Hi everybody. This is Sean and we are dusting
off the microphone for another episode of Everyday Quality, a
quality systems podcast that should hopefully help make stuff
a little better, a little easier every day, because that's
ultimately the goal of what we're doing with all this, this
quality stuff. You know, it's been a while
since the last episode and it we tend to do four in a row and
then nothing for months. And that's how it's going to be
been busy, been busy trying to to change and improve an an old
system and lunch and change lots of stuff.
You can tell this is totally scripted.
But I, I visited A vendor recently and most of the staff
there had been been with the the company for 20-30 years and
they, they don't do big changes all the time.
And, and to this state, I've, I've really made my, my quality
career on revamping entire quality system, starting things
from scratch, doing giant heavy lifting projects.
And I didn't see that at this vendor.
And it, it made me think, you know, all of the, of all of the,
the, the books that I've read, all of the Kaizen stuff and it's
really quality continual improvement isn't always about
giant big changes. It's about change making things
better, not just for the, the sake of change, but to make the
job easier. So today we're going to talk
about that. We're going to talk about, you
know, the finding tiny wins to, to have a big impact and really
making continual improvement a, a daily habit, not just a, a
thing that needs to be brought up in a, a project charter or a,
a big plan to, to roll it out. So really we're going to talk
about why good solid quality systems aren't built really on,
on giant changes, but on small little ones that make everybody
more involved in the process, more aware of what's going on
and make the the system easier to interact with.
So let's go back to that vendor. Is it, you know, walking around
there, all of these, these very experienced staff that have been
there almost since the, the origination of the organization.
It was, it was a a different perspective than what I'm
accustomed to, You know, in, in most situations, you know,
quality managers right now are sticking around for a year to
maybe 18 months and then moving on, because quality is not a, a
field that really rewards sticking around from what I've
seen. At any rate, it's it's a field
that needs those fresh ideas that that new kind of set of
eyes in a place to help find out where that low hanging fruit
might actually be. It's also unforgiving and tiring
and thankless and not, say a big showy job.
So seeing a quality manager in a in a single role for 30 years
and meeting this person was kind of kind of neat.
It was neat to see that it can be done.
I don't plan on joining them in that kind of situation, but it's
neat to see that it can be done. So we're, we're sitting around
this career that had been there for a very, very long time with
an old technology in a field that doesn't have a ton of
change because the, the customer base just expects the same thing
over and over and over again. And they don't really need it to
change. But they're ISO certified, So
they got to improve stuff. They got to look at things and
they got to say, OK, let's make that better.
And not even from an ISO certification point, but from a,
how do you make your employees happier, faster, stronger, more
effective and enjoy their work more?
You got to improve things and what I what I got in there.
I didn't see any of this this stuff that I was typically
implements. You know there's no obeya rooms.
There's no daily management system on on the floor.
There's no clear indication that metrics are are clearly on the
wall for people to read and yeah disseminate on their on their
own. There's no major posters about
hey, we're doing this big change.
There's no signage celebrating a a giant change.
What we did see was quiet change.
A little, little adjustments to processes, little interactions
between management and the the operation group asking what can
be improved. What made yesterday tough?
How can we make it better today? It wasn't a lot of theatrics
involved in improvement. It was habit.
And that habit is so difficult to build.
But that is really what continual improvement is
supposed to look like. You know, there's no in, in my
past with big giant improvements.
It's it's, you know, somewhere along the way it became that
improvement has to be a dramatic thing.
You know, we've got new org charts, new software, new
systems, new processes, new quality manuals, new ways to
share information, new dashboards.
It's always about new, not necessarily improved.
And those are two very different things.
Nothing can be new and improved. It's just a revision 2 or a new
product. So what I'm accustomed to is
something big enough to have like an announcement or you need
a slide deck and all hands meeting to to talk about.
Big improvements are very tough though.
They're very rare and really they exhaust the crud out of a
team because that change, if not managed well, if not explained
why it's happening. If you don't have that initial
buy in and you won't have full buy in, you're going to have
your early adopters, your laggards who eventually come on,
your enthusiastic adopters who who take it on eventually.
And then some people will never come along.
