Imagine that you have been hired into a manufacturing organization that is struggling with quality. It deals with lots of customer complaints, too much waste, rework and scrap. Around you, you see people 'saving the day' by working hard and long hours. But despite their heroics, margins are low, costs are high, and you have been brought in to get the situation around. How would you approach your mission? How does one drive a Culture of Quality?
This grim yet very common scenario was the starting point for our 'How to drive a Culture of Quality' webinar. Industry experts, John Blankensop and Gerben de Haan have put themselves in the shoes of a Quality Director to answer this question and discussed how to successfully drive a Culture of Quality with the goal of improving the quality of an organization's output and operations in a way that is sustainable and lasting.
Continue your read for a summary of the webinar's key topics. And sign up here to access examples, tools and view the entire webinar on demand.
Critical quality - where to begin
While there are many actions that could be taken in a manufacturing organization that is struggling with quality, in a critical situation, it's best to first focus on stabilization. To illustrate this point in the context mentioned above, John Blankensop said:
"For me, an organization is like a living being, and quality represents its health. To stabilize the organization, you've got to monitor vital signs. And it's the way we measure quality, being able to look at the amount of nonconformances that are escaping to customers, also understanding the internal nonconformances. Looking at quality objectives and quality measures, integrated measures through the organization is very critical. Because once I can get the organization stabilized, I can now look at the reasons why we got there and how I can turn that around."
But what happens when you don't have much to measure? How can you then assess quality and make its full impact visible? Gerben de Haan suggests that you need to start looking at the cost of quality. ''Although it might be an immature organization, there's probably data on the number of complaints and the number of deviations in the various areas. It's important to start with these numbers and then trying to put them into a monetary perspective, because ultimately that's what's hurting us: the cost of poor quality.''
Gerben continued explaining how to come up with a standard price per complaint and with estimations that would help understand how the organization is doing and trending. Listen to the full webinar recording and understand his explanation and examples.
The Big Q mindset
Creating a Culture of Quality requires more than awareness around cost. A true, lasting transformation takes time and involves some more impactful changes. "If you want to have a quality-minded organization, you've got to start with creating quality-minded leaders," says John Blankensop. Changing the behavior of leaders that can make quality a central business issue is an absolute must for an organization looking to replace its little q with a Big Q mindset. More specifically, it's the necessary transition from focusing on inspection and defect reduction (little q) to using quality strategically and embedding it into every process (Big Q).
How can one achieve the Big Q mindset? It begins with quality professionals. They need to make leadership aware that investing in quality has many benefits, even though it might not be the cheapest option in the short run. And that brings us to the next section.
Translating the impact of quality into a compelling business case
"I think one of the reasons that it's taking so long for quality management to become a topic on the corporate strategy is the inability of many quality professionals to translate their operation into dollars and cents," said Gerben de Haan. No matter how mature an organization is, there are many activities that can be quantified to understand the monetary impact. But there are also many that quality professionals struggle with to estimate, to measure, and to express to leadership in a way that would inform their decision-making.
So, how does one translate the impact of quality? These steps are essential to creating a compelling business case:
- Expose the cost of inaction: Demonstrate the financial implications of maintaining the status quo and the costs associated with current quality management practices.
- Quantify the cost of quality: Divide quality management activities into prevention, appraisal, internal failure, and external failure, and calculate the cost of each.
- Assess current practices: Employ a maturity model to evaluate existing quality practices and identify areas for improvement.
- Calculate the impact of positive change: Determine the potential impact of quality improvements on the Total Cost of Quality.
- Utilize benchmarking: Use industry benchmarks to justify anticipated savings.
Gerben further complemented these steps by explaining the role of technology and how it helps to build a Culture of Quality through awareness, involvement, and ownership.
Culture trickles down in an organization
Once quality professionals make leadership aware of the impact of quality, these become the champions of quality. And with their help, you can drive a Culture of Quality. It's important to highlight that leadership cannot hold back or the CEO to be hands off. Or as John Blankensop puts it "Culture is a verb. It requires action and maintaining a condition that's sustainable for growth.''
To delve deeper into this topic and examples of how you can help leadership adopt and promote a quality mindset, watch the full webinar session.
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