The parallels in the business world are uncanny. We have specialists that take advantage of current circumstances incredibly well, and we have opportunists who, whilst they may not exploit the status quo as efficiently as the specialists, are less reliant on it, so in general more than a bit more resilient. You could say they manage their risks a little better.

People and companies that can’t or won’t change aren’t called dinosaurs for nothing. When things change, the specialists suffer first. The bigger they are, the harder time they have, because big things need a lot of fuel to keep them ticking over. When when things change rapidly and over a sustained period, it is less likely that specialists are going to be able to tough it out. That’s when we get periods of mass extinction, and the ones left standing tend to be the little nimble characters who quickly develop survival strategies, then find a way to thrive

Right now this is what it feels like is happening in business. Plenty of change, plenty of uncertainty and plenty are starting to suffer. There will be casualties to be sure, and among the casualties will be companies that really need things to stay just the way they are. The old markets and economic systems are gone for good. New markets are evolving rapidly, different customer groups are being created, with different needs, and needs that might not even stay the same for very long. How very inconvenient!

Big slow companies are finished. The new world needs clever, agile and flexible entities. Companies that can think fast, move fast and change fast. Companies that have a different type of management and a different mentality. Less precious and less afraid of the odd failure. In the future big will not be beautiful

Post from: Capable People Blog

Opportunities in the Age of Mass Extinction

So what is so special about Men-Tai? Well …

It doesn’t have a liquor license, so you can only choose from a small selection of teas (which they don’t offer you, you have to ask – and they don’t do refills) or you could take a soft drink from the chiller in the corner. When you arrive you are  presented with a polystyrene cup of chilled tap water, which they will refill. The polystyrene cups are taken from a cardboard box on the floor of the cafe. The servers wear whatever they want, which is generally a hoodie, trainers and usually a baseball cap. They tend not to make small talk. The tables are small, close together, no frills, no table cloths, nothing like that. Cutlery consists of disposable chop-sticks or a porcelain spoon (you can use both if you want) but no forks. The dish that your food is served in is likely to be chipped. They only accept cash. The second you consume your last mouthful of food, your bill will be placed on the table in front of you. You never need to ask for it. In fact you would not have time to ask for it. The menu is not extensive and there are no desserts. They don’t take reservations and if there are no tables free you have to wait on the street

It is quite beautiful. And I mean that

It is a perfect case study in quality management. It is so beautiful that I recommend every quality professional to pay it a visit. It is most definitely a “how to” guide to quality. The Men-Tai has precision designed the business model and customer satisfaction is very much at its core. It works, and this is how

The cafe specialises in dishing up large plates of tasty, cheap noodle and rice dishes in a no-frills environment. It does not pretend to be anything other than that. That is how they make their money and, because they have chosen affordability over luxury (a clear strategic decision), margins per serving will not be very large, and they only have about 8 tables. So think about that for a moment.  If this business model is to work, turnaround time as absolutely critical. That’s why wait times on food are under 5 minutes, and wait times on the bill are under 5 seconds. The last thing they need is for a couple of diners to tie down a table for an extra half hour sipping tea – that’s why drinks don’t figure in the equation. That’s why they can do without the hassle and added expense of washing glasses and changing table cloths. That’s why you never have to ask for your bill. There is a very clear but unwritten deal going on between the establishment and the diner which goes something like “I’ll give you a large plate of cheap, tasty and fast  food on the understanding that you eat up, pay up and make way”. If they have a mission statement, that’s probably it. And if it is, they certainly walk the talk

So why is it “quality”?  – Because it does exactly what it says on the tin

How can I say that they care about customer satisfaction? Because they deliver

Even when the temperature on the street is below freezing, when you’ve paid your bill and walked outside, there’s likely to be a small queue of people outside prepared to suffer the cold for the dining experience. It’s no place for an anniversary dinner, but it is exactly the place for a quality management study tour

I’d post a link to their website, but they don’t have one

Post from: Capable People Blog

Quality – The Men-Tai Approach

What’s eating Shaun?

