Moving Beyond Product Quality

Posted on June 12, 2012 by John Hunter

This month Paul Borawski (CEO of ASQ) has asked the ASQ Influential Voices to share their thoughts on moving beyond product quality.

The opening paragraph of the Quality Council’s perspective is, “For some organizations, ‘quality’ remains a set of tools and techniques associated almost exclusively with quality control. For others, quality has evolved into a critical partner, closely linked with business model development and the enterprise-wide execution of long-term strategy to achieve results.

The way to move beyond just the set-of-tools mindset is very similar to the March topic on selling quality improvement.

What is needed to move beyond quality tools into a new management system is to make changes to the system that allow for that management system to be continually improved. Using the tools helps improve product quality a great deal. Much more can be done (both for product quality and overall effectiveness) if we don’t limit the use of modern improvement efforts to the manufacturing line.

At first it is often difficult to get managers and executives to accept the kind of change to their work that they will direct others to make. But once the process of improving the management system gets started, it takes a life of its own and is a very strong force to move beyond product quality.

Here are some previous posts on methods and strategies to move forward the organization into adopting a customer focused systemic effort to continuously improve every aspect of the organization – including the management system:

Related: Dr. Deming in 1980 on Product Quality in Japan and the USA

Posted in Management, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Management Improvement Blog Carnival #169

Posted on June 10, 2012 by John Hunter

The Curious Cat management blog carnival is published 3 times a month with some recent management blog posts. The posts generally focus on the areas I have focused on in the Curious Cat Management Guide since 1996.

Posted in Carnival | Tagged | 1 Comment

Management Improvement Blog Carnival #168

Posted on June 2, 2012 by John Hunter

Kevin Meyer is hosting the 168th Management Improvement Carnival. Highlights include:

  • As noted in the last Carnival, several bloggers including yours truly took an appropriately harsh look at an article in Harvard Business Review titled It’s Time to Rethink Continuous Improvement. One of the best responses was by Jon Miller of Gemba Panta Rei with a post titled How is PDCA Inimical to Innovation?
  • Jamie Flinchbaugh has a thought-provoking post asking Are You Working on the Right Problems? Probably not, especially if you’re a manager. “The manager’s problems are why those problems exist. The manager’s problems are why we can’t solve those problems faster.”

  • Similar to jumping into solutions mode, Matthew May reminds us in a short video that Doing Something Isn’t Always Better than Doing Nothing. Or as he says, quoting National Geographic journalist Boyd Matson, “when the hippos charge, stand still.”
Posted in Carnival, Management

Customers Are Often Irrational

Posted on May 31, 2012 by John Hunter

Penney Pinching

“The first rule is that there are no irrational customers,” Drucker wrote in Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices. “Customers almost without exception behave rationally in terms of their own realities and their own situation.”

“in terms of their own realities and their own situation.” is a huge caveat. Essentially plenty of customers behave irrationally – by any sensible definition of rational. I agree, to make them customers and keep them as customers you need to develop theories that can make sense of their behavior. And it doesn’t make sense to think if they behave irrationally that means randomly (chaotically, unpredictably, uncontrollably). Customers can be predictably irrational (as a group).

Seeing that people will choose* to fly lousy airlines because the initial price quoted is a little bit cheaper than an alternative (or because they are in a frequent flyer program) you can say the customer is behaving rationally if you want. Coming up with some convoluted way to make their decision, which based based solely on their desired outcomes (and cost factors etc.) is not rational, to be seen as rational seems like a bad idea to me. Instead figure out the models for how they fail to behave rationally.

They consistently chose an option they shouldn’t rationally want; in order to save some amount of money they don’t care about nearly as much as the pain they will experience. And the amount they will then complain about having to suffer because they chose to deal with the badly run airline. That isn’t rational. It is a common choice though.

The problem is not in thinking the customers are being irrational for not buying what you are selling. The problem is in thinking the customers will behave rationally. Your theory should not expect rational behavior.

There are plenty of other examples where customers make irrational decisions. I don’t think calling them rational (within the irrationality of their “own realities” makes sense). People will buy things because they think it is a better bargain to get the more expensive item that is the same, for more money, because originally the store charged more and now it is on sale. Anchoring isn’t an understanding of how people are rational. It is an understanding of how psychology influences people in ways that are not rational.

