beginning in the 1950’s. But they didn’t succeed simply because they are Japanese,
and they didn’t succeed in a short time. As a country, they took about 20 years. Some
companies developed much quicker, and continue to improve. The secret of their success
was the way they used the training and coaching they got, with their commitment to
improvement over the long term. They use their management methods in American plants
with American workers, and are successful here, too. It is this kind of commitment that I mean
when I ask if you are committed. It is a recognition that, without this transformation, you are
limited to short-term fixes that may be profitable in the short run, but do nothing to affect long
term operations. My team is going to begin with short-term problems, but you need to be
taking a longer view.”
“Well, now I understand better why you asked about my commitment, and I can see how
this might be more disruptive to management than the workers. I must tell you that I have
some reservations. I will need to be convinced before we go beyond the process 5
improvements we have talked about. I am still committed to your study, but what you are
talking about is a major change in the company.”
“That’s right, it certainly is. Let us do this. I will begin the study, and you can announce to
your employees that my team will be conducting a month-long quality improvement study.
During the course of the study, you will have opportunities to see what we are doing, and how
we are doing it. This will show you what kind of training your line workers will need, because
they should learn to do the same kinds of studies on their own. In the later stages of the study,
I will want your management to participate in some sessions leading to development of a
strategy for quality improvement in your company. This will address more long-term issues.
At the end of the study, you will have seen the methods we use and the results we have gotten,
and I will give you a set of recommendations for further action. At that point, we can discuss
all this again. So, you have some options, and part of my job will be to give you information
to use in selecting options.”
“That sounds fine. At the very least, you might discover some process improvements that
we can use. What do we do next?”
“I would like to talk with a few of your managers and employees. If you will introduce me
to your VP of Manufacturing, I will start getting into details.”