Unlike most of my “quality” peers I do not come from an engineering background. I am aware of spanners, yes, but I am unsure under what circumstances one would use such an implement safely. I actually come from an HR and management background, and spent a not inconsiderable time collecting a range of qualifications in that field. That means I like to think I can express a relatively informed opinion on the “people” type things in management standards. Like section 5 of ISO 9001 for instance

Before I start dissecting section 5 clause by clause I’ll start with the big stuff, because I not only think that that the clauses are badly written, pointless, unenforceable or whatever, I actually think to a large extent it has missed the point completely. I have written on the subject of top management/quality department dislocation in the past and I could suggest that if the quality department were to use section 5 as its primary tool for engaging top management, that could well be one of the major problems. In my experience there are few idiots occupying top positions. There are also few “uncommitted” individuals at that level as their livelihoods depend on being successful, so to suggest top management are fools for not understanding “quality” or accusing them of not being “committed” is not only usually a bad career move, it is usually just plain wrong

Shaddap! Leave me alone! Give me some peace!

One of the problems is that top managers usually have a flock of department heads underneath them and they all have one thing in common. They each believe the planet (not just the company) revolves around their department. The HR manager thinks the world revolves around HR and that every problem has an HR solution, the sales manager likewise, same with purchasing, same with IT, same (if we see it from their perspective) with quality. The functions that get the ear and the support of top management are the one’s who make the most persuasive case, and in boardroom language that usually means that the case usually needs to be expressed clearly in cost versus benefit terms. Section 5 completely by-passes the importance of this critical dynamic. It does not so much as acknowledge that it exists

When higher quality is a bad thing?

Understanding the financial side of “quality” is a critical principle that has to be understood within the organisation. There is a point in the life-cycle of every product and service when “higher quality” is a bad thing. I often find senior execs understand this better than their quality people, and it certainly does not feature in ISO 9001, which is a major, major omission

What is “top management”?

Fundamentally, in management system terms, top management has three critical responsibilities

1. Define and communicate direction
2. Provide the resources people might need to make it happen
3. Personal intervention, when required, to make it happen

Let’s go through those three items one by one

Define and communicate direction

People need to know what they are supposed to do. They need to know in which direction the company is headed. One of the weaknesses of ISO 9001 is that it more or less assumes that this will always be predominantly quality driven, which often it is not. Management of an organisation (boiled down to its bare essentials) is little more than making the best use of what resources you have to try to make the best of a set of circumstances, and managing risk. That can often mean trying to make insufficient resources go as far as they possibly can, and make a bad situation less bad than it could have been

Personally I find the mandatory inputs of clause 5.6.2 less than appropriate in many situations. I see no reason why things like results of audits and product/process issues etc can’t be analysed and managed away from the boardroom. Many senior managers like to keep strategic review strategic and the MR requirement restricts that approach. Additionally, to have the primary output of this review to be determined as “quality objectives” doesn’t help anyone. In reality (in large and successful corporations that don’t go near ISO 9001) the company may express strategies at the top level and then translate those into what we could describe as “quality objectives” at the operational planning stage. In this case I like the way ISO 14001 clause 4.3.3 handles objectives as it does not allow for the documentation of woolly aspirational objectives supported by ill-defined “plans”. It requires something far more substantial and, if we are to assume that these so-called “quality objectives” are the most important quality issue a company faces, they should be expressed clearly, properly project managed and appropriately disaggregated into personal goals and targets, with a system of review that operates at each level, not just “MR”

The Quality Policy requirement is a complete nonsense. That is not to say that I don’t believe that policies in general are nonsense, just that the thing that clause 5.3 requires is not substantial enough to be called a “policy” by any right thinking person. It is, at best, a statement of intent, and if we are grown up about it, it never impacts anybody’s work. Ever. So it either needs to be changed into something that COULD be described as a policy or ditched. I get embarrassed every time that the policy gets audited during a third party audit because everybody (apart from the auditor usually) knows that it simply does not matter. That does not mean the company may not be serious about quality, you understand, just that it is a pointless document that for some reason this chap obsesses over

Provision of resources

Clause 5.1 and 5.2 of ISO 9001 as they are written are extremely difficult to audit objectively, maybe impossible even. In fact 5.1 is expressed in a way that can best be described as “potentially inflammatory” to say the least. Management support (commitment if you want to call it that) is important, but let’s be more practical about what that means. Forget about the quality policy. It does not matter. So far as support and commitment is concerned it is time and money. The most practical way to test support is to follow the money. If resources are not provided to make things happen it is both a top management issue and a serious problem. That’s the money side.