And for them that that kind of changes especially exhausting
because they just don't get it. They, they start to think like,
well, it worked this way for so long, why can't we just keep
doing it like that? I'm like, yeah, sure it worked,
but it cost 5 times as much. It took 10 times as long.
Let's do it better. That's, that's the logical side
of everybody's brain says that. But a lot of people don't get
that. So they get tired along the way.
People driving the change, if they're getting all that
resistance, they get tired. So change is just tiring.
And if you got to do it all the time with giant big things, no
wonder quality professionals leave so quickly in the jobs
these days. Even in the past, you know,
it's, it's not, it's not an unheard of thing for quality
people to move around a whole bunch.
So, but, but what what I want to say here is that if you're only
doing big changes and you're, you're getting that exhaustion
or to the point of exhaustion from doing all of these sort of
big things. And it's a rare occurrence when
you find something really big to change.
If it's only big stuff, it's not going to happen that often.
And if it's not happening that often, there's no way to build a
habit. And if you don't build a habit,
nobody cares to participate in a continual improvement
environment. It's a real improvement.
It's got to be small, it's got to be constant.
It's got to be almost invisible. You know, I'm reminded of the,
the Paul Akers 2 second lean book where the, the goal was to
just shave 2 seconds off of whatever you were doing.
And that that works fine in a production environments of of
any sort where you're tracking time.
But maybe it's, you know, shaving off a little bit of the
hassle. Maybe it's removing a little bit
of the, the, the transport waste that we're going to deal with.
What, what really matters is just making it so that these
improvements in a nice environment are documented, but
are also something that that people just see and they go, oh,
yeah, that makes sense. Cool, let's do it that way.
If you can get that kind of improvement culture going, that
is perfect. But how do we, how do we do
that? Well, here's kind of what I saw
at this this recent vendor step. They didn't talk about a
continuous improvement program. You could see their machines
were older than I am. They were, you know, we they
move stuff around. They bought some new equipment,
got in some new tools. Nobody seemed excited about
those though. That was really interesting.
They had the young kid in the shop handling all of the the
really new machines and then they had their experienced staff
on the the harder to work tools, items that required a lot of
manual movements and set up and and all of that.
But what we saw were simple checklists at each thing, a lot
of them from an ISO compliant side.
It was kind of a nightmare because the checklist had items
that were permanently scratched out without any kind of single
in strike through and and good document practices.
That aside, they updated the checklist.
They made it easier over time to work with they.
You could see there was floor tape in some areas that had been
removed, but you could still see the outline of where it was and
the thing that was containing or holding the the tools for the
job had been moved a little closer to the work center
itself. You could see that there was,
there's so much dust. Honestly, it wasn't an ideal
vendor visit, but you can still see that they were working to
make things easier. But there's areas where dust had
collected around certain objects and they removed those objects.
So you still saw the ring. Seriously, just just sweep.
That's, that's really all it needs to do.
But they removed some objects and made them more accessible
and that was awesome. That's all that you got to do,
empower the team to to make those kind of changes that you
should have a system set up to to note that especially if like
your work center set up is a standardized process at this
vendor. Probably not because it was just
one or two people that used it, but having a means to
communicate, to document control, to update something is
essential in in that ISO environment.
But even more important is that improvement step, because once
people start to feel like they can actually participate in
improvement or make improvements, make changes to
their work center, their station, that means there's
enough psychological safety, there's enough appreciation of
their labor that they they perceive enough appreciation of
their labor to actually participate in the system.
And that is the, the ideal state you want people to feel safe and
secure and acknowledged and worthy of participating in a, a
massive quality management system that ultimately gets you
more work. So really what, what I saw at
this vendor was that kind of participation and nobody was
like out there with like, woo Hoo, you guys made a, a change.
You saved 2 seconds on your, your thing.
Nobody did that. That was not the, the culture
that they set up. Now I've, I fully believe in
loud, loud recognition of, of improvements, especially early
on in the, the CI sort of journey because it just, it
makes it more known. Some people who will respond to
it, some people will never participate in the system again.
But you got to advertise it, you got to sell it, you got to make
it a real pop and happening thing for for people to be
participating in. So the, the vendor did great at
that. What we saw was a lean system.
What we saw was Kaizen in action, good change.
