Replying to LO24326 --
> It appears that I have once again stumbled on an age old dilemma (the
> tortoise and the hare) within yet another organization. The link between
> organizational performance and individual performance is elusive, but
> nonetheless detectable. The dilemma I am speaking of concerns quantity
> vs. quality. In a manufacturing environment, for instance, there is the
> constant push to ship-on-time which undermines the organizations'
> seemingly time-consuming efforts to ensure that quality products are
> shipped. There seems to me to be a relationship between the perceptions
> of individuals of what constitutes "a job well done" (expectations) and
> organizational relationships (structure) of these individuals. Ultimately,
> the efforts of those who believe their performance is evaluated based on
> their ability to "move product" will be undermined by those who believe
> that they are responsible for the quality of the product. Does anyone
> have practical experience in transforming an organization's approach to
> measuring performance that aligns the two metrics, quality and quantity?
What if you made an initial small step that didn't count a product as
"moved" until it was in some sense accepted by the next step in the
process?
One problem I was involved in helping solve ages ago involved products
that "left the end of the line good" but were "bad when they got to QA."
We resolved that by setting each failed product at QA aside. We'd call
the manufacturing technician who tested it to come to QA to watch it fail
there. If they agreed it failed there, then they'd all take it back to
manufacturing to test it on their systems. It was a _very_ rare
occurrence for the product to pass or fail based solely on the 50 meter
geographical distance (I can't remember a single such failure). Usually
we'd find either the QA or manufacturing test had a problem. We'd fix the
problem, record the results, and move forward. When we were done, we
could (and did) safely eliminate the QA function because they were no
longer finding _any_ problems.
That was only one piece in a long evolution, but it seemed like an
important piece; it made customer satisfaction the responsibility of
manufacturing, not QA.
> Thank you in advance,
> Sincerely,
> Nancy Kristiansen
You're welcome,
Bill
-- Bill Harris 3217 102nd Place SE Facilitated Systems Everett, WA 98208 USA http://facilitatedsystems.com/ phone: +1 425 337-5541Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <Richard@Karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>
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