Personal intervention

The “time” side relates to whether or not they are prepared to intervene personally to make things happen. That could mean banging the heads of two department managers together to make them play nicely or, to take Deming’s view, to try to make it easy for people to do the right thing. To actively try to seek out the barriers to quality and take them away. Active rather than passive involvement, real stuff with a point to it

Involvement of People … where are you?

Involvement of people is a stated quality principle of ISO 9001. I do not have a problem with that and the concept is supported by Deming among others. I am heartened that the ISO 9000 series has acknowledged the importance of it, but I struggle to find a smoking gun in amongst the clauses of ISO 9001. Quite simply “where is it?” This just looks to me like a half-finished job, and when it came to defining requirements, the matter was simply ducked

So what could have happened? Well, back to Deming again, what we are trying to achieve is the most efficient application of the potential and expertise of our workers. That relies on one thing above all else. A good upward communication process or problem reporting process. In the last section I mentioned that top managers should, among other things, act as a remover of barriers. For this to happen they really need to know what the barriers are. If the upward communication doesn’t work, it won’t happen

The solution?

So what would I do? I could make the solution complex, but I won’t. If the solution is too complex it won’t get done. The ISO review of standards process is change averse, so baby steps is the order of the day. What I would do is to structure ISO 9001 in a PDCA way and bring it more into line with OHSAS 18001 and ISO 14001. Not only would it improve the application of top management stuff considerably, but it would also make a heck of a lot of sense to people

My view as always. It may change tomorrow, that’s the trouble

Post from: Capable People Blog

Top management and the management system

I was a Quality Manager in a large Government department for a while over a decade ago, so I have an interest whenever Governments start making noises about renewed efforts to drive out public sector inefficiency. I’ve heard it all before, of course, but this time it’s seems to be different. This time failure seems like its not an option

The old obstacles are still there, though. The main one being that the systems are not actually designed to be efficient. That is no comment on the will, commitment or talent of the people who work there, you understand, but just on the way the system is set up. It is unintentionally designed to resist efficiency. I will elaborate

There are significant features of public sector systems that make them resist efficiency

• The way budgets are set up and managed
• The system is designed to try and protect its own equilibrium

Budget underspend is a problem not an achievement

As a manager I had a budget. I was given that budget at the start of the year and told to make it last. So I did. I knew that I’d be in trouble if I overspent. I also knew I’d cause myself a headache if I underspent. So I did neither. I, like all of my peers, made it last. This was generally achieved by a combination of two quarters of cautionary spending, followed by two quarters of progressively care-free spending (depending on how much I had left and how quickly I had to get rid of it). If I didn’t spend my budget I knew I’d get less next year, and I didn’t want that if I could avoid it, especially as there was no reward in it for me for giving anything back, and it would only give my staff a harder time next year. So why would I try and save? Who would?

The status quo is the safest option

Every two or three months I would be asked by the Chief Executive (via his secretary of course) for some “words on quality” for his ministerial briefing. It was my job to make sure he had plenty to talk about, so we did a lot of things on Investors in People, EFQM, Chartermark etc. I don’t want to sound big-headed, but I have a way with words and I could make these activities sound pretty impressive – I knew what they wanted to hear. No-one ever asked me to justify anything or put numbers on anything (god forbid), so the “quality improvements” it could have been argued, were almost entirely cosmetic – smoke and mirrors. And that, at the time, was good enough. No-one really wanted any of these improvement projects to put anyone’s nose out of joint, so we were channeled towards safe territory. We redesigned forms, we moved photocopiers to reduce travel time, that type of thing. We never did anything like ask “You see that fellow over there? What does he get paid? More to the point, what does he actually do?”  I’ve since heard it called “the elephant in the room” syndrome. Things like identifying underloaded jobs, or over-staffed departments would cause managerial problems and we didn’t need go round creating any of those. Provided we showed a bit of willing, we’d be left alone. That meant the equilibrium of the system was not upset. No-one lost their jobs, had their budgets cut or anything like that. So no-one complained. Then after a while the Government as usual got distracted by something else and we were completely off the hook for a while. You could buy a lot of time with great anecdotes …

