SURVIVE THE ECONOMIC DOWNTURN THROUGH QUALITY IMPROVEMENT

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SURVIVETHE ECONOMIC DOWNTURN THROUGH QUALITY
IMPROVEMENT
American Society for Quality Chapter 1508

• Michael Weekes Whataboutquality LLC
• St Petersburg Tampa
• May 2009

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The Agenda

• Listen to the Voice of Your Customer
• Strategic Direction Got One?
• Map Out Your Key Processes
• Look For The Culprits
• You Cant Improve What You Dont Measure
• Whats Behind My Issues?
• How Do I Tackle It?
• Prioritize the Critical Few
• Employees are Stakeholders Too!
• So Whats In It For Us?
• Clean it Up!
• Proceduralize

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Listen to the Voice of Your
Customer

• What characteristics and attributes of your
  product or service mean the most to your
  customer?
• Youre SURE of what your customer needs but are
  you sure of what THEY think they need? If youre
  struggling, you probably dont know.
• Quality, Delivery, Price ALL of these?

Someone calling themselves the customer says
they want something called service
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Meet All Three Typesof Customer Requirements

• Spoken
• Those they reveal upon request
• Satisfy to the extent they are present and
  vise-versa
• Unspoken
• Expected
• Basic and often unmentioned
• A required part of what delivering VALUE means
• Complained about if NOT met
• Example Getting out of your connecting airport
• Exciting
• Exceed expectation
• Harder to discover
• Give them more than they could have imagined
• If you dont they wont complain
• Example a free drink, appetizer, sample

NOTE If you deliver exciting, unexpected value
you differentiate yourself from the competition
and assure success.
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Strategic Direction

• Convert your mission, vision and values into
  measurable, strategic objectives
• Once you know where you want to be, how do you
  get there whats the GAME PLAN?
• How do you know youre getting there without
  measurable objectives, per year, per quarter, per
  month?
• How do you know what ideas to act on if you dont
  know how they align with your strategic plan?

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Examples

• From
• We will be the Premiere Entertainment venue in
  the Gulf coast region.
• To
• We will increase the average number of seats sold
  per performance from 1,273 by 30 by June 30th,
  2009.
• We will decrease the number of minutes it takes
  to receive and confirm a ticket order from 13.2
  minutes to less than 8 minutes by the end of the
  season.

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Map Out Your Key Processes

• Any organization delivers value and satisfies
  customers through its key processes
• What are these and what activities make them up,
  who performs them and how do they relate to each
  other?
• How does the relationship between departments,
  teams and individuals impact how well we deliver
  value?

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Examples
NOTE the cross-functional nature of the work flow
and how different departments depend on one
another as suppliers
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Look for The Culprits

• Two types of culprits
• Waste
• Things that keep the flow from happening
• Inventories
• Overproduction / Batching
• Defects / Errors
• Moves and Transportation
• Waiting
• Variation
• Multiple ways for doing the work

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You Cant Improve What You Dont Measure

• In any process, there are three critical
  characteristics
• Quality
• Delivery
• Cost
• How well do you deliver a quality product or
  service to meet your customers needs?
• How often do you deliver on-time?
• How much does it cost you to deliver these?

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What Makes Good Metrics?

• Verifiable can be tested
• Quantitative - numerical
• Simple easy to understand
• Common Definition everyone has same idea
• Captures Performance How is something being
  done?
• Related to a standard
• Allows and encourages comparison
• Supports business strategy, objectives,
  direction
• Translates customer needs into a measure

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Examples

• Quality
• Missing items per room service order
• Insufficient solder joints per circuit card
• Insufficient knowledge of operator per call
• Delivery
• Percentage of late room service orders
• Percentage of late orders vs. due date
• Missed completions on new home builds
• Cost
• Labor per mortgage application processed
• Material per package shipped

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Whats Behind Our Issues?
Im sure our people are the problem!

