Letters to My Younger Self — Problem Solving 101
March 4, 2008 at 2:17 pm | In Six Sigma, quality, training | Leave a CommentTags: continuous improvement, quality, training
Dear Bill,
So you think you want to be a quality manager. Are you out of your mind? Don’t you know that quality managers get the blame when things go wrong, have to explain problems to the customer, and are the ones the boss yells at when he gets bad news? Uh huh. You wanna do it anyway. Okay, your funeral, but if you do want to be a quality manager, I have just two words for you: Problem Solving.
What, you think it’s easy to solve a problem? You may not realize it, but sometimes it’s hard just to understand what the problem really is, and not just what you think it is at first glance. In fact, the first step in solving a problem is to accurately define the problem.
For example, it’s 10:30 AM and I’m hungry. This is an easy problem to define: “I’m hungry.” Not hard, right? But if I had started the problem statement with, “Man, my stomach hurts!” we would have to work backwards to determine why my stomach hurts…is it because somebody hit me? No. Because I’m sick? No. Because I did too many sit-up? Yeah, right. After the right look at the variables, we can determine that my stomach hurts because I’m hungry.
One of the tools for determining root cause is to ask that question–”WHY?”–until you get back to the fundamental issues. For example:
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Why am I hungry? Because I didn’t eat breakfast.
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Why didn’t I eat breakfast? Because I got up too late and had to hurry.
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Why did I get up too late? Because my alarm didn’t go off.
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Why didn’t my alarm go off? Because I forgot to reset it after the weekend.
So now I have dug down to the real reason I’m hungry: I failed to reset my alarm clock lastg night! Now, you can keep digging on the problem definition to a ridiculous degree sometimes, but this answer provides me with something that can be addressed: a real problem (resetting the alarm clock), for which I can determine a cause and establish a course of action.
And that’s the important thing: Solving a problem doesn’t mean putting a band-aid on the current concern. It means fixing the problem so that it goes away for good!
In the long run, it doesn’t help my situation to get a quick bite to eat if I ignore the real problem, failing to set the alarm. Tomorrow I could find myself right back here at my desk, hungry at 10:00 AM, because I didn’t get to the root of the problem.
Tomorrow we’ll look at how to analyze root cause, once you have properly defined the problem.
A Giant of a Man
March 3, 2008 at 4:03 pm | In Six Sigma, quality | Leave a CommentTags: continuous improvement, quality
I read yesterday that Dr. Joseph Juran, sometimes called the “Father of Quality,” passed away last week at the age of 103. While I never had the opportunity to meet Dr. Juran, I knew many quality professionals who had known him, and I learned much of what I know from his Quality Contol Handbook, which for many years has been the backbone of the quality management structure.I am grateful for Dr. Juran’s life and work.
One Step at a Time
March 3, 2008 at 3:52 pm | In Six Sigma, quality, training | Leave a CommentTags: continuous improvement, quality
The cafeteria in my building is on the second floor (uh, first floor in Europe). That floor is 24 steps above the ground floor, where my office is. In one stairwell, that 24 steps is divided into two flights of 12; in the other stairwell, there are three courses of steps, with flights of 7, 8, and 9 steps each, in reverse order from bottom to top. The effect of this is that it truly feels like it’s a harder climb up the two flights than it feels going up the three sets of steps.
Life can be like that, sometimes, especially when you’re trying to make progress in continuous improvement activities. We want to solve all of our problems at once, but one look at the magnitude of the issue can scare us away from even starting the effort. It’s only by breaking the activity down into small steps that can be studied and improved as pieces, that we can eventually address the problem as a whole.
There are many ways to break an issue into steps. We can use a flow chart or a tree diagram, we can use the FMEA approach I spoke of last week to determine the components of the problem that we need to address most urgently, we can use the Pareto approach to identify the most pressing concerns…all of these tools can be part of breaking a project down into manageable pieces.
Climbing a lot of steps isn’t too hard, if you just take it one step at a time.
Expecting the Unexpected
February 21, 2008 at 10:41 am | In Six Sigma, quality | Leave a CommentTags: quality, Six Sgma
Most of us do pretty well in handling the various crises that come our way, especially those that are similar to those we have seen before. If I get pulled over for speeding by a highway patrolman, I probably won’t panic, because it’s happened before. I smile and the officer apologetically, and hope she lets me off with a warning, but am prepared to accept the consequences. If the battery is dead and my truck won’t start, I shrug and mutter a few imprecations, but from past history I know what steps to take in order to get my truck back on the road.
So it is in the quality world. The question is not, “will something go wrong?” The questions actually are, “when will something go wrong?” and “do I know how to respond?” Knowing what can go wrong and planning for it can help you avoid some problems, and can also help you mitigate the issues that do arise.
One of the best tools for “expecting the unexpected” is the “Failure Mode and Effects Analysis,” or “FMEA” for short. The FMEA is a systematic approach to stepping through each part of a process or a design, trying to anticipate what could go wrong, and developing a plan to address it.
