Do Your own standard:
By jay Oliphant
8/05/06
World-class leader
Every company likes to be a world class leader. So why is it that so many are
last-place quality followers? Leading entails defining you own path and moving forward
with your own plans and not waiting till others have blazed the trail. So how is picking
up some poorly fitted quality fad, leadership? What about finding your own ideas and
moving forward with your own passion.
You can do better
But you say, how can you improve on quality idea XYS-- it came from the
smartest people in the country. You can do better! Why- because you can make a
program that fits your organization like a glove. No matter how fancy the garment; the
nicest one will be custom fitted. You then build your program around your industry,
incorporating the best ideas and practices available.
Best Ideas
In the midst of WWII, many corporations in the United States spent time looking
for and developing advanced tools to speed up production and increase quality. Then
men / woman of intelligence and innovation developed new and better tools to control
processes. Some of them helped Japan, as that countries’ companies worked hard to
develop excellence.
We have access through their innovations from a group of people that popularized this
movement’s achievements. This group (commonly called the ‘gurus’ of quality) and
their writing, are a great place to seek the bedrock ideas that your standard should stand
on. I have detailed six ideas that have helped revolutionize the field below:
 Measure the variation of your process, and classify the cause
Every process has creates variations as it transforms inputs to outputs. Its first important
to classify variation as special cause variation, where a unique untypical event creates
variation and common cause variation, the routine random variation not attributable to
events. We need to first understand these events and eliminate them. Only once we have
a process under statistical control (no special cause variation) can we make fundamental
improvements to the routine error of a process.

You cannot guarantee quality through inspection, you must “error-proof” your
process
“To err is human” as the saying goes, and it is a well known fact that as inspection duties
increase, inspector acuity decreases. The trick is to avoid making poor quality parts in
the first place, that way you both save money (from decreased inspection) and improve
quality (consequently improve sales). This is done best by designing the process so that
mistakes aren’t made, or even if they are , your product quality is still high.
 Focus on your customer and your process, and the $$$ will come
How many times have seen that wise changes and investments haven’t been made due to
$$$, even when the customer want it and the process could use it? Without customers or
process, you’d have no $$$, so the ‘bottom-line’ is that you must have satisfied
customers and a capable process.
 Center your material within the specification for the most customer satisfaction
The customer feels the difference of each of your products from the center target.
Specifications spell out the minimum requirement but they do not state the optimum; for
that you will need to take the processes that create your product and center them with as
little variation as possible at the target.

Eliminate fear, lack of communication and quotas and replace with leadership and
employee involvement
Your employees can either work for you or against you. An atmosphere of fear cannot
lead to excellence; nor can distrust and suspicion. It’s the employees that work with the
basic processes that are you best asset. They are the ones whom see most clearly what
goes wrong and what could be done better. Win them over by investing in them; give
them training, and incentives for good ideas. Bring them on the teams that furfill
improvement projects and allow them to spell out their ideas. Remember quotas and
numerical targets can hold back performance or create discouragement, as in almost all
cases it’s the process that limits the quality or quantity of your product. Personnel should
be fostered and allowed to gravitate to area where they perform best.
 Begin a never-ending search for continual Improvement
Just like you can never have too much money, you can never have too much
improvement. Your processes can always be further analyzed and your customers will
still always want more. In a global economy, competition will be at your door.
Unsatisfied customers will go somewhere else and innovation will press you to meet new
and better features within your product.
Your ideas
So far we’ve broadly discussed of what a program would contain, but not what
makes it your own. For that you’ll need to research. What is your company’s culture?
What is your industry? Its more than merely marketing what others have, it is analyzing
what your company does well. Build around a solidly capable engineering group or a top
notch team who excels at design of experiments. You can’t perform this step alone, and
it is important to connect to the people who can make this program your company’s own.
You’ll also need to connect to upper management, and that means simplifying the
technical and emphasizing how well it fits the company culture.
The ISO family of standards
Wait? You say, “I can’t define a new standard, I already have one. It’s called ISO
9001:2000.” Well actually the ISO standard is a set of minimum standards an
organization must meet to receive accreditation. It is far from a tyrannical document that
tells you what to do. In fact you might consider it a family of standards, since there are
very many standards that meet and exceed the requirement. You want a standard that is
your own addresses what is important in your business and challenges the company to
excellence. ISO merely requires a minimum of good habits to ensure good product
comes out.
Summary
Actually, Doing your own standard is hardly a new idea. In fact, many of the
great innovators have brought their innovations to life in courageous companies for many
years now. But some of the quality world have kept the letter of quality while it’s lost the
spirit of quality innovation. Just because you haven’t discovered some basic fundamental
law of quality doesn’t mean you should stoop to mindless copying. You can ‘discover’
what works best in your company. You can ‘discover’ what bring out enthusiasm and
commitment in your company. You can use the best tools and are the most appropriate
documentation. You can win in the marketplace by being the best You that you can be.