We are in the middle of a “teachable moment” customer service situation.  Out dishwasher died so after exhausting my ability to troubleshoot the fault, we called for service.  We purchased the dishwasher from a nationwide retailer that is known for high quality hand tools as well as appliances.  The retailer has sophisticated systems to help them manage the parts and scheduling process.  The first call I set up using their internet interface.  I typed in the model number, serial number, and error code from the dishwasher, selected a time on the earliest date available. 

The earliest date was a week away, and the times available were in four hour windows.  It didn’t make it easy to plan the day.  The initial service call went well.  The technician called about 15 minutes prior to arrival.  He was polite and knowledgeable and quickly diagnosed the problem with the dishwasher.  He told me that he would have to order parts that would be shipped to the house and he would come back and install them.   Oddly enough the fault the error code read was the same as the actual fault in the machine.  My first confused moment was when he did not have the parts on the truck.  Why did I give them all that information about the machine and fault if they weren’t going to bring the parts to fix the highest probability problem with the machine?  

The technician had a laptop computer and printer with him.  He got online and ordered the parts from his parts depot and we scheduled the follow up visit (oddly enough it was a week out).  The day before the scheduled service, we received a robo- call from the service provider saying that we needed to call to set up an appointment for the service.  The message was quick and gave the phone number so quickly that I didn’t have a chance to write it down.  There were no options on the message to replay it.  I wondered why I needed to do that since the technician had already scheduled one.  I dutifully called and entered in my phone number (I assumed so the system could pull up my records and the call take would have all the information they needed to help schedule the second visit that I already had scheduled).  After several minutes of waiting, I was connected with an individual that had some issues with the English language and proceeded to have to give her my phone number, name, address, and the reason for the call.  (Didn’t they already know that from me typing in my phone number before?)  She asked me if the parts for the service had arrived.  I told her that I thought so; I received a box from their parts depot, but hadn’t bothered to open it.  She then asked me if I would retrieve the box, open it, and verify the parts.  I complied and got back on the phone and told her that the pump was in the box.  She then said there were three other parts that were on backorder so the service could not be completed.  One would wonder why I needed to go look since she already knew the answer.   She told me to call back when I got the parts and she would set up the call.  The day of the repair appointment originally set up by the technician, I got another phone call from the service call center.  I talked to a very polite person who spoke fluent English that explained to me that all the parts were not there and we had to schedule the service call for when the parts arrived.  (I thought we had established that yesterday?)  I asked about the expected ship date of the backordered parts, but she didn’t have that information.  Waste abounds in their process.   I’m getting tired of doing dishes by hand.  

The adventure continues.

 After a busy day in meetings, I’m back in my home office, cozy in my sweat pants and reflecting on the day’s activities.  This morning my husband and I had coffee with an associate who is in the process of starting a consulting business.  I really enjoyed talking with him and trading information on resources.  The meeting was definitely value-added for us and I hope it was for him as well.  I always enjoy sharing ideas and information - it  really gets the mental wheels turning.

One surprising takeaway from our meeting stemmed from the image of an American flag on his business card.  His new company name:  Quality Leadership.  The image:  The stars and stripes.  Now the wheels are really turning.  One of the strongest ideas I associate with being American is that of freedom.  We enjoy freedoms envied by most of the world.  And is America a leader in quality?  Indeed, it is.  

But if you’ve been around for any length of time you know that not so long ago this was not the case.  If the title of this blog caught your eye, you’re probably familiar with Philip Crosby and his pivotal 1979 book Quality is Free.  Here’s a little background.  During the late 1970s and into the 1980s North American manufacturers were losing market share to Japanese products largely due to the superior quality of the Japanese products.  In fact, my entry into quality as a career is due, in large part, to the quality movement of the 1980’s.  Thanks to the work of Crosby and his counterparts W. Edwards Deming, Joseph Juran and the pop-culture management guru Tom Peters, America was waking up to the fact that Japan was beating us in quality, cost and increasingly, market share.  We went “in search of excellence” with Peters who found companies like Harley Davidson executing breathtaking turnarounds by focusing on improving the quality of their products and involving their employees.  (Think Quality Circles and SPC - two big ideas that gained widespread popularity during this time.)  Remember the Ford slogan “Quality is Job One”?

If you were an engineering student in the 1980’s and you thought statistics was cool, quality was definitely the place to be.  My first job was “SPC Coordinator” at a company that made refrigeration timers for the appliance industry.  (SPC by hand - spreadsheets and PC’s were relatively new at that time!)  After two years, and a stint as a Quality Circle facilitator my husband and I were recruited by GE to work at a newly acquired plant making ranges in Georgia.  He as a process improvement engineer and me as a purchased material quality engineer.  At the time the service call rate on some product lines was a staggering 30%!  We were part of a wave of new quality professionals that were hired to  help dig our companies out of the quality ”hole” that had developed over the previous two decades.

