Legitimizing process incapability
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n one of my monthly visits to the head office of a television manufacturer, the Chairman was a worried man. No. Correction. He was in a state of shock. He purposefully took me to his plush Chairman’s Office and shared a devastating quality lesson he had learned the previous day. From a potential Korean mega buyer of colour televisions. Two Koreans had arrived in his office at the dot of 8 am. They had no time to sit in the Chairman’s Office; refused the Chairman’s courtesy of a cup of tea; went straight to the shop floor.
These two Koreans walked the shop floor, making notes in their pictorial script. They whispered to each other, at a regular frequency over a four-hour walk.
At noon, they finally had a meeting with the Chairman at his office.
“Why do you paint your machinery grey?” was the first question.
“Why do you have incoming inventory? And work-in-progress inventory? And finished goods inventory?”
More: “How many inspectors do you have?”
Even more: “How many after-sales service engineers do you have?”
The Chairman confessed that he had fumbled with his answers.
The concluding remarks of the Koreans were: “Respected Sir, we paint our machinery white to sensitize the workers for detecting errors. Also, we see a strong correlation between inventory and process incapability. Further, your army of inspectors reinforces weak process capability. Finally, your large after-sales service department leads us to ask: Is your product so unreliable and bad? Our advice to you Sir is that you improve your processes and thereby reduce your costs. We would not like to pay for your chronic problems.”
"Is Reliability Engineering the key to economic growth?"