That's all that we needed to see, you know, ISO clause 10,
all of the the improvement stuff.
If it can become a habit, it can become a behaviour.
And then it's, you know, yeah, we're going to talk about that
during an audit. But the auditor's going to be
able to go out and see it. They're going to say, hey, what
did you improve today? Ask that of an operator and the
operator may have an answer, which would be an incredible
thing. So what I have personally run
into is kind of the opposite. It's really the the, that's how
we've always done kind of mindset.
You know, a lot of the people that's I've I've worked with in
the past had been in their positions for five or six years.
Never, never have I really worked with people in a 30 year
plus kind of role. That's just mind boggling to me.
But but that phrase, all right, let's let's focus here.
The phrase, that's how we've always done it.
That is not about process. That's about permission to
change things. You know, it means that if if
people are only expecting it to happen, that that one single way
that means they don't feel safe and challenging that assumption.
Everybody has ideas on how to make their job easier.
You can't go to anyone work center in any factory anywhere.
And people were going to say, yeah, just set up exactly how
how I like it. That doesn't happen.
Everybody's going to say, Oh yeah, I like my tools a little
bit over here as opposed to the marked spots.
They're going to say like, oh, I need my trash can raised 3
inches so that they're not have to lean down as much.
They're going to say like, oh, I prefer pen over or I prefer blue
pen over black pen, but we only ordered black.
So that kind of stuff. That is still improvement.
But people need to feel safe and secure in their their approach
to the work and their interactions with leadership and
the people that are in charge of making those changes happen.
They need to feel safe with them.
Worse, if we say that's how we've always done it, that could
mean that nobody feels responsible to improve it.
And without any responsibility, without any accountability in
the process, of course nothing is going to change.
It will be a never ending cycle of well, yeah, we're we're going
to have that fixed, but who is we, who, who, who is assigned to
it? At worse, when you hear that
phrase, that's how we've always done it.
That means nobody believes that change is worth the effort.
And that's sad. Once you get to that point, you
know your system, your organization has a a bigger
issue. That's some leadership Section 4
ISO stuff. You know, it's, it's just bad.
That's an eloquent presentation of it.
But if nobody believes the change is worth it, they don't
believe that the company is worth adding to.
They don't believe that their jobs are going to help them get
to where they want to be. So if you feel that in your
organization, if you feel the continual improvement doesn't
happen because nobody believes that change is worth the effort,
work with the management team. Tell them, hey, we've got this
problem going on, how are we going to fix it?
It's a requirement of ISO to fix it.
It is a key principle leadership participating in the, the
functionality of the system and really morale is the the key
cornerstone of any system. So watch for those because if
you get any of those, if you, if you keep hearing that's how
we've always done it. That's how your system stops
learning, stops growing, stop stops being good.
It's not through failure. It's not through poor corrective
actions. It's not through bad processes.
It is apathy that kills your system.
So how do we avoid all that? How do we get to that point
where we're like that little vendor that that I went and saw
where they're just making changes?
You know, we're updating, we're improving every day.
Well, we got to make it so that we make improvement, something
that people do, not something that our teammates are told to
do. So first problems need to feel
normal. You know, there's, there's that
classic case study of the, the nurses team that's reported way
more problems than than any other team, but they had better
results, They had better growth. They showed better patient
interactions than any other group, but they had more
problems, right? Again, that's because they felt
safe. They saw those problems as
opportunities to get better. So if you can get to the point
where your culture is saying like, yes, your problems need to
be treated like opportunities, and that is how we are going to
grow and get better. Finding a problem is a good
thing. I'm going to make that a big old
poster for for my office that's just going to say finding a
problem is a good thing. Bring MO MO problems, MO fun,
something like that. But the problems are good to
have and they are better to know about them because the more
people report problems, issues, findings, not even just with the
the product, but like maybe they had a problem finding the right
box for the the good that they were going to build.
Maybe they had a problem? Getting a forklift over to move
a heavy pallet in a timely manner, that's a good thing.
That means everybody's looking at it.
They're trying to find out where waste exists and how to make it
better. No problems means you can't
improve anything, and that makes for a boring day at work.
Now, I mentioned a lot of of really small scale stuff, like I
need to raise my trash can 3 inches, right?