Just a side-note - today that GE range plant is an industry leader in employee involvement, quality and innovation and consistently leads the division in financial performance.  It was such a privilege to be part of the outstanding team that made that happen.

Back to Crosby.  The legacy of Crosby’s work is arguably the concept of Zero Defects.  The idea that products could be produced with zero defects followed the logic that if we can design processes to prevent problems then we don’t have to pay to detect or correct problems.  The cost of paying to detect and correct defects is known as the Cost of Poor Quality, another one of Crosby’s key ideas and contributions to what had become conventional wisdom.

Let’s bring this back to the title of the blog…Quality is Freedom.  I believe that quality is, indeed, a tremendous source of freedom.  When you’ve successfully built processes that consistently produce a high-quality product or service, you’ve gained a lot of freedom.  Freedom from what?  Firefighting.  Excess inventory.  Expediting.  Sorting.  Rework.  Schedule changes.  Overtime.  Customer complaints.  Did I mention firefighting?

You know, I don’t remember the last time I heard someone arguing that improving quality would cost too much money and wouldn’t pay back.  Philip Crosby would be proud that logically almost all of us prescribe to his thesis that quality is free.  But if the logical argument for quality doesn’t resonate with you, perhaps the emotional lure of freedom from all that pain will help you decide to make quality your “job one”.

  Top 10 signs that you might need Lean….10.  You can’t leave the building you work in without employees calling asking you what to do (including evenings, weekends and holidays).

At the September 24 Union County Chamber of Commerce’s Legislative Breakfast, State Representative David Burke emphasized the importance of process improvement to Ohio’s manufacturing competitiveness. 

Burke talked about reducing waste and improving flow to reduce manufacturing costs.  He described his experience touring area manufacturing plants and learning how they’re striving to cut costs by eliminating unnecessary process steps and reducing inventory levels.  We were delighted to hear our representative  promoting Lean as a priority! 

At the breakfast we also heard from State Senator Karen Gilmore and a representative from US Senator Mary Jo Kilroy’s office.  Health Care Reform and Cap and Trade were the more controversial federal legislative initiatives that were discussed.  They are controversial, in part, because of the increased burden they will place on business if passed.  In the case of Cap and Trade, the bill disproportionately affects the State of Ohio because of our manufacturing-based economy.  

To keep jobs here in Ohio, it is critical that our businesses take steps to compete with world-wide challengers.  The US Congress has a host of bills moving through the legislative process that, if passed, will further challenge our manufacturing companies with increased taxes and regulations.  If your company has not yet taken action to address internal waste and inefficiency, I hope you’re beginning to feel the urgency.  The challenges we currently face will pale in comparison to those that await us if these anti-business laws are enacted.

Traditional cost-control efforts such as limiting paper and office supply use are worthwhile, of course, but they don’t begin to address the deep-seeded wasteful activities that have become standard practice in many of our businesses.  As a business community, it’s time to proactively address our opportunities to improve.  We can’t afford to wait any longer.

I just watched a Guinness world record in egg tossing being beat on Fox News.  In case you had something better to do before church on Sunday morning of Labor Day Weekend, I’ll describe it. 

Allison Camerota and Clayton Morris took on Ashrita Furman and an unnamed assistant in side-by-side egg tossing.  The opportunity to see the world-record seeking team go head-to-head with the news anchors was an outstanding visual to explain the advantage of standard work.

A timer was set for 1 minute and the eggs started to fly.  Clayton Morris, donned with a rain poncho, was the catcher for the anchor team.  The contrast between the record-seeking team and the anchor team was so dramatic that it made for great TV….and a blog about standard work.

Furman’s assistant used a very consistent technique.  With minimum motion, he picked up one egg after another and tossed them to Furman.  His consistent technique resulted in a small distribution of location where the egg would be caught, making it easier to catch the eggs and reducing the chance that an egg would arrive out of his reach.  (Did I mention that Furman didn’t wear a poncho?)

At the next set of tables, the unpracticed, unprepared news anchors had eggs flying in all directions.  Allison’s tossing technique varied from throw to throw and Clayton didn’t have a chance.  I have no doubt that they were trying to be successful.  And if success were measured in spilled yolk, they would have won hands-down.

It was clear that the world-record winners had practiced and perfected their technique.  Just like world-class athletes use consistent techniques to achieve consistently excellent results, so did the egg throwers.

The result:  Furman caught 66 eggs…beating the world record of 40 by 65%!  Wow…that’s breakthrough improvement!   

So…if you’ve disregarded the power of standard work in your improvement efforts, I urge you to rethink that position.  Sure, it takes some work to develop the best technique to minimize motion and the other types of waste, but once found, the use of the best technique by everyone who does a job can make a marked difference in performance.