For example, if I am making spaghetti, part of the process is to boil the pasta. In the FMEA approach, I would evaluate what could go wrong in the “boil the pasta process.” I would identify some potential failure modes:
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Not enough water in the pot
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Not enough heat under the pot
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Not enough time at the boiling point
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Too much time at the boiling point
I would then review each of these failure modes for what the effect of that failure would be:
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Not enough water in the pot – pasta will clump and not cook well
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Not enough heat under the pot – pasta may never come to a boil
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Not enough time at the boiling point – pasta may not cook completely
Too much time at the boiling point – pasta may overcook and be mushy
Each of these modes and the resultant effect are then analyzed to determine the severity of the failure, the likelihood of its occurrence, and the probability that the occurrence could escape detection, ranked on a scale of 1-10, with the higher number representing the worse case (obviously, the numbering scheme can be somewhat subjective…):
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Not enough water – Severity=4, Likelihood=4, Escape potential=3
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Not enough heat – Severity=4, Likelihood=2, Escape potential=1
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Not enough time – Severity=4, Likelihood=2, Escape potential=3
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Too much time – Severity=4, Likelihood=4, Escape potential=4
The next step in the FMEA process is to multiply these numbers. The resulting product is called the “Risk Priority Number,” or RPN. The higher the RPN, the more significant the failure mode. From the example above, my highest RPN is 64 (4*4*4), from failure mode #4. So I would want to be sure to develop a plan to minimize the risk by perhaps monitoring the amount of time the pasta has been cooking, or performing an inspection of the pasta at a set point to determine if it is ready.
The FMEA process isn’t perfect, and it really can be a time-consuming, pain-in-the-butt process to go through, especially for a complex product or process. It also doesn’t stand alone in the crisis avoidance process, but should be combined with other tools to analyze the situation at hand.
But it is the wise quality manager, Grasshopper, who can use the FMEA process to her advantage. You can learn more about the FMEA process at the American Society of Quality website.
Letters to my younger self, or “Things I wish I had known”
February 6, 2008 at 5:26 pm | In Six Sigma, quality | Leave a CommentTags: quality
Today I start a semi-regular look at the art of being a quality professional. This will be framed as information that I could have used as a young quality engineer and then quality manager. I learned my craft through on-the-job trial and error, with mentors who had learned it the same way. As I went along, I learned new lessons that could have made my life easier had the knowledge come earlier.
At least, I think it would have been easier. It’s possible that I didn’t know enough to have used the information at an earlier time. Whatever the case, I will try to look at the art of the quality life, at least as seen through my own filter.
I wish that I had understood what “quality” is, back when I first came across it. When I was a young production planner with SCI Systems, the quality folks were my enemies. I saw them as the road blocks to successful product shipment. I had a goal: I was supposed to ship as much product on time as I could, and earlier was better. Every delay caused by an inspector or a quality engineer just meant I had to work a bit harder to get my product out. I thought the quality team was arbitrary and temperamental—and I was right in many ways.
The problem was, I didn’t know enough about the ways my product was supposed to work, so I couldn’t appreciate the potential effects of quality issues with my products. The funny thing was, I was working on items that could save lives: voice alert systems for military aircraft, data acquisition controls for missile tracking satellites, computers that controlled the space shuttle. Any defect that caused one of my products to fail could kill a pilot or an astronaut. And while I knew that in an abstract way, it was hard for me to see where this faulty solder joint or that faulty coating could cause disastrous failure.
In this case, a definition of quality was easy: “Quality” was the absence of a defect.
Unfortunately, realizing that definition was difficult. The system in which I worked relied upon visual inspection to identify potential defects. This was followed by extensive tests of the product to verify that it worked properly. The proof of the quality pudding was hard to find, and I had no one to explain it to me. On top of that, my thoughts that sometimes the quality group acted in a capricious manner were accurate: the supervisor of the inspection team sometimes used his group to reward or punish those manufacturing managers whom he felt had interfered with his operation, or had erred in some way. The wispy nature of the acceptance specifications allowed him to tell his employees to “tighten” or to “loosen” their inspection approach.
So from this I get my first quality truth that I wish I had known:
Product expectations should be well documented and clearly communicated.
In this case, “quality” was what Bobby said it was, regardless of the specific requirements.
There are several text-book definitions of quality. One of the most common is that quality is “the characteristics of a product or service that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs.”
Or how about, “a product or service free of deficiencies.” Quality guru Joseph Juran defined quality as “fitness for use,” while Philip Crosby said that quality is “conformance to requirements.”
If you find this confusing, join the club.
“Good players do not always make good coaches.”
January 29, 2008 at 1:35 pm | In Business, Six Sigma, quality, training | Leave a CommentTags: quality, Six Sigma, training
“Good players do not always make good coaches.”