Not every improvement needs to be big, because again, big
improvements are rare. Big improvements are exhausting.
You don't want to deal with that all the time.
So step 2IN making improvement part of the the daily stuff, go
ahead and just lower that bar. There's no moon shots every day,
but you can pick an apple every day, right?
Low hanging fruit. Not every improvement needs a
meeting, a form, a presentation, a committee, a subcommittee, a
project charter. Sometimes we just have to say
and encourage and record, hey, what if we just moved this here
instead? That's all you got to do.
Pull out in a three if you really want to.
Those things are so fast, so easy.
But they don't need to be the entry fee for improvement,
right? Fix stuff, tell somebody, fill
it out, and then we can document it to get that little credit for
the improvement during the audit and we can make sure that it's
documented properly should any standardized processes exist
related to it. Just let small improvements stay
small. It's our job as the quality
people to make sure that the the change is recorded and provided
in a timely manner. Next up, we want to make sure
that we connect improvement to our daily work.
If improvement doesn't connect to the job, it won't happen
because the job is what matters, right?
Improvement should sound like at times, you know, somebody's
going to say like this step is annoying.
Let's fix it. They're going to say, hey, this,
this confuses me. Can we clarify?
They're going to say, Oh my gosh, this step takes 5 minutes
too long. We'll simplify it.
Those are the key terms We want to see that people are looking
to resolve the issue, fix it, clarify it, simplify it.
Whatever the the action word is, so long as there's action, there
is improvement. We want to act on that fast.
Now, if you are in a, a leadership or a management role,
again, two different things. Managers manage, leaders lead.
We'll do that in a in a later episode.
If you are in those positions of decision making of some relative
power, then you are the ones that are going to have to make
sure that that fix that clarification, that
simplification happens. You'll be allowed to miss one,
maybe 2, but if you keep missing them, the people will stop
telling you about it. And the second that you lose
the, the floor, the staff, the the people that are doing the
work and bringing these ideas to you, the second that you lose
them, you don't get them back. Be really careful with the trust
that they put in you to make sure that this stuff is
addressed. So once, once you fix it, you
clarify it and simplify it, celebrate those wins.
You know, this, this is really the, the cornerstone.
Now, I like loud celebrations and it works sometimes.
But you really want to match your, your celebration to, to
the person who made it happen or people who made it happen.
But you do have to celebrate it. Most companies will take the
time to celebrate big old project launches, milestones
getting hit. Good cultures celebrate these
little wins, these little fixes, these little clarifications,
these little simplifications. They celebrate everyday problem
solving. They figure out you know who's
who's submitting these ideas for continual improvement and
they'll recognize those people in some little way.
It doesn't need to be showy. It doesn't need to be loud.
It's more fun loud in my opinion.
But it doesn't need to happen. Celebrate those wins just like
you would with an 8D with a major milestone getting hit.
Because that recognition, it's going to fuel repetition of the
behavior. And once that behavior gets
repeated a lot, it becomes culture.
Culture is what we do. And if we do continual
improvement pre mouth back to the the responsibility of
leadership here, it will leave managers out of this one because
it's got to be leaders, people who can help push things
forward, people who demonstrate what good behaviour looks like,
what desired culture looks like. Leaders have formal titles and
informal titles, but your leaders need to model this sort
of stuff. All right, leaders need to ask
the questions. Leaders need to be the first to
say, hey, this isn't perfect. What do you think?
How can we make this better? Leaders are going to suggest the
small improvements. Leaders are going to accept
feedback without any form of defensiveness.
All right, if leader trip, if leadership goes into a system
thinking that it is set in stone, that it's finished, that
there's no need to change things because it's worked to this
point, that's how everyone else is going to interact with the
two leaders Can't do that. Leaders need to be the the first
ones to say, all right, this is how we do it now, how are we
going to do it tomorrow? What is this going to look like
in a month, three months, a year?
That's the role of the leader. Of course there's going to be
the need for formal tools. You know, we're all working with
ISO in in some manner. So we've got to do corrective
actions, preventive actions. For some of us we've got to
mitigate those risks. But a three's preventive
actions, doing formal risk register stuff, those don't need
to happen for everyday things. Those amplify what we're trying
to do here. So use those when the complexity
is high, the risk is astonishing or even just a little bit above
whatever your system says is the the desired risk level and and
definitely document when the learning needs to be captured.