Things might be different this time round. I get the impression that this time words will be no good. They’ll need deeds, and deeds with numbers attached. Governments are spent up and need to make some savings to off-set all of those so-called “financial stimuli”. Consequently the option of cosmetic improvement may well be removed this time round, and kicking things into the long grass may prove more difficult

That made me think. If I was a manager in the public sector right now, what would I do? It’s a fair bet that “quality improvement” and “efficiencies” may well become the buzz-words once again, but would I try to steal a march right now and put myself ahead of the game? Score some early points maybe? I’m not sure I would

It could actually work against me. I could end up with the worst of both worlds if I made my savings before I was asked. The big risk would be that I’d make my command a lot leaner, but then this new “lean” position would be used as my starting baseline and I could be asked to deliver yet more on top of that, with no credit being given for my earlier voluntary endeavors. Better I sat and waited till I was ordered to do it, I might decide. That way I’d have more scope to find improvements with it being in its current inefficient state

Now all of those features and quirks I’ve described might sound just plain wrong, immoral even, considering its public money we’re dealing with. But that is the way the system is set up. Don’t blame the people. You would do exactly as they do in the same position – I guarantee that. It will be interesting to see if the new reality acknowledges that the way systems behave are generally down to the way they are designed

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Post from: Capable People Blog

Public Sector Quality Improvement

How many people really understand “root cause”? How many people really make a serious attempt to apply clause 8.5.2c of ISO 9001 in the correct spirit? How many auditors (presumably for a quiet life) are quite prepared to be complicit in this charade?

These questions and more are considered by Mike Mickelwright in this funny little video clip. We ALL know what he is talking about, right?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Post from: Capable People Blog

Top Ten Unacceptable Corrective Actions

Many people use the word “efficiency” without really understanding what the term means. Even fewer understand how efficiency works – the dynamics of efficiency, if you will. So here’s a crash course. You can thank me later

In an earlier post I outlined the difference between efficiency and economy. An economy is spending less money (making a cut, in other words, which often results in doing less in order to make ends meet) whereas efficiency is the ratio of productive output in relation to the inputs to the system. An efficiency could therefore mean producing a similar quantity of productive output with a reduced input, or it could even mean doing more for less – which is more difficult. Anyhow, that’s what it is. Now to talk about how it works, because I worry that some people don’t understand some simple facts of efficiency life

Efficiency and the simple facts of life

There is one golden rule to appreciate if you are to fully understand the dynamics of efficiency

Efficiency never happens by accident or without a reason

What I mean by that is that systems are NEVER accidentally or naturally efficient. A system will ALWAYS gravitate (given the choice) to the easiest possible life. Efficiencies will never fall out of the sky and on to your lap. You have to go and find them and drag them kicking and screaming from their hiding places. Systems generally resist efficiency because it means a hard life. That means that you seldom find real efficiency in uncompetitive markets, and the most efficient systems you will find will always have competitors just half a step behind them snapping at their heals

My eureka moment

I was once at an event where a man called David was describing a recent and dramatic turnaround where his company managed to rescue itself from a seemingly terminal decline. In the Q&A that followed a member of the audience asked “How did you deal with resistance? How did you manage to get staff buy in? That is usually very difficult”. David paused for a moment and then responded “There was no resistance. We did not give them the option. Nothing polarises your strategy more than a lack of alternatives”. As I write this, I heard those words 7 years ago and it was a eureka moment. Maybe my biggest eureka moment. In that instant I understood how efficiency worked. I realised it was not about culture change models or quality management tools, it was more like an evolutionary event, obeying very simple evolutionary rules. A certain set of circumstances existed that allowed survival under certain conditions, and you either found a way of meeting those conditions, or you die. David’s company accurately assessed their options and found they only had one option remaining. So they followed it, and anyone who didn’t like it was told they could lump it.  They learned, and they lived to pass on their wisdom. Others are not so fortunate

