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”.

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.

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.

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”?