Back to the eggs.  In case you want to try this at home or work, you’ll need:

·         Two tables

·         Eggs

·         A receptacle for the eggs on each table.

·         Situate the thrower and catcher 16 feet 4 inches apart.

·         A timer set for 1 minute. 

The performance metric: 

·         The number of eggs that are placed in the catcher’s receptacle uncracked.

With world-class performance now defined as 66 eggs, the egg toss at the next company picnic could take on a whole new meaning.  In fact, I may use this as a training exercise…

Today I learned to be a race timer.  On August 1, I’m helping with a 5K to benefit the Union County Humane Society.  So today I helped out at another local 5K to learn the ropes.  The guys from the Columbus Running Company are awesome – so willing to help organizations doing fundraising races – and very gracious to let me tag along with them.

Helping with the race today made me think about measurements.  The runners, both experienced and novice had a time they were working toward achieving.  They had a goal.  They had a way to measure their progress.  They assessed their performance along the race course and adjusted.   If you’re a runner, about now you’re saying “duh”.  Why would it be any other way?  That’s the challenge of running….setting goals and working to achieve them.

What is really amazing is that many businesses have measurement systems in place that don’t give the people running the race the information they need to adjust their performance mid-race.  They get financial results long after the end of the month.  And that’s all they measure.  Everything they know about their performance is from the past – like driving while looking in the rear-view mirror. 

Let’s go back the running analogy.  How do you know what to measure when running?  To run a 5K in less than 30 minutes, you need to run a 10-minute mile.  While training, on a treadmill or on the road, you must know how long you have run and how far you have gone.  Knowing this allows you to measure your progress, pushing a little harder until your goal is achieved.  So you need to measure distance and time and have a system in place to do so.  I know – “duh”.

So what’s your long-term goal?  How can that be measured?  What short-term measurements will help you know how you’re doing and adjust your approach?  In business these short-term measurements are called Key Process Indicators or Process Metrics.  Every process owner needs some.  Get yours today and watch how much easier it is to win your race.

Recently we took our 11 year old truck to a shop so they could figure out what was wrong with it.  Rob was out of town, we wanted to sell the truck and paying someone to nail down the ongoing problem it was experiencing seemed like the logical thing to do.

The truck was running very rough.  It started after pressure washing the engine.  Weeks of dry time had not resulted in the problem going away.  I explained everything we’d tried and where we were now.  The amazing mechanic declared, “It’s probably a coil”. 

Well, it ended up being an electrical problem - with the spark plug and coil that are recessed in an unreachable crevice of the engine cavity.  The area where the problem was could only be reached with extremely small, dexterous hands by a person that can perch on top of the radiator without messing up something else.  Because our mechanic was more the Grizzly Adams type than olympic gymnast, we figure he gave up on fixing the problem when he got to the last coil.  He returned to the truck to us after giving it his best shot and charging us $700.  The problem was better, but was not gone.

Rob came back from his trip and finished the job - with the help of my smaller (but not quite small enough) hands, we managed to resolve the problem.  Was the mechanic right?  He was on the right track.  Did he fix the problem?  No.

This all comes to mind because I am in the process of writing an Analytical Trouble Shooting course for technicians in a manufacturing plant.  The wasted time and money troublshooting our truck were frustrating for us.  The same process applied in a high-pressure equipment downtime situation in a plant would be more than frustrating - it could set off a chain of events that could disrupt the entire plant’s operations.

Our mechanic probably thought he was pretty smart.  He had pointed to the problem right away.  He just didn’t fix it - probably because it was too difficult and time consuming.  He got the truck running better…but he didn’t fix the root cause.  He got our $700.  I guess he was pretty smart after all.

My husband of almost 23 years probably won’t appreciate the format of this topic.  I’ll say that right up front.  But I’m sure he’ll appreciate the meaning, given that he’s a Master Black Belt.  So here goes…This morning (in the shower, no less) I found myself thinking about how often I’ve told people that they need to have an “intimate” knowledge of their data when considering using it for a Six Sigma project.  I tell them that there’s no substitute for really understanding what they have and where it came from.  I could be wrong, but I think data is like men. 

When you’re first introduced to a man, you see all the possibilities…all the things the two of you could do together…everything you have in common.  On your first date, you get a glimpse of what you really like (and dislike) about him.  You may have found a pleasant surprise, or slightly disturbing discovery.  At home you think about the date and the person you’re getting to know.  Will he meet my needs?  Do his strengths outweigh his weaknesses?  Does he drive a nice car? (This one seems like it only applies to men, but we can get caught up in the glitz and glamour of a new software package that will give you everything you need…admit it; you’ve been there.)

If you’re an optimist, like me, you’ll look for what’s right about him.  And what about the things you don’t like?  You could change him!  With your good influence and clever ways, you can make him what you want him to be!  If you’ve ever stuck with a relationship to try to fix the other person, you know that this is a mistake.  He is what he is.  You must acknowledge who he is and make a choice.  Do you stick with him or drop him and move on?