Anyway, to cut a long story short, if you are a quality manager with a passion for your job, tearing your remaining hair out asking yourself how your system can be so inefficient, and why other people can be so ambivalent towards it, I give you this word of comfort. It isn’t your fault. There may not be that much you or anybody can do about it. The simple fact is that your system is most probably the way it is, and your people are the way they are, because they can be. The real fun will only start when that option ceases to be available – when things get tougher

So be careful what you wish for

Post from: Capable People Blog

A crash course in efficiency

I have just returned from the Ninth Annual IRCA Conference, held in Yokohama, Japan. It was a great privilege being invited to speak at such a prestigious and high profile event, and to be among such interesting and distinguished company

The theme of the event was “Auditing for Effectiveness” and I guess that I was invited because I have been quite vocal on the subject over the past year or so. I still find it hugely flattering whenever I realise that someone is listening

Auditing for Effectiveness: The CPD Workshop

Anyway, prior to the event I ran a 2 day CPD workshop for a number of individuals who wanted to explore the concepts in more depth. I had put together a 2 day program earlier in the year, and I must pass on my gratitude to the people of Gloucestershire College for allowing my to test out the new materials on them in May. The feedback I received from that trial run was extremely valuable and helped me refine elements of the workshop to the extent that it received excellent feedback

The workshop explored ways in which the EFQM RADAR assessment mechanism could be incorporated into more general QMS audits to add depth and rigour to the process. Here’s a group shot of the workshop delegates

The 9th Annual Conference

The annual conference was something of a daunting affair. It was held in the very grand surroundings of the Pacifico Yokohama Conference Centre, with over 300 delegates attending. I had a one hour slot mid-afternoon, the other speakers included:

• Simon Feary, Director of the IRCA and Chief Executive of the CQI
• Masakuzu Ikoma, JAB (Japan Accreditation Bureau)
• Noriyuki Hishino, Technical Advisor of LRQA in Japan
• Ashihiko Aoki, Cannon
• Paul Palmes, Business Standards Architects Inc
• Ian Nield, Investors in Excellence Ltd

All in all the delegates all received good value for money, and it appeared that the general consensus was that third party certification could not carry on drifting in its current direction, and decisive action to protect the integrity of the system was required. This would clearly involve improvements in both technique and governance

Free stuff for my blog readers

If anyone is interested in receiving copies of the powerpoint slides I used during my 1 hour presentation on the topic of “Auditing for Effectiveness” you can download them from the Members Area of this blog. You’ll need a password which you can request via the contact form on our main site – MAKE SURE YOU TYPE YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS IN PROPERLY – otherwise I can’t send it

We love japan

Finally I need to thank everyone we met while we were in Japan. When I say “we” I mean me and Mrs Shaun, who tagged along for the experience. The people and the county are quite lovely, and we have never encountered such kindness in all our lives. Particular thanks go to the IRCA team in Japan, Masayo, Miho and Yuki, who looked after us so well. I’d also like to nod in the direction of Ian Nield from Investors in Excellence. His operation may well be worthwhile checking out – they have some interesting ideas

Post from: Capable People Blog

9th Annual IRCA Conference: Yokohama 2010

This topic has taken on somewhat of a scary feel for me lately. In June I will be presenting to several hundred representatives from the third party certification industry in Japan, at the IRCA 2010 Conference in Yokohama. This is my topic

I think I know why I was asked. I’ve had a lot to say about weaknesses in third party audit systems on this blog and a few other places, and I have expressed strong views on the need for modernisation of traditional and (dare I say it) out-dated conformity focussed approaches. It may be that the industry is starting to agree with some of the things I have been saying. I hope …

Anyway, I really need to start constructing something. An argument. Something that is challenging enough to make people think differently, but engaging enough not to turn people off and create a defensive response. A dilemma and no mistake

Fortunately I have been able to review a JIBDEC/JAB action document, so I know a little about where they are coming from. That document talks about the need for a balanced effectiveness/conformity assessment. Not so much “does it work to its own procedures?” more like “does it do what the customer wants it to?” The JIBDEC/JAB document also talks about how the audit needs to add value. It is this second aspect that has got me thinking. What do we mean when we say we want the third party audit to “add value?”