Continue reading →

Posted in Psychology | Tagged , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Better Management in Government

Posted on May 27, 2012 by John Hunter

This month Paul Borawski (CEO of ASQ) has asked the ASQ Influential Voices to share their thoughts on quality management in the public sector.

photo of John Hunter with the US Capital in the Background

John Hunter with the US Capital in the background, Washington DC

I have been involved in quality improvement in government at the Office of Secretary of Defense Quality Management Office and the White House Military Office and elsewhere. Transformation and Redesign at the White House Communications Agency by March Laree Jacques provides a nice look at some good efforts. I also was on the board of the Public Sector Network which became the ASQ Government Division. There is lots of great work that has been done.

There are many issues involved, but the biggest is that the leaders in government are normally not interested in having the government perform better. They have political agendas that they are more concerned with, performance just doesn’t matter (or in some cases they even want bad results because their political view is government is bad and therefore anything that makes it look good should be avoided). So they turn the focus of the government to achieving the political aims they have and starve government organizations of talent and money that are not focused exclusively on their agenda.

This doesn’t have to be the case. If politicians cared about the results of their policies, not just the political points related to their agenda it would make sense to support better management strategies. By and large their actions indicate they are not really interested in the results.

Some in government are able to overcome bad leadership. And occasionally political leaders that actual care about results do emerge. In Dr. Deming’s Out of the Crisis he includes (on pages 245-247) an overview, by my father – William Hunter, of the efforts at the City of Madison (which was the first application of Deming’s ideas by government). My father talked to the Mayor (Joe Sensenbrenner) about a project to use management improvement ideas to improve city government performance and the Mayor went along and then became a great advocate.

Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Public Sector | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Management Improvement Blog Carnival #167

Posted on May 20, 2012 by John Hunter

The Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog Carnival has been published since 2006. We find great management blog posts and share them with you 3 times a month. We hope you find these post interesting and find some new blogs to start reading. Follow me online: Google+, Twitter, instant management consulting, and more.

Lake with Mountain in the Background

By John Hunter, see more of my trip to Rocky Mountain National Park.

  • Celebrate Learning, Not Success or Failure by Jurgen Appelo – “Failure and success are orthogonal to learning. What you learn from are the experiments and tests that you run.”
  • How to do Hansei by Jon Miller – “There is a fundamental cultural difference between cultures, regions and within organization when it comes to facing up to faults and failures, accepting responsibility, and learning. The capacity to reflect may be what separate homo sapiens from animals, successful organizations from those less so.”
  • Toyota Way Principle #3: “Pull” Systems by Chad Walters – “The purpose of the pull system (also called “kanban” system) is to have a measured queue of materials (raw materials, work-in-process, components, whatever) ready to be ‘pulled’ by the next process step. After the materials are ‘pulled’ a signal is sent to the preceding process step to replace what was taken.”
  • Blaming Deming, Lean, and Six Sigma and the Importance of “Why?” by Kevin Meyer – However both lean and six sigma are phenomenally powerful – if used properly. And at the core of using them properly is to first ask “why?” What is the problem or opportunity, why is it important, what is the desired future state, and what is the most appropriate tool to leverage?… Not asking that simple question is the difference between companies that successfully leverage Deming’s methods, lean, and six sigma…

    • Continue reading →

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Richard Feynman Explains the PDSA Cycle

Posted on May 17, 2012 by John Hunter

Ok, really Richard Feynman Explains the scientific method. But his thoughts make the similarity between the PDSA cycle and the scientific method obvious.

1) Plan, hypothesis.
You make a guess about a theory (in using the PDSA cycle this step is often missed, while in the scientific method this is of the highest priority). You make a prediction based on that theory.

2) Do the experiment

3) Study the results

If the results disprove the theory you were wrong. If they results don’t disprove the theory you may have a useful theory (it can also be that your theory is still wrong, but this experiment happened not to provide results that disprove it).

Step 4, Act, only exists for PDSA. In science the aim is to learn and confirm laws. While the PDSA cycle has an aim to learn and adopt methods that achieve the desired results.

Richard Feynman: “If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong, in that simple statement is the key to science, it doesn’t make any difference how beautiful your guess is, it doesn’t make a difference how smart you are (who made the guess), or what his name is, if it disagrees with experiment it is wrong.”

Actually far to often “PDSA” fails to adopt this understanding. Instead it become PA: no study of the results, just implement and we all already agree it is going to work so don’t bother wasting time testing that it actually does. Some organization do remember to study results of the pilot experiments but then forget to study the results when the new ideas are adopted on a broader scale.