Are you seeing the parallels?  Data are like men….or men are like data…I’m not sure which is appropriate, but with either it’s important to see the true picture of what you’ve got early in the relationship.  If the data you have isn’t ever going to meet your needs, it’s important to acknowledge it quickly and not waste your time.  If you can dig a little deeper and get what you want, proceed. And if it’s perfect from the beginning, you’re one of the lucky few.

With experience you’ll learn to differentiate the good from the bad early on in the relationship.  A substitute for that experience is a good girlfriend to talk to.  (A coach or good MBB can help you with this in your relationship with data. )

It’s been a long time since I’ve been on the dating scene (long enough that I still use the term “dating scene”), and I think I got quite a catch when Rob and I met back in 1982.  I haven’t always been as lucky with my data, but I’ve had the good judgment to know when to stick with it and when to cut it loose. 

Last week in a Black Belt class we were discussing project management techniques to help belts keep their projects on track.  The Issue and Action Item list, an oldy but a goody, was covered and one of the BB’s brought up how her MBB calls it an Opportunities List.  Let’s just call it what it is…a list of issues that must be resolved in order for the project to move forward. Well, we used to call it a Problem and Action list (P&A list - catchy, isn’t it?), but not every issue is a problem, thus the name change.  But the “Opportunity” thing really bugs me. Not every problem (or issue) is an opportunity to excel or an opportunity for improvement. Sometimes you just have to get an answer to a question, get the right resources to address a problem, or ensure that a commitment is followed through upon. (Think ISSUE.)  In general, I think too much political correctness is a problem for business. Of course, communicating with colleagues in a respectful way is an absolute necessity. You just aren’t as effective a leader, team member, or employee if you can’t build relationships, and respect is essential in good relationships. But being direct and focused on the issue or behavior is absolutely necessary as well. So let’s be objective and issue-focused and work together to solve problems for the betterment of our organizations. Can’t we do that without everything being an “opportunity”?

This week Rob and I went to Orlando to a WCBF Lean Six Sigma conference.  We heard some great speakers, met some cool people and had the opportunity to hang out with one of our Green Belts from ECOT in Columbus, who presented her team’s project on a story board.  (Good job Brittny!)The subject of this BLOG is not the great stuff we learned from other practitioners, but observations we made while leaving Orlando.  Picture 5:30 AM on a Friday at the Orlando International Airport.  The shops are still closed and the open security lanes are limited.  From observing the schedule of operations, you’d think that very few flights would be departing before 7:00 AM.  Instead, when you try to book flights out of Orlando, there’s very little that departs in the evening and the bulk of flights leave in the early morning through early afternoon.  That would account for the lines.Not only were the lines long, but it seemed that the TSA staff was surprised by it.  OK - it could have been that we were there on the only Friday when lines are long at 5:30 AM, but do you really think so?  The Orlando airport uses the new security lane designations, a lane for Casual Travelers, a separate lane for Frequent Travelers and a special Expert Traveler lane.  At 5:30 AM everyone was being funneled through the same lane.  Then the TSA began opening lanes about 6:00 AM (no doubt when the morning shift started).  Because of the long lines, there was no effort made to use the special lane designations, it was merely an exercise in crowd control.  Like 4-H’ers directing their swine around the show ring, we were steered in groups to the next lane to be opened, then the next.  All special routing was abandoned in favor of spreading the herd out as quickly as possible.So, would I do anything differently?  Have the years of Lean and Six Sigma training paid off?  Here are the questions I would like to ask the TSA management:  How do you schedule your TSA agents?  Is it the same every day, or does it vary by volume of flights?  What procedures are used to start the day?  What passenger behaviors would you like to encourage / discourage?  How does your current system support the desired behaviors?How about measurement systems?  How do you measure your performance?  What characteristics does a “good” start-up have that a “bad” one does not?  How would you qualify last Friday morning - was that a “good” day?I guess the most frustrating thing about being herded in the lines was the apparent lack of  a system to accommodate traveler volume at the beginning of the day.  I suspect that TSA agent shifts are scheduled for convenience of management rather than to match customer travel patterns.  I also imagined arriving at the security lanes at 7:00 or 7:30 when the lanes are switching over to the special queues by traveler type.  How would you like to be the last family moving through the expert traveler lane being glared at by business people with laptop in hand and loafers neatly tucked in the gray bin?  (Or in our case being the traveler waiting for the mom with several children.)  Really - we’re nice people and we love kids - but there are some loafer-sliding expert travelers out there who aren’t so nice.Remind me to take a stop watch next time I go to the airport.  I think a little queuing simulation is in order!  And how great would it be to make the TSA agents wonder what I was up to???