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Welcome to the tenth post in this 12-part series on QUALITY, titled #QUALITYtweet – 12 Ideas to Build a Quality Culture.
Here are the first nine posts, in case you would like to go back and take a look:
- Quality #1: Quality is a long term differentiator
- Quality #2: Cure Precedes Prevention
- Quality #3: Great People + Good Processes = Great Quality
- Quality #4: Simplifying Processes
- Quality #5: Customers are your “Quality Partners”
- Quality #6: Knowing what needs improvement
- Quality #7: Productivity and Quality
- Quality #8: Best Practices are Contextual
- Quality #9: Quality of Relationship and Communication
#QUALITYtweet Formal inspections can be a
huge waste of resources if you have not invested
in getting it right the first time
The goal of any process improvement initiative is to prevent same problems from occurring again. New problems are an opportunity to identify areas of improvement but same problems occurring repetitively is a sign of stagnation.
As someone rightly said, “Quality can never be inspected in a product; it has to be built first.” Processes have to help identify the quality expectations from the customers and translate those expectations into a practical action plan to build/verify quality constantly.
Inspections done at the tail end of product life cycle can eat a huge chunk of your budget because later the problems are found, costlier the resolutions. On top of that, if you have not “engineered” quality in a product, inspections can be a huge waste. You can never verify something you have not built upfront.
In manufacturing world, it is very unlikely to find that a component is inspected after it is integrated in the product. The very idea of inspecting everything after completing all product development is a dangerous one – one that has many business and financial risks associated with it.
This is where “prevention” is always better than “cure”.
Don’t get me wrong. Inspections are still one of the best ways to find problems. The timing of inspection is very important.
When inspections are done earlier in development process:
- Fixing problems is less costly
- Early identification of critical risks helps you manage them proactively
- Lower risk of failure at the end
Following are some very simplified guidelines on how inspection activity can be leveraged to generate value and lower risks for your customers. Each one of these points can be a process in itself.
- Know customer’s quality expectations early and educate team
- Clarify the exact customer requirements (and be ready for change)
- Give thoughtful consideration to a robust product design
- Plan actions to ascertain that quality expectations are built in the product
- Inspect Early and Inspect Often in cycles
- Each cycle of early inspection reduces risk of failure
- With this, final cycles of inspection can focus on “value-delivered-to-customer” rather than “defects-found-at-the-tail-end”.
The process of inspection can be your biggest asset if you have invested early efforts in building quality and then inspecting it. Else, it can be a huge waste. Reduce this waste and you will automatically start forming a culture where “building quality” always takes precedence over inspecting. Your journey towards a quality-oriented culture begins there
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