The most stunning accomplishment of Toyota during the last 50 years is its turnaround from making “junk” to virtually redefining quality in the auto industry. Toyota was influenced to the core by W. Edwards Deming and quality is evident everywhere in the company. The objective of the Toyota Production System (TPS) is presented as quality, cost, delivery, safety, and morale. Any metric board in Toyota will include quality indicators.
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Every lean consultant or lean training course I know emphasizes quality. Anyone who claims that lean focuses only on cost and efficiency has missed the point. On the other hand, I am not aware of any lean training course or lean consultation that focuses on the details of building a complete quality system. There’s a great deal to developing a world-class quality system and great quality departments that do amazing work. When we consider processes such as failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA), quality-function deployment, statistical quality methods, reliability engineering, and more, there is certainly a lot to learn and do. So why are these detailed methods not taught in lean courses or focused on in lean engagements?
I admit to being one who has designed many lean courses at the University of Michigan and through my consulting practice, and I have never taught a detailed course on quality methods. We always mention quality and it comes through in the jidoka pillar. In TPS, we stop when there’s a quality problem and the work group is responsible for containment and then root-cause problem solving. Quality shows up in key performance indicators and as part of the hoshin kanri system of aligned objectives. Quality key points are integral to standardized work and job instruction training so that each team member builds in quality.
At the engineering level, we talk of front-end loading the design process so quality is designed in through engineering changes rather than fixed after the fact. Know-how databases and tradeoff curves help to codify knowledge of quality issues so that they can be avoided in the future. The problem solving process we teach is very similar to 8D methods taught in quality programs. So quality is there, yet we are not really teaching quality methods in detail.
Some people have asked me where quality methods fit into lean and the question caused me to reflect on why we don’t teach them in great detail. I have several answers:
- They are already taught and developed within quality departments.
- Our focus is heavily on the gemba and building these methods into daily routines.
- Too many executives see lean as a cost-reduction tool rather than a quality philosophy and method.
- Maybe we are in fact missing something.
1. Quality departments already teach this.
In the lean courses I have designed, we often state that there are many quality methods outside of what we are teaching and they are absolutely essential… but we are not going to teach them. In the early days of the quality revolution, detailed several-week training programs were developed on quality methods. They were rigorous and had an effect on the students. All the companies I can think of have that curriculum somewhere and have quality departments with capabilities in those areas.
2. We do our most important work at the gemba.
What we find is that the quality methods taught in courses have not taken root at the gemba in a deep way. They have identified critical quality parameters, engineering has some awareness, and procedures for checking quality are in place. The quality department polices that and does a reasonable job, but quality is not built into every process. Team members are often not well trained in how to do their jobs to avoid quality problems, let alone taught statistical quality methods in any great detail. So we work on the quality issues as one part of the tool kit when we work to transform the gemba. Defects are one of the seven wastes, but there are others we also focus on as we do our work. The result is that we typically see improvement in quality even though we aren’t working on a quality initiative. In the best lean engagements, quality becomes much more integrated into the work groups as a daily focus.
3. Top executives often are focused on short-term cost reduction.
The reason I hear many companies starting the lean journey is that they are under intense cost pressure for one reason or another. “We need to get lean to survive” is a common refrain and it usually refers to cost. When we work on our first lean project and show labor savings, we are often pressured to intensively focus on return on investment, which means more labor savings. Most consultants I know face a moral dilemma between walking off the job if senior executives have only a short-term cost reduction philosophy of lean, and staying in the game to try to persuade them to change their thinking.
4. Maybe we are missing something critical.
The reality is that we all know that quality systems ebb and flow. They have their day in the sun as a major focus, good training is done, quality becomes a major priority, and then priorities shift. In too many companies the great training and transformative efforts that occurred in the past have gotten watered down. As lean experts, should we be continually emphasizing quality? Should we in fact better integrate basic quality methods into our courses and consulting?
We certainly need to be a constant voice for quality. I know many lean experts will insist on working on quality before jumping into flow methods. The problem-solving process (for example, Mike Rother’s concept of the improvement kata) is still the key to continuous quality improvement. I believe that the advantage we have in the lean area is to make quality a real part of daily work rather than an add-on pushed by a staff organization. As the Toyota’s recall crisis indicates, repairing in quality is far more costly than building in quality.
Comments
Process-approach in ISO9001:2008 is central to Lean and Quality
G'Day Jeff,
Your timing is brilliant as it surprises me too how many Quality, Lean and Six Sigma folk introduce such programs and do not look to their Quality Systems. Sadly, most QMS's have been documented by simply copying the Elements of ISO9001:2008 and other ISO Standards, to then document their Quality Manuals and supporting policies and procedures under such headings - contrary to the required ISO9001:2008 'Process-approach'. As you said in your Toyota Way book page 135 "the essence of building quality has got lost in bureaucratic and technical details" - such Element-based not Process-approach and based documentation, leaves Executives slighted and disinterested that their QMS has no relation to Lean, Kaizen, Six Sigma, BPR and so on.
Consultancies abound exciting executives about conducting "As-Is" and "To-Be" Process Mapping and Analysis to then determine the 'Performance Gaps' and suggest improvement inititives like Lean/Six Sigma etc that can reduce such gaps. I agree with your view that many Quality folk do not step-up or propose, usually not even consulted, about referring to such QMS for the Should-Be process for process stability and compliance. With an Element -based QMS Manuals and documentation, cannot provide that House of Quality Foundation stones / Toyota Systems (Amasaka "Toyota's New JIT").
'Lean Thinking' by Womack and Jones page 19 provides support for this and your QD article in that most Value Stream Mapping activities do conduct the three 'Tasks' for such VSM being a] Transformation b] Information and c] Problem Solving Tasks. Value Analysis of non-Value adding activities within the VSM is as Dr Deming said, sub-optimal as rarely do we see the use of the Work Study/Work Simplification Flow Process Charts (A Mogensen fame).
So thank you for your article - it was indeed a timely reminder and wake-up call for many seeking to sustain the Quality, Lean, Six Sigma improvements that they may care to look at their QMS and 'Check' (PDCA) if they are Element-based and then reengineer them to the Process-approach for better value and embedding the process changes - 'Study' in PDSA as Dr Deming changed it too courtesy of Ford Motor Coy back in the late '80s.
Michael W McLean
Managing Director
McLean Management Consultants Pty Ltd
Embedding Strategic Change (Established.1988)
PO Box 917 North Ryde BC 1670 NSW Australia
M: +61 419 225 996
P: +61 2 9706 8566
F: +61 2 9706 8366
E:michael@mclean-mc.com.
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