We usually hear these words in conjunction with sports. When I hear the phrase, I always think of Ted Williams, who may have been the greatest hitter who ever played the game, but failed completely when he managed the Washington Senators/Texas Rangers. Or I might think of Michael Jordan, arguably the greatest player to ever lace up basketball shoes, but whose tenure as general manager of the Washington Wizards was less than successful.
But today I heard the message from a young Asian-American woman who was discussing on-the-job training. As part of our efforts to improve the infrastructure of our facility, we’re holding round-robin discussions with four groups of employees who have been on the job for less than six months. We want to know what went right in their training…and what went wrong.
So we’re holding four sessions (across our four shifts–clever, huh!?) with our new employees, and a couple of sessions with their trainers. We’re hoping to pull the best practices together.
The quote above came about halfway through the first session, when one young woman noted that even though her trainer had been with the company for over 20 years, she really was not successful in explaining the job, in mentoring her trainee. Just because she knew how to do the job well, that didn’t mean she knew how to demonstrate it well.
Among the other comments gleaned from this first session:
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The trainer needs to level-set the training to the needs of the trainee. One young man had been with the company in earlier years, was returning to his old job, with the same supervisor, but was made to again undergo training for something in which he was already proficient, while another new employee was bombarded with acronyms and terminology for which she was not ready.
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One operator who has been with the company for over four months still isn’t sure what her job is…she knows how to push the buttons, but has no idea what the machine actually does, or where her process fits in the overall scheme of the manufacturing activity.
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The folks in our meeting had been hoping for an opportunity to discuss their training experience. Had we not invited them to do so, they would have (corerctly) assumend we didn’t care.
So over the next several weeks we’ll continue these sessions — six in all.
I’ll keep you posted.
One up on the competition
January 26, 2008 at 1:34 pm | In Business, quality | Leave a CommentTags: business improvement, empowerment, quality
Yesterday, I attended my first “business improvement competition” at my new employer. I watched seven teams give twenty-minute presentations on projects that they had conducted over the past year to improve some part of the business at our facility. One team had completely overhauled the manufacturing documentation system. Another had almost completely eliminated a harmful chemical from use in the company. Yet another had re-engineered a product to reduce the leading cause of failure at our customer’s site.
In all, nearly 70 team members were involved in the presentations–nearly a tenth of the employees at the facility. The teams used innovative and imaginative means to get their message across: my favorite was the team that used the Wizard of Oz concept to describe their road to improvement.
The three teams that won our local competition will move on to Charleston, South Carolina, to take on their counterparts from our other North American sites. The winners there will head to Beijing for the corporate finals.
For years we in the quality world have talked about empowering our people to make improvements. What this company has done is to create a world-wide environment where the impetus for such activity involves the pride of creation, the pleasure of presentation, and the recognition not only of their peers, but also of the whole company. This drives engaging and innovative projects that are good for the bottom line and support corporate growth. If that’s not the essence of quality, I don’t know what is.
Some folks are already starting to look to next year’s competition!
The Mercy of Quality is not strained…
January 25, 2008 at 10:16 am | In Business | Leave a CommentTags: quality, Six Sigma, Zero Defect
Back in the dark ages (25 years ago), a quality guru named Philip Crosby wrote a book called “Quality Is Free.” At the time, the established wisdom held that you achieved quality through inspection, using the results of the inspection or test to look for ways to improve your product. Conventional wisdom held that there was such a thing as an “acceptable quality level (AQL)”, implying that it was okay to expect to ship a certain level of defective product. Crosby suggested that the goal should be perfection: the best defect is the one that never happens, that is prevented before it occurs. His book challenged the notion that it cost extra to have high quality; rather, he insisted, if we can identify and eliminate the causes of defective material, thereby avoiding rework and scrap costs, better quality in all aspects of the organization will provide savings rather than incurring costs.
This was a revolutionary concept, at a time when quality organizations were considered to be of no added value to the organization.
Today, we look to our quality organizations to be the leaders in coordinating internal changes and improvements that can lower cost and improve product reliability. We use terms such as “Zero Defect” and “Six Sigma” as an everyday part of the quality journey, without remembering the days when “quality” was a bad word in the board room.
It’s a big change. And it’s been fun to be part of it!
So today we start…
January 24, 2008 at 3:55 pm | In Business, Uncategorized | Leave a CommentTags: continuous improvement, New York Hudson Valley, quality
Hello, world!
Today we start a new blogging adventure, in which I will discuss the business, art and science of quality management.
A bit about me:
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I am the quality manager for a large semiconductor wafer fabrication facility in the Hudson Valley of New York.
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I have been in quality management, continuous improvement, ISO 9000, and lean manufacturing for over 20 years, in a variety of companies and locations.
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I am passionate about continuous improvement.
In the next weeks and months we shall look at a variety of quality tools and applications, as well as discussing some of the challenges of being a quality professional in the real world.
I hope you will come along!
Bill
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