To most of us, the phrase “work that matters” infers job satisfaction. The outcome is lower stress, lower turnover, and higher productivity—in business, a win-win for employees, customers, and shareholders. The logic is infallible. So, I ask you, why is there such a gap between the theory and the practice? Why are so many organizations and so many workers struggling to find workplace nirvana?

Our industry embodies many aspects, but “Big Q” quality generally involves issues affecting management, measurement, and methodologies. This week on QDL, we covered all of them, and more. Let’s look closer:

To ask a good question requires two things: insight and gumption. The root of all worthy questions is a desire to fill in a gap in your understanding of something. The insight in good questions comes from seeing that gap, exploring its edges, and forming a question that can serve as an invitation to others to fill. But a question can’t ask itself. You need gumption, or the courage to ask the question of someone. Many people have good questions but never find the courage to speak up and share them.

For manufacturers in diverse sectors such as automotive, aerospace, electronics, and medical device, there’s little question that ensuring great quality would be impossible without the proper testing of materials. And proper material testing applications begin with reliable and repeatable preparation methods.

Back in the 1990s, when U.S. banks started installing automated teller machines in a big way, the human tellers who worked in those banks seemed to be facing rapid obsolescence. If machines could hand out cash and accept deposits on their own, around the clock, who needed people?

During the late 1990s, I was working in the Silicon Valley for a medical device company, responsible for a drug-infusion pump manufacturing operation. I had just completed a crazy period where I had also “temporarily” (months and months...) led the advanced engineering department after that manager had transferred to a different location. I was finally settling back into one job when I was offered a position to run the company’s largest molding facility in a different state. Of course I accepted, without asking more than a couple questions.

All organizations are looking to increase the competency of their employees and, hopefully, of themselves. Looking at this from the base level up, in a practical sense our competency evolves with experience, expertise, and possibly, time.

1. Unknowing

We begin by not knowing about a skill, issue, or subject. Think of newborn babies: They are not ignorant; they just don’t know.

2. Disturbed

Data science is hot right now. The number of undergraduate degrees in statistics has tripled in the past decade, and as a statistics professor, I can tell you that it isn’t because freshmen love statistics.

In his book, The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results (Bard Press, 2013), author Gary Keller reminds us that everyone has 24 hours in a day. So, why do some people earn more, achieve more, and get more done? They “go small.” 

If you are a CEO of a manufacturing company with many value streams, it’s impractical to think that you have the time to review all the performance measures of every value stream in your company. Yet you need to know the operational impact of lean on your entire organization.