Third party audits – adding value for whom?

When we talk about “value adding” third party audits are we really suggesting that a third party auditor, without performing any meaningful research or necessarily having any great expertise in the sector, should be able to go into an established company for a couple of days and tell them much that they did not already know? Come on, let’s take a trip to planet earth for a second, is that realistic?  I think anyone who thinks that a third party audit is going to yield a treasure trove of hitherto unknown and valuable management information is living in a dream world. It is not going to happen. The good news, though, is that it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because third party certification schemes were never designed or intended to do that in the first place. Its just that somehow over the years we’ve lost sight of what the primary purpose actually is, and for whose benefit they exist. Third party certification schemes exist primarily to provide information not to the audited organisation, but to customer organisations. It is these organisations that we really should be thinking about. What do CUSTOMER organisations want from third party certifications? How can we improve third party certifications to increase value for CUSTOMER organisations?

It’s the customer, stupid

How could we be so blind? The reason the vast majority of companies seek registration is not because they want it for some intrinsic reason (although I accept one or two may do), nor is it because they believe the CB will send along a kind of Tom Peters to sort out all their problems and tell them how to conquer the world. It isn’t these companies we should be focussing on. We must think about the external value of certification and what that is supposed to mean in the public domain. When we think about adding value we should be asking questions like

• What is it supposed to say about a company that has certification?
• How high are the standards?
• Dare we trust the certification?
• Is it consistently applied?

What if every hotel was rated 5 star?

Maybe we need to start thinking about it in the same way that we think about star rating systems on hotels, because the same principle applies. When we choose a hotel for a family holiday we look at the hotel’s star rating and this adds value to us as customers. The ratings are extremely useful so long as we feel we can trust them. They give us information and help us to reduce the risk of choosing a hotel that might not suit our needs

But what would happen if we lost faith in the integrity of the star rating system? Well, for a start, we’d pay no attention to it. We would not use it as a selection tool, hotels would stop going through the rating process and the scheme would soon fall into disuse. Pretty soon there would be no more pointless star ratings. That is what would happen if the integrity was lost

I think it is this parallel we need to consider when we talk about breathing new life and credibility into third party management system certification. Above all else the system has to be consistent, trusted and enforced to a level that means something to prospective CUSTOMER organisations. We need to be clear about what the badge means and go back to basics to a certain extent. Maybe there needs to be more fails too. Think about it. Should it be our aim to get everyone certified? Great for CBs in the short-term, lots of fees, but in fact it is the last thing we should ever want if we think about it properly. All differentiation would effectively be lost

The day everyone achieves certification is the day that nobody needs it any more

Post from: Capable People Blog

Value adding third party audits

ISO 9001, that part of the ISO 9000 series that defines the quality management system requirements, clearly means many things to many people. There are certainly people with a vested interest in promoting its virtues and (sometimes) overstating its merits in the process. There are also some very vociferous opponents, including some career critics who have made a good living from slagging it off. But let’s try to be objective, (whilst simultaneously declaring an obvious interest in the its continued existence)

Why do people seek registration?
Check out this thread for some contributions. The simple inarguable truth is that most registered organisations seek registration to meet the requirements of an important customer, or an important prospect. It basically allows the company to bid for work they would otherwise be excluded from, as the customer has defined it as a condition to supply. Is this right? Well, we’ve talked about this in the past. The customer is king, if he says “jump!” we should all say “how high?”

