On Fridays I will post a Lean related Quote. Throughout our lifetimes many people touch our lives and leave us with words of wisdom. These can both be a source of new learning and also a point to pause and reflect upon lessons we have learned. Within Lean active learning is an important aspect on this journey because without learning we can not improve.
"Quality must be monitored: Not just encouraged; Rewarded: Not Just Praised." — Joseph L. Mancusi, Ph. D.
Quality in your processes must be measured. A quality measure quantifies the quality of a product or service, as defined by comparison to a criterion. A performance measure is a type of quality measure designed to assess the extent to which the actions of an organization conform to business guidelines or standards of quality.
Performance measures designed to move associates toward business goals can be a powerful catalyst for action. Because "you get what you measure," it is important to think through how and what you measure so you can achieve the desired results.
Long term financial performance hinges on overall quality, value, and customer satisfaction. However, when individual departments focus solely on maximizing their own financial performance, the profitability of the whole company is sub-optimized. A warning from the father of Total Quality Management, the late Dr. Deming: "Everyone propels himself forward for his own good, on his own life preserver. The organization is the looser."
A key performance strategy can be to use the service department to increase customer satisfaction levels. Customer complaints are considered a gift, an opportunity to learn about, then remove customer dis-satisfiers and secure high levels of customer satisfaction.
There are a number of other quality assurance measures that can be used to measure and monitor the quality of your processes like these:
Percent error in reliability projections
Percent of product that meets customer expectations
Time to answer customer complaints
Number of customer complaints
Number of errors detected during design and process reviews
Percent of employees active in professional societies
Number of audits performed on schedule
Percent of QA personnel to total personnel
Percent of quality inspectors to manufacturing directs
Percent of QE's to product and manufacturing engineers
Number of engineering changes after design review
Number of process changes after process qualification
Errors in reports
Time to correct a problem
Percent of suppliers at 100 percent lot acceptance for one year
Percent of lots going directly to stock
Percent of problems identified in the field
Variations between inspectors doing the same job
Percent of reports published on schedule
Number of complaints from manufacturing management
Percent of field returns correctly analyzed
Time to identify and solve problems
Percent of lab services not completed on schedule
Percent of improvement in early detection of major design errors
Percent of errors in defect records
Number of reject orders not dispositioned in five days
Number of customer calls to report errors
Number of committed supplier plans in place
Percent of correlated test results with suppliers
Receiving inspection cycle time
Number of requests for corrective action being processed
Time required to process a request for corrective action
Number of off-specifications approved
Percent of part numbers going directly to stock
Number of manufacturing interruptions caused by supplier parts
Percent error in predicting customer performance
Percent product cost related to appraisal scrap and rework
Percent skip lot inspection
Percent of qualified suppliers
Number of problems identified in-process
Cost of scrap and rework that was not created at the rejected operation
Level of customer surveys
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