• The Cause Effect Relationship
• Equipment
• Policies
• Procedures
• People
• NOTE by People do not focus on the person as
• Much as the role, skills and knowledge required.

NOT!
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Examples

• Problem 7 of the drive-thru orders come with
  undercooked or burnt french fries.
• Cause equipment lack of temperature or time
  controls.
• Cause process failure to define the time and
  temperature for a standard batch.
• Solution justify new equipment based on avoided
  errors install and monitor.
• Solution develop a visual aide to define the
  recipe (time/temp) and train personnel and
  certify demonstrated skill.

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Pareto - Prioritize the Critical Few
Summary of Room Service Complaints ( of total)
35
40 30 20 10
27
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Food Quality Late (gt 20 min.) Lack of
Other Variety
NOTE one category represents more than a third of
all problems two issues represent more than half
of the problem
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Cause / Effect for Food QualityIssue - Room
Service
PEOPLE
POLICY
The emphasis on satisfying the customer was not
understood by most of the personnel
No policy in place for room service
Poor Food Quality
The broiler was not capable of meeting food prep.
requirements
Dont deliver until The Chef places the
receipt with the order
EQUIPMENT
PROCEDURE
NOTE each cause is just an opportunity waiting
to be acted on
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Employees are Stakeholders
Too!

• We are all in business to make money, but if you
  make money at the cost of ignoring your
  employees, youll never be as lean as you need to
  be.
• Employee involvement is the key to SUSTAINING
  improvement, making it an ongoing journey, not
  just an event or a slogan.

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The People Side of Improvement

• Quality and Improvement
• helps assure job security
• clarifies job expectations
• gives the employee a new reason to get up and
  come to work
• gives creative thinkers a new role at work and a
  way to make a difference
• differentiates the firm from the competition
• provides focus and a systematic approach to
  achieve more with the same people

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People Quality of Life

• We spend 40-60 of our life at work so
  satisfaction matters
• Improvement efforts can be a perk advancement
  opp.
• Improvement efforts can build trust boss
  peers
• Job Factors Improvement
• Satisfaction seeing results, being heard
• Autonomy puts work in the hands of process
  owners
• Skills and knowledge growth
• Esteem you matter
• Less Stress more becomes known
• Stability making a difference

NOTE History proves that only quality
improvement efforts with extensive employee
involvement Lead to sustained improvement
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Clean it Up!

• Get Rid of the Waste!
• Sort define and remove non-essentials
• Set organize remaining items
• Shine clean, paint and polish
• Standardize label and color code
• Sustain keep it that way

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Procedurealize!

• Define the correct way to do everything
• Document it - Say what you do
• Train on it make it dynamic and living
• Certify through demonstrated performance
• Do what you say you do
• Monitor Improve

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So Whats In It For Us?

• The Business Case the bang for the buck
• CEOs, Directors and Managers only understand the
  business aspect of quality improvement
• Quality improvement isnt just something thats
  nice to do its critical to your survival.
  History shows us that by adapting, changing and
  improving we survive
• Improvement efforts are not EXTRA costs they pay
  for themselves, many times over
• Improvement is a Lifetime Journey not an event!

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Conclusion

• Turn goals into objectives to get some sense of
  where we are and if we are getting where we say
  we want to be.
• Set aside time to find out how we do the work we
  do, how well were doing and whats behind not
  doing it right.
• Map out key processes, activities and workflows
  to see the opportunities.
• Measure performance to know where we are and if
  were getting there.
• Look at the causes behind the issues and take
  corrective action to improve the process.
• Involve the employee along the way, to improve
  and sustain that improvement, building an even
  more capable team.
• We can survive through quality improvement and
  position ourselves for a competitive future that
  retains talent and draws new business to us

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Thank you!Questions Answers
Mike Weekes President, Whataboutquality
LLC Osprey, FL [phone] Email info_at_whatabo
utquality.com On the web at http//www.whataboutq
uality.com Blogging at http//www.whataboutqualit
y.wordpress.com/
ISBN 9780615272443