Tips, Advice And News To Improve Your Logistics / June 2017
FOUR STEPS TO HIGHER QUALITY
Were you affected by last month’s hummus shortage? And yes, I am asking the question with my tongue at least partly in my cheek!
I’m sure we can all manage without hummus, but this event shows how poor quality, and the resulting product recall, has a rapid and widespread effect. It’s not difficult to imagine that, with a different failure or a different product, the consequences could have been much worse.
That’s why quality isn’t just a management buzzword – it’s vital for any business. And here are four practical steps you can take to improve the quality of what you do – and then keep on improving.
Step 1: Your Customer Defines What Quality Means
You can’t manage quality unless you know what it is. And although we talk about quality a lot, we don’t often stop to think what it means.
First of all, here’s something quality isn’t. It isn’t a specific measure of accuracy, reliability or durability.
Quality is “fitness for purpose”. In other words, it’s how your customer judges what you sell them. As the great Peter Drucker said:
“Quality in a product or service is not what the supplier puts in. It is what the customer gets out and is willing to pay for.”
Step 2: Measure And Record
Once you’ve defined what your customers mean by quality, measure how you’re performing against the criteria they set you. And don’t just measure your performance – record it as well.
These records allow you to build up a picture of what’s going right – and what’s going wrong. Before long, you’re sure to see some patterns. You make lasting improvements by finding these patterns, rather than by simply responding to events.
Step 3: Take Action – Where It Counts
Measuring and recording is a necessary step, but it’s not sufficient. If you want to make improvements, you’ve got to do something – you have to take action.
Your time and effort is a limited resource, and you’ll find more changes than you can implement right away. That means you have to prioritise which changes to make.
Here’s a technique you can use to help you do just that.
List the causes of error you’ve found; and then count the number of errors resulting from each cause. You’ll almost certainly find that 20% of your causes result in about 80% of your errors – so this is where you should take action first.
Step 4: Design Error Out
When you make changes, you will need to put new processes in place. Keep one principle in mind when you design them. Make it more difficult for the operator to get the process wrong than right.
Here’s an everyday example of what I mean. When you use an ATM, before it dispenses your cash, you have to take your card back. Why is that?
You go to an ATM to get cash, so that’s what’s on your mind. You’ll stay there until you have the cash in your hand. Because you have to take your card before you get your cash, you won’t leave it in the machine. But if the ATM handed out your cash before it gave you back your card, just imagine how often you’d walk away and leave your card behind…
So here are four simple steps you can take to improve – and keep improving – the quality of your products and services:
- define what your customer means by “quality”;
- measure and record your performance against your customers’ definition;
- find the 20% of factors that cause 80% of your errors – and take action on those;
- don’t rely on people being diligent, design error out of your processes.