This is the second in a series of blog posts digging deeper into the seven keys to building a quality culture, which builds on Nicole Parker’s recent introduction blog. In this article, we will discuss the second of these seven keys; Discipline. Below are several areas where discipline is crucial to building a quality culture.
Preventive Discipline and Improvement Tools
Prevention requires reflection. In order to prevent bad outcomes in the future, one must draw upon prior experiences to predict what is possible or likely to happen. We can define the things we don’t want to happen in the future, look at how those things have been dealt with in the past, and, using that knowledge, plan how to reduce the likelihood of them happening again. Even after those plans and practices are put into place, unexpected outcomes can happen. This describes the iterative loop of continuous improvement.
Lessons Learned Library
A lessons learned library allows a team to leverage lessons documented by other teams in the organization and share the collective intelligence. One of the first acts of discipline in New Product Introduction (NPI) should be to review the relevant historical information concerning lessons learned, nonconformances and corrective actions.
NPI Project Templates
Discipline in planning and managing the project is crucial to an effective NPI. To leverage knowledge from the past, templates should be developed to provide a framework to reduce NPI risk and increase standardization and repeatability, including:
- Defined gates or milestones to track significant steps
- Tasks and their timing required for each gate with the potential for checklists to ensure completeness and approval by others for critical tasks
- Visibility for all stakeholders and accountability through periodic reviews and automatic escalation notifications
- Linkage to supplier NPI-related activities and PPAP to track suppliers’ progress
Design Risk Mitigation
In the design phase of NPI, the discipline of carefully considering design risks and the plans for mitigating those risks is crucial to reducing a product’s overall cost of quality. Use of a Design Failure Mode Effects Analysis (DFMEA) is an excellent tool to understand those risks and how to address them. To do DFMEA efficiently and effectively and leverage institutional knowledge, a living library of system DFMEAs should be developed to act as a baseline DFMEA for any new NPI work. Other design considerations should include design for manufacturing, assembly, and service to reduce costs and improve customer satisfaction, so involving people from those disciplines will be critical.
Once designs are complete, prototypes can be developed and a disciplined series of tests covering all aspects of the design are required to validate the design. This process is typically called a Design Validation Plan and Report (DVP&R). This is a crucial gate, and if the product is not meeting design requirements, design changes should be considered before moving forward.
Sourcing
A thorough and thoughtful supplier selection process can be crucial to overall quality. Having a robust Request For Quote (RFQ) solution that provides visibility to price, capacity, feasibility, and supplier quality and delivery performance combined with an effective supplier auditing tool is critical. Piece price is only a fraction of the cost that could result from a bad supplier selection. Having the discipline to track any labor, material, or value add that is lost as a result of a supplier’s quality is important. These costs should be charged back to them and taken into account during future sourcing decisions or contract negotiations.
Process Risk Mitigation
Most goods are produced through a series of sequential processes. Identifying process risk and developing the response to that risk should be done through a Process Failure Mode Effects Analysis. Key process characteristics that indicate conformance to specifications should be checked at setup and at specific frequencies thereafter. The aim is to prevent the creation of bad product by controlling the process.
A formal plan commonly called a control plan showing what to measure, where in the process flow to measure it, how often to measure, how to measure, and what to do if a check fails is important when developing work instructions that can be institutionalized through training.
Finally, periodic audits can be done to make sure people are executing to the plan and to ensure feedback is gathered as a basis for future improvements and retraining.
Reactive Discipline and Improvement Tools
Addressing a product problem with an unstructured approach will be ineffective and can lead to treating a symptom rather than the true root cause resulting in repeat issues. The first discipline is to triage Non-conformance Reports (NCRs) and choose which will become corrective actions based on severity and likelihood. No organization has infinite time or resources and taking too many corrective actions can result in none of them being effective or in costs that make them too expensive to maintain. Exercise discipline when containing defective product. There is nothing more risky to a brand than to have repeat issues because of poor containment and corrective actions that do not eliminate the root cause of the problem.
Once a decision has been made to escalate a non-conformance to a corrective action, the goal must be to eliminate a reoccurrence. To really do this well requires the following:
- Use cross-functional teams of Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to get the best people working on eradication.
- An accurate, defined and agreed upon problem statement.
- Use of root cause tools (5 why, ishikawa/fishbone, etc). Do not consider corrective actions until the team is convinced the true root cause has been identified
- Use a facilitator seasoned at effective root cause analysis.
- Identify actions that can eliminate the cause. If that cannot be done, look for actions to minimize the occurrence of the cause.
- Think beyond the current situation.
- Systemic perspective – determine if there is systemic cause and if so, this problem will likely affect other parts. Consider applying corrective actions to other affected part numbers (e.g. foundational for family FMEA updates).
- Lessons learned – document the lessons the team learned during the CAPA process so it can be shared for future personnel or new products.
- Continuous Improvement – consider using continuous improvement projects to manage improvements.
- SCARs – if NCRs are due to suppliers, issue SCARs and hold suppliers accountable to eliminate the problem.
Discipline in the use of these processes and tools will improve product quality, the overall costs of quality, delivery timing, brand and reduce the chaos and firefighting within the organization. In the meantime, download and share our “7 Keys to Building a Quality Culture” infographic below.