Interestingly, when the benefits of ISO 9001 registration are debated, most people launch into often unquantified justifications revolving around control, conformity and efficiency themes, almost as if doing it mainly because the customer wants it is somehow something to be ashamed of. The fact that it opens doors economically is often overlooked. This obvious economic advantage of offering access to more contracts has to be a major benefit, and “quality guys” should not be afraid of recognising it

Is it a mark of excellence?
Some people might claim that it is but they are just plain wrong. There may well be a decent set of good business practices woven into that clumsy and badly written document, but the requirements set out in ISO 9001 are no more than a base line. Successful certification indicates that the bones of a documented QMS is in place, it is auditable and it is supported by a basic set of management processes and, if we’re lucky, a PDCA theme running through it. The company may be a million miles from world class and may even be going steadily out of business at the same time. So I’m saying, in quality terms, it’s no more than our starter for ten

Why the confusion then?
The ten thousand dollar question, but I can offer a personal opinion. From my own personal experience I find that quality guys don’t speak the language of business, and business guys don’t speak the jargon of quality. That means strategic, commercial and quality people often have parallel agendas and, because the communication and transparency are poor within the processes (the principle that we should all be seeking the same end result, a successful business), is lost in the ensuing conflict and battle for resources. How often do we hear the QA department moaning about poor top management commitment to quality? Time for a common language and a clear focus on what is important to the business and the customer, whichever way we want to badge it up

A business approach to managing quality
Another favourite theme, but let’s expand on it a little this time by exploring the cost of quality in economic terms. Quality, generally, is defined as “the degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfills requirements” or “conformity to requirements” or a variation on that theme. Often “quality” is stated only in product conformity terms, as if that was the only thing that mattered to the customer and, as a consequence, the lower the level of functional defects, the better things are. However there comes a point at which investing in conformity related improvements does not yield any economic benefits. Eventually we reach a point at which (at the current price) we offer the customer a tolerable level of defect, a lower rate of defect may come at a price that the customer is not prepared to pay. So “better quality” (in this situation) increases the chances the customer will seek a cheaper provider, possibly one with an inferior defect rate. So examining the likelihood of repeat business only from a conformity and defect rate perspective is a dangerous mistake to make. Customers care about lots of things. Once the level of defects is tolerable they start to care more about other things. After sales service, response times, ease of dealing with, user-friendliness of contact systems, flexibility, image even. If these are important to the customer, then they become the new conformity

Post from: Capable People Blog

The real benefits of ISO 9001 certification

When its a cut!

What’s eating Shaun today? I’ll tell you what. It’s efficiency savings. Here’s an example of a political ding-dong where the major parties criticise each others’ projections for “efficiency savings”. The thing that is annoying me is the misuse of terminology – and I’m NOT being pedantic!

To understand my argument, you first need to understand what “efficiency” actually means. So if you don’t, and you want to follow the argument, you’ll find it helpful to read this first

Now I don’t have a problem with efficiency savings. Getting things working well, reducing waste and re-work, its all good. But the problem is that this is NOT what the political parties are talking about. What they are talking about is “CUTS” or, to put it in economic terms, economies

Efficiency savings and cuts – what’s the difference?

Well, if we were to achieve something that we can justifiably call an “efficiency saving”, we’d have to be able to outline a circumstance where we have identified ways of achieving a similar level of productive output for a lower input cost. What the political parties are actually describing is a circumstance where they will simply reduce the inputs (budgets) and see what happens next. This is an economy or a cut

Now it could be that an economy (cut) could lead to an efficiency. In fact this technique is commonly used in the automotive supply chain, where the value of the supply contract is reduced a little year on year, and the supplier simply has to find ways of preserving its margin. But is that likely to happen here? In the UK Public Sector? I’m not so sure. Already we’re hearing departments, councils and unions describing what the implications are likely to be if their budgets are cut, and they aren’t talking about efficiencies. In actual fact they are predicting that they will square the economic circle by reducing the outputs. That is, not by reducing waste, being more efficient and producing a similar output on a reduced budget, but by operating more or less at the same rate of efficiency, but producing less

The only way that the politicians would be able to be technically correct with their use of the term “efficiency saving” would be if they were to construct a system where the budgets would be cut but the productive output protected or guaranteed. Until we hear something like this, what we’re actually dealing with are CUTS

Post from: Capable People Blog

When is an efficiency saving not an efficiency saving?