"Quality Reasons" for not looking into Weaknesses

The most usual reason that I hear on why certain tasks never gets done is lack of staff....This reason is quite common in most organizations, especially in the government sector. Should we with such weakness do only what we can and forget the rest of it....?

Let's look into a scenario, a government agency staff has to conduct a number of programs every year in his district on Quit Smoking Campaign. Over time these types of programs should reduce the number of smokers among the youth....that is of course one of the many outcomes that would be expected. However when u question the staff on whether we have achieved the outcome(s), the possible reason that would be given is that to quantify such things we don't have enough man power.....

This is where one must "think outside the box"...in such lacking we should be able to create a system that make us achieve what we suppose to & not give "Quality reasons" for not doing so. If your service provider, for example water supply service were to tell you that there will be a cut in your area for the next 5 days, what would be your actions towards the failure in the current system? Are you going stop taking bath for the next 5 days? Are you going reduce water intake in your cooking? Are you going stop cleaning at home?......Most likely the answer to those questions would be "NO"....what you would have done is, create a system within the weakness (which is certainly beyond your control) by storing water with whatever means in order to reduce the variation of how things have been before the water cut....

"Quality thinking" will always take us through........NOT "Quality Reasons"

Quotes By Dr.Q

• Do it Right the First Time but make sure you are doing the right thing....

• Why do we need Continuous Improvement?....The only reason is because Quality is a Dynamic Phenomenon....

• The highest price we pay for ignoring the importance of Quality is life itself.....

• Variation exist, so our biggest challenge is to understand it & its implication to Quality.....

• All our efforts towards solving an issue may be a total waste if variations were not understood first....

• Capturing data, compiling it, presenting it, analyzing it or even reporting it without Statistical Thinking is as good as not doing anything at all.....

• Preventive actions or measures will never be at your sight, if you are just sitting on Corrections.......

• Right from the time u wake up in the morning & until you go back to sleep again at night, do understand that you are filled with all kinds of variations that might effect the Quality you want.......If you understand them, u'll have the right approaches to handle them....

• Do not just focus on the output but do learn to create an outcome based output....Remember one output can create many outcomes....

• We have Quality problems because we have split personality......we are not the same person when we are in a place of worship & when we are out of that place.....Until such gap in behaviour is eliminated, Quality issues will always be a challenge to us.....

• Making mistakes is undoubtedly part of life, but please do reduce such occurrences by learning from other people's mistakes as well.....Life is too short to make all the mistakes ourselves.....

• Revenue - Cost = Profit....Do understand that the cost is not just the cost of operations or the real costs of doing business because it includes failure costs as well......

• Failure events will always generate many non-value added activities........These activities further creates costs which is known as the Hidden Costs of Quality......

• You can never achieve Quality in isolation.....total participation is a must.......

• Majority of Quality problems are due to system weaknesses.....So creating a system that works for you is a must & not create a system that you (& your Interested party) have to work for.....

• Always get feedback to understand about an outcome........Which means you must understand between passive & active feedback....
  

• A lot of Quality related issues can be under control if we have active & passive monitoring system.......

• Incidents or near misses are truely warning from God, ignore them it will certainly turn into an accident.....

• Accident doesn't kill a person, but Poor Quality certainly does.......
  

• A Quality Management System (QMS) auditor should only look for the weaknesses in a system but not the person.....

• When auditing a QMS issue, if you focus on the person first then you are actually failing right from the beginning.....

• "When organization's STATIC Systems live, SUSTAINABLE DESIRED OUTCOME (SDO) dies!!!

• “The Key to survival in this very fast changing world, is by understanding the holistic Dynamism of Quality in all aspects that touches our life, failing which leading directly to extinction”

• "Making mistakes can be a norm anywhere but NOT learning from them shouldn't be our culture"

Living with Corrections

Have you ever wondered why certain failure events (such as complaints from customers or even mistakes made by someone) keeps appearing even after the problem has been solved? Due to such repeated events, there are also organizations out there that hire staff to handle them....These kind of situations will create what we call as the Hidden Cost of Poor Quality, which are most of the time is absorbed as operation cost or the cost of doing business...... It's a known fact that Revenue - Cost = Profit, but one should realize that the cost is certainly not the real cost of doing business because it includes the failure costs as well......

The main reason for the failure events to recur is because no one actually takes the right Corrective Action (CA)....The CA taken may not be adequate or another common scenario is that the problem is considered solved by merely taking Correction but not CA......Since I'm involved in training and consultation of the ISO 9001 certification process, I tend to come accross such audit reports where only corrections are done but not the required CA. If this current trend continuous then there will be no chance for us to see any sort of Preventive Action (PA).....These kind of problem occurs mainly due to the poor understanding of the issue by the decision makers (top management).....They just can't differenciate between Correction, CA and PA.....Many organization that I've been to have tons of data which they merely compile and present for the many required reports, that's all.....There is no further statistical analysis done to understand the trend or any kind of hidden information that can be very vital for better decision making.......