Related: Does the Data Deluge Make the Scientific Method Obsolete? – Video of Young Richard Feynman Talking About Scientific Thinking – How to Use of the PDSA Improvement Cycle Most Effectively – Using Design of Experiments

Posted in Process improvement, Quality tools, Science | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Management Improvement Blog Carnival #166

Posted on May 11, 2012 by John Hunter

Tim McMahon is hosting the Management Improvement Blog Carnival #166, highlights include:

  • Performance Organizations – Art Smalley answers why is there such a resistance to creating learning organizations and why are leaders letting the future deteriorate without doing anything about it.
  • Trust – Cornerstone of Performance – George Rathburn explains that teams lose trust in their leaders when they fail to show trust and respect in their teams.
  • Lean Snake Oil Cures What Ails Ya – Mike Wroblewski takes some creative license to explain Lean and it benefits but warns against secrets to implementation as Lean takes hard work and personal commitment.

Take a look at the entire post on Tim’s blog: A Lean Journey

The management sub-Reddit is a social network for those interested in management improvement to post useful online resources and recommend those they found most worthwhile.

Posted in Carnival, Lean thinking, Management | Tagged ,

Long Term Thinking with Respect for People

Posted on May 9, 2012 by John Hunter

Toyota nearly went bankrupt near 1950 and had to lay off a third of their employees. A huge focus of the Toyota Production System as envisioned by Taiichi Ohno was to secure the long term success of the company. The priority of doing so is easier to see when you respect people and are in danger of witnessing the destruction of their careers.

photo of John Hunter with a walking stick

I can’t find the quote (maybe Jon Miller, or someone else, can provide one), but I recall one along the lines of the first priority of management is providing long term viability of the company (my sense is this is first due to the respect of the workers and also for all the other stakeholders). The respect for people principle requires executive put the long term success of employees at the top of their thinking when making decisions for the company. I don’t believe it is a ranked list I believe there are several things right at the top that can’t be compromised (respect for people, safety of society, support for customers…).

This means innovating (Toyota Management System, Toyota Prius, Toyota Robots, Lexus brand, etc.) and seeking growth and profit with long term safety that does not risk the failure of the company. And it means planning for the worst case and making sure survivability (without layoffs etc.) is nearly assured. Only when that requirement is met are risks allowed. You do not leverage your company to put it at risk of failure in dire economic conditions even if that would allow you to be more profitable by various measures today. And you certainly don’t leverage just to take out big paychecks for a few short term thinkers.

The economic situation today is extremely uncertain. The whole eurozone financial situation is very questionable. The government debt burden in the USA and Japan is far too high (and of course Europe). China is still far from being a strong economy (they are huge, fast growing and powerful but it is still fairly fragile and risky).

The failures in the current financial system have not been addressed. Band-aids were applied to provide welfare to the largest 30 financial institutions in the form of hundreds of billions or trillions in aid. The system was left largely untouched. It is hard to imagine a more textbook example of failing to fix the causes and just treating the symptoms. This leaves a huge financial risk poised to cause havoc.

Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Lean thinking, Management, Respect, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Lean Manufacturing and the Toyota Production System

Posted on May 3, 2012 by John Hunter

In this post I explore my thoughts about what lean (lean manufacturing, lean thinking…) means. The way I think about it is that lean manufacturing sprung from Toyota. It seems to me the lean manufacturing name was meant to capture the entire Toyota Way. Capturing the whole of what that encompasses isn’t possible in 1 or 2 or even 10 books so it wasn’t done completely.

To me the difference between lean manufacturing described early on by Womack and Jones and the Toyota Way was more about what can be captured and conveyed than about an intentional creation of “lean” ways that are different than Toyota ways.

The question is further complicated by what happens with any management idea of any popularity: the using of the name with all sorts of watered down and even just plain not-lean implementations. So much of what is called “lean” is not the Toyota Production System (TPS), it isn’t even lean.

It seems to me today there is no real accepted authority for what is lean. LEI is good. Some people might say they should be the arbiter but they are not in any way I know of.

Then too, over time any organization of people changes. So what Toyota does today isn’t exactly what Taiichi Ohno would say they should be doing. Even the Toyota Way can be ignored by Toyota. And Ohno certainly wouldn’t think standing still was the answer. Just like Deming; Kiichiro, Sakichi and Shoichiro Toyoda; Ohno expected the management system itself to continually improve. And just like Deming, they would expect the implementation in a different organization (different system) to be different.

Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Lean thinking, Management, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged , , , , , , | 6 Comments