Now we do not want to confuse the tool with the behaviour
though. The behaviour is we make things
better, we continually improve our system.
The tools prove it. So those a threes are going to
be great for for when your your problems are just way too big or
costly or customers yelling at you.
That is when the the more formal tools need to come in to tell
the the frontline that they need to do a full problem solving
exercise to raise their trash can 3 inches.
That kills continual improvement culture.
Again, if it's a standardized setup, have somebody go out and
document that change. But that is not the
responsibility of the person suggesting the change to make
that happen. We want continual improvement.
We want standard work. We need to find that balance.
Let's talk about as we start to close this out.
I've been, I've been rambling for a while now.
Jeepers. OK, happy to be back.
Glad you're here. A quality system doesn't have to
feel heavy. If we want to keep in mind that
we make our quality system. A quality system needs to feel
helpful, responsive, alive. People want to participate in
continual improvement because they think that that quality
system that built that culture, that built that concept of
continual improvement, they need to see it as, yeah, the the
system makes my job easier. That's why I participate in it.
That's why I make it better every day.
Once you start hearing that one, you've educated the team
incredibly well. Good job.
Let me know in an e-mail how you made that happen.
But two, that is what your system needs to be.
It doesn't need to weigh people down.
It doesn't need to be just a series of red tape.
It doesn't need to add cost, time, energy.
It needs to make the work easier.
And that is true, I believe in even if you're working with 1345
or ITF, it's, it's stuff that is there.
The standard exists to guide how to make a system that works for
customers, stakeholders, customers alike, employees.
I said customers twice. Who do we work for?
Anywho, all right, so rolling it back to, to what we're doing
here, but the vendor didn't do big improvements.
And it reminded me that not everything needs to be a big
improvement. They didn't talk about their
their continual improvement system.
They just showed it. They did it.
They did it all the time. They did it in every work center
that we walked by. They need to sweep.
I left a note. They need to take down some old
documents, yes, But everywhere we went, we saw a work center
that had been modified over time to get the best results possible
for the team member and the customer.
And that's cool. That is just awesome.
And none of that seemed like a required elements.
They didn't have dedicated Gambo locks to do this.
They didn't have dedicated risk registers at every station
saying like, hey, you need to do this, this, this, this, this
should reduce our risks in these areas.
They wanted to. They did it.
They built a culture there that can't help but improve itself,
and that was awesome. So let's close it out.
Some fun call to action stuff, if you will, in your work
center, your workplace, wherever you are.
Find one small thing. Find a thing that saves you that
2 seconds for illuminate a little bit of waste.
Make it better. You don't need a form.
You don't need a an exploratory committee to figure out if it's
necessary or doable. Just do it, make it better.
Update a document if it's a standardized process, because
that will really mess everything up.
If you're doing it not according to plan, but still make it
better. That's a challenge.
Go out, have some fun. This is the first one that we're
back in quite some time. So I'm going to end with a a
quick note. I have completely updated the
the QC tools register of tools that we've got control plans,
FMEA makers, a really nice, really easy to use JavaScript,
HTML, CSS. There's a bubble printmaker, A
newsletter maker, a because so much stuff and and it's yours
for free. Download it if you if you need
tools to help with your analysis.
There's a really nice CPK calculator does PPK as well.
So so don't worry if you aren't doing multiple group sizes in
there. You'll you'll get the the right
data chart builders chart JS did a major update, so I was very
excited free again and it works. The math checks out the the
bubble print maker is the coolest thing I've I've ever put
together. So download it, hit the website,
coqms.com. Donations, of course, welcome.
Won't shy away from that. But not obligatory.
Not not obligatory. That's how you say that word.
Use it. Check it out, send me an e-mail,
let me know what you think. Everyday
qualitypodcast@gmail.com Yeah, excited to be back.
We'll get a few more of these episodes out soonish and we'll
have some fun. So thank you for listening.
I really appreciate you stopping by and ranting with me.
All right. Thanks, everybody.
Bye.