What we have here is a failure to communicate
August 12, 2008 at 10:55 am | In Business, Six Sigma, quality | Leave a CommentTags: communication, quality
So this isn’t about quality, per se…
Last week, at 2:00 AM, a product that had been listed as the hottest priority in our factory hit a screeching halt in its manufacturing progress. A critical piece of tooling was not available. Indeed, it wouldn’t be available until 10:00 AM the next day.
The engineers who were tracking the lot knew about the potential delay. The product manager knew it was possible the product might hit a snag.
But the manufacturing people had no idea!
It is unfortunately true that even in this day of mass communication, the basic information is sometimes not provided to the people who need it most.
So now, in my pantheon of aphorisms, is added: “It is impossible to over-communicate.“
Data? We don’t need no stinkin’ data!
August 8, 2008 at 1:54 pm | In quality | Leave a CommentTags: continuous improvement, data, quality
Earlier this week, the Director of Quality Systems for a small regional hospital was heard to explain to one of her managers, “We don’t need to collect and analyze data for this! We’re a small enough organization that everyone already knows what the problems are!”
To which I would say, “Hogwash!”
A dictum of continuous improvement is that “if you’re not measuring it, you can’t improve it.” We may not always want to know what the data show, but we certainly can’t make informed decisions based on what “everybody knows.”
Kinda scary, the way some people get to